Aside from earning money from the sales of narcotics, the Cartel also collects taxes aka piso, cuota from street level dealers, prominent businesses. Anyone passing narcotics or aliens through a plaza belonging to the Gulf Cartel is subject to payment of these ‘taxes’ to the cartel, regardless of whether the contraband is subsequently apprehended by US law enforcement or not. Payment of these taxes assure that the Cartel will not strike violently at those who pay them. The Gulf cartel does not limit itself solely to narcotics trafficking, as they have been known to kidnap local businessmen to collect money.

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Last Sunday, the police chief of Praxedia G. Guerrero, another municipality near this violent metropolis just across the US border from El Paso, Texas, was found decapitated.

Also Tuesday, a group of armed men shot dead in Ciudad Juarez two officers with the Chihuahua state attorney general’s office who were in their official vehicle outside a shopping centre.

The two men are the first law enforcement personnel killed this year in Juarez, a city where about 70 officers were killed last year.

According to press reports, so far this year, more than 65 people have been murdered in incidents linked to organised crime.

Ciudad Juarez was Mexico’s deadliest city in 2008, reporting more than 1,600 homicides blamed on drug cartels and other organised crime elements.

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Eduardo Arellano is one of eight siblings in the infamous Arellano Felix family, which runs Mexico’s most powerful drug ring, the Tijuana cartel. Eduardo was said to be one of the bosses after several of his brothers were arrested or killed.

Just days before, Jesus Zambada Garcia, one of the leaders of the rival Sinaloa cartel, was arrested in the Mexican capital.

President Felipe Calderon declared war on organized crime and violence two years ago when he took office, sending tens of thousands of soldiers into the especially dangerous regions in the north, near the US, the main market for illicit drugs.

More than 5,000 people have been killed in bloody wars between the cartels and criminal gangs this year so far, many of them civilians caught in crossfire. In recent weeks, particularly gruesome group murders have been carried out in the northern towns.

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Though the victims were yet to be identified, police believe they may include Mexicans, Guatemala or Colombians, he said.

Officials said, the bruise marks on the bodies suggested they were tortured before being killed by shooting to the back of thier head from a close range.

Meanwhile, police in the northern state of Nuevo Leon have also found two burned human heads on a road in the city of Escobedo, the state Attorney General’s Office said.

An anonymous caller tipped off authorities to the location of the human remains, the AG’s office said, adding that the condition of the heads made it impossible to determine the gender or age of the victims.

On Sunday, the decapitated bodies of eight army soldiers were found along an urban boulevard in the southern state of Guerrero.

Brutal slayings by drug cartels are on the rise in Mexico, and officials estimate that more than 5,300 people have died in organized crime-related slayings this year.

Mexico has been plagued in recent years by drug-related violence, with powerful cartels battling each other and the security forces, as rival gangs vie for control of lucrative smuggling and distribution routes.

Armed groups linked to Mexico’s drug cartels murdered around 2,700 people in 2007 and 1,500 in 2006, with the death toll this year already at more than 5,300, according to governemnt data.

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An officer who took part in the operation said that dozens of soldiers travelling in military vehicles arrived early Saturday at an upscale home in the Residencial Chipinque neighbourhood of San Pedro, which has the highest income per capita in all of Latin America.

The soldiers burst into the residence during a party attended by presumed members of the Sinaloa drug cartel, a powerful crime syndicate led by Mexico’s most-wanted fugitive, Joaquin Guzman, for whom the US has offered a $5 million reward.

The soldier said that 15 suspects, including men and women, were arrested inside the home, and that weapons, drugs and money were also confiscated from them.

The detainees have been kept at a military installation and later will be handed over to the federal Attorney General’s Office for processing.

Meanwhile, six people have been killed by a group of suspected drug cartel hit men inside a garage in northern metropolis of Ciudad Juarez in Chihuahua state.

According to prosecutors, the incident occurred Friday afternoon and the cause of slayings remained unclear.

With the latest killings the gangland murder toll in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico’s most violent city, raised to 1,600 this year.

Since taking office, Mexican President Felipe Calderon has deployed more than 30,000 soldiers and federal police to nearly a dozen states in a bid to crush the cartels.

The operation, however, has failed to put a dent in the violence because of the drug gangs’ ability to buy off the police and even high-ranking prosecutors.

The US is the main market for the illegal drugs and also the source of most of the weapons that flow to the heavily armed cartels.

Battles over smuggling routes to the US and internal power struggles within the cartels have left more than 5,400 dead nationwide.

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