By John Ward Anderson
                  Washington Post Foreign Service
                  Friday, March 19, 1999; Page A19

                  MEXICO CITY—He's an ordinary banker, but in Mexico City these are
                  not ordinary times. So he has a driver trained in counterkidnapping
                  maneuvers and they take a different route to work every day. The
                  windows of his two private cars have been treated with a special film to
                  resist smashing.

                  When he and his wife go out at night, they strive for understatement -- no
                  French cuffs or diamond engagement ring -- and when they return, they
                  call ahead by cell phone and a police car meets them at the front gate,
                  emergency lights flashing. In addition to a new alarm system, the home has
                  a new television camera to monitor the front door and there are plans to
                  build a vault-like "safe room" on the second floor that can be sealed with
                  the family inside should someone break into the house.

                  Paranoid? Perhaps. But in a city where crime is a major growth industry --
                  for criminals and companies that sell security systems to thwart them --
                  such extreme measures are increasingly common.

                  "My company paid for all this infrastructure. As a high-level executive in a
                  big multinational, the cocoon is provided," said the banker, a foreigner who
                  agreed to be interviewed only if he and his bank were not identified. "The
                  house is wired like Fort Knox, so at night, with the alarms, if anything
                  happens, the cops are here within two minutes."

                  The extra security is warranted by an explosion in crime that has forced
                  residents to dramatically change their lifestyles and even has prompted
                  some rich Mexicans to move their families out of the country. The surge in
                  kidnappings -- as many as six a day in Mexico City -- and violent crime
                  has been a boon to companies that provide bodyguards, alarm systems,
                  specially trained ransom negotiators and other security services.
                  Newspapers are filled with ads offering personal-defense training and
                  bulletproofing for automobiles.

                  Daniel Bell, general manager of Kroll-O'Gara of Mexico, a leading
                  international security firm, said that the business of bulletproofing cars in
                  Mexico has grown more than 400 percent in the past four years. The
                  demand reflects the growth in crime that followed Mexico's 1994 currency
                  devaluation, which thrust the country into a deep recession.

                  "Mexico changed forever with the economic crisis, the opening of borders
                  [with the United States under the North American Free Trade Agreement]
                  and the globalization of the economy," he said. "Before '94, this was a very
                  peaceful place, but the economic crisis had such a severe impact that it
                  changed the moral fiber of the country."

                  Sociologists also trace the rise in crime to a leadership vacuum that has
                  accompanied Mexico's gradual democratization, and the decline in power
                  of the long-ruling and autocratic Institutional Revolutionary Party. And
                  there is a sense that crime pays. According to the federal government, 95
                  percent of all reported crimes go unpunished.

                  Statistics on crime in Mexico City are unreliable, partly because so many
                  crimes are unreported. According to the attorney general's office, about
                  700 crimes are reported daily in the capital, an increase from about 376 a
                  day in 1993, the year before the economic crisis.

                  Crime victims' reluctance to go to the police is fueled by suspicion that
                  police themselves are behind much of the crime. According to a survey last
                  week by the daily newspaper Reforma, 32 percent of the people polled
                  said they or someone they know has been assaulted by a police officer.
                  Earlier this month, five officers from a northern suburb of the capital were
                  arrested and charged in the robbing and killing of 17 people.

                  Police are not the only ones who have organized themselves into gangs. In
                  December, the vice president of the City Council's public safety
                  commission released a "Crime Atlas of Mexico City," mapping the turf of
                  747 gangs with more than 18,000 members.

                  Many of the gangs are involved in the same increasingly popular criminal
                  pursuit: kidnapping. Mexico has been rocked in recent months by
                  high-profile abductions; victims have included the father of the country's
                  most famous soccer star and the son of a superstar "ranchero" singer, who
                  reportedly paid a $2.5 million ransom after kidnappers cut off one of his
                  son's fingers.

                  "Everybody wants to get into it because it's easy money," said Max
                  Morales, a Mexico City attorney who has been involved in numerous
                  kidnap negotiations.

                  "They do financial research and choose their targets," he said. "Sometimes
                  they pick the best time for a kidnapping by studying vacation time, travel
                  habits and [they study] cash flow through the victim's companies to make
                  the ransom collections easier. But if they need to, they can keep the
                  hostage for more than a month."

                  Long waits and protracted negotiations take a brutal toll on families.

                  "After 1 1/2 weeks we reached the first impasse, and they said, 'If you
                  don't send the cash, we're going to send you his right hand in a bag,' " said
                  a Mexico City man whose brother was kidnapped and held for several
                  weeks. The man spoke on condition that the case not be identified.

                  "I thought they were bluffing, but then they didn't call for two days. That
                  broke their routine, and it worried me. Then they called and said, 'Did you
                  get the packet?' I said no, and they said, 'We threw a packet over the
                  fence with your brother's hand. Go look,' and they hung up. I flipped out.
                  The hand -- the mutilation -- makes you think you failed. That's the
                  psychological torture they use."

                  In his case, his brother's hand was not cut off and the hostage was
                  eventually freed. But the ordeal helped destroy their family, the man said,
                  and led to nightmares and paranoia. "When my brother got back he
                  expected a united family to comfort him but everybody, from their
                  perspective, was a victim. We were all traumatized," he said.

                  Long-term abductions are sometimes considered too risky so kidnappers
                  have devised a technique called "express kidnapping" -- a short-term
                  abduction in which the aim is to drain the victim's liquid assets quickly,
                  often by forcing him or her to make multiple withdrawals from different
                  automatic teller machines.

                  In November, New York University graduate student Frederick McPhail,
                  27, died after a group of Mexico City police officers allegedly abducted
                  him and drove him to cash machines to make withdrawals, then forced him
                  to drink a huge quantity of alcohol, apparently hoping it would cloud his
                  memory. Instead, it killed him. So far, 13 current and former officers -- all
                  alleged to be members of a gang that used the same drinking strategy to
                  discredit and confuse their victims -- have been arrested.

                  Another popular crime is "virtual kidnapping," in which a family is falsely
                  led to believe that a loved one has been kidnapped. In a typical scenario, a
                  stranger meets a woman at a bar and engages in personal banter.

                  Then the woman goes to a movie while the stranger calls her family, saying
                  she has been kidnapped and demanding an instant ransom, to be paid
                  before the movie is over.

                  Foreign executives and rich Mexicans are taking unprecedented measures
                  to protect themselves, their families and associates but the crime wave has
                  touched all levels of society.

                  Javier Sanchez Gomez, 37, a waiter and actor, said that he and his
                  girlfriend moved from the city after they were express-kidnapped and she
                  was raped by the abductors. Now, he said, "I don't go out alone at night. I
                  don't carry a lot of cash. I don't use regular cabs, only Sitio cabs [from
                  monitored taxi stands]. I look around all the time, and if I see something
                  suspicious, I just leave that street."
 

                           © Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company