134 tons of Marijuana, up in smoke

Tijuana, Mexico: Tons of marijuana  - 134 tons, in fact - sat on a makeshift platform Wednesday on a military base here. And then, after a military band played, after speeches by Army and police commanders, after a laborer sprayed fuel on the verdant, pungent bales, after college students and dignitaries and a throng of journalists took aim with their cameras, it was lit on fire.

And so up in smoke went the equivalent of a few hundred million joints in what Mexican authorities called the largest seizure of the drug in the country's history, a dash of hype befitting the elaborate ceremony to both get rid of it and highlight a success, any success, in a bloody, lingering drug war.

The authorities could not say with precision what the previous record was, but no matter, this one, they said, had to be the biggest.

With the push of a switch setting off an electrical charge, a few patches of flame burst from the bales and quickly erupted in boiling flames that sent blasts of heat more than 100 meters away and thick, black billowing smoke into the wind.

The column of smoke was visible for several miles and eventually the tell-tale scent began enveloping the area, especially down wind, as guests were ushered out.

It had taken soldiers several hours to unload three tractor-trailers and a smaller truck filled with the 15,300 bales - wrapped in plastic and aluminum foil, with some labeled "yoyo" and "dog" and "wolf" or bearing the smiling image of Homer Simpson, apparent branding or labels for distributors in the United States.

It will take two days to burn it all.

The image - the government flew national and international journalists from Mexico City on a military plane to witness it - was clearly designed to send a message to traffickers and assure an increasingly anxious public of progress in the drug fight.

Left unsaid was how the marijuana made it so close to the border or how much goes undiscovered - the neat, orderly bundling and labeling made clear the sophisticated smuggling and distribution system that remains in tact despite the government's crackdown.

The drug wars of the last four years have killed nearly 30,000 people, and the violence has spread to areas like Monterrey, the industrial capital once thought relatively free of the problem.

The government, largely through the military and the federal police, is trying to dismantle the largest trafficking groups, which have splintered and erupted in battles among themselves for routes into the United States.

The marijuana was seized Monday here, a city that two years ago was experiencing some of the worst violence - beheadings, combatants disssolved in vats of chemicals - but is now perceived as calmer because murders are down from then and those that occur, more than 600 so far this year, are far less spectacular and public.

The drugs were confiscated in an industrial area near the San Diego border during an operation carried out by the military and local and state police, the kind of unity that local and federal officials say has helped quiet Tijuana, relatively speaking, and could serve as a model for the nation.

"This was a strike at the structure of this criminal group," said Julian Leyzaola Perez, the police chief here, whose officers first encountered the suspicious vehicles that eventually led to the marijuana.

It was believed to belong to one of the largest and most notorious drug organizations in the country, the Sinaloa cartel headed by Joaquin Guzman Loera, known as "El Chapo," or shorty.