ALTAR, Mexico (By Dianne Solis, Dallas Morning News) February 21, 2007 — For nearly a decade, this village on the edge of the Sonoran Desert has been a supermarket for smugglers and the smuggled. Migrants choose from an array of packages offered by coyotes and pick up day packs and anti-dehydration potions for the trek north.

Now drug smugglers want their route. And to drive home their point, they've burned nearly two dozen vehicles of van drivers in the last two months, and left migrants shoeless in the Sonora.

The violence spilled into Arizona last week: Three Guatemalans in a truck carrying illegal immigrants were killed in a shooting northwest of Tucson.

Some officials say human smugglers are fighting among themselves and ripping off migrant customers.

But others point to veteran drug-cartel leader Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman, whose nickname is Spanish slang for "Shorty."

Guzman heads the drug cartel named for his Mexican home state of Sinaloa. And he wants the Sonoran route in the same way that Mexico's Zeta gang wants Interstate 35 from Laredo through Texas, said two law-enforcement officials in the U.S.

"Chapo's ambition is nothing short of taking control of the Mexican border," said one U.S. law-enforcement official who's been on Guzman's trail for nearly a decade and agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity. "He's a crafty drug trafficker and ruthless killer who also happens to be a brilliant businessman. And there's nothing more lucrative on the border than control of vital transit border routes."

Human smuggling is a lucrative business, with fees tripling in recent years and as many as nine out of 10 illegal immigrants using a smuggler to get into the U.S.

In Altar last week, many immigrants at the central plaza and those working at a shelter were buzzing about the violence.

"They're actually burning buses now," says Marcos Burruel, a volunteer at a migrant shelter in Altar. "These guys are trying to control the corridor for drugs, and they don't want migrants using it. ... And all we can do is give warnings."

Isaac Catalan would love a job in construction in the Carolinas, he says. But the Arizona border is now "tapado por la mafia" — closed by the mafia, says Catalan who tried to cross three times and lost more than $3,000 in the attempts.

"There's too much vigilance, too much," says Catalan, who comes from Mexico's southernmost state of Chiapas. "And it's not the Border Patrol."

Fernando Martinez nods in agreement. His brother was knifed in the leg and robbed of $600 when he tried to cross the border near Sasabe, a popular crossing west of Nogales, he says.

"We want President Bush to know what's happening here," Martinez says.

Drivers in battered vans complain that business is off 20 percent to 50 percent because of the drug violence.

They charge $10 a head to take people to Sasabe, Mexico, right on the border. But they won't go near El Chango, just west of Sasabe. That's too violent, they say.

At the plaza, the steeple on the church of Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe juts into the sky defiantly. It's encircled by desperation. For $3 a night, "casas de huespuedes," guest houses, beckon migrants to rest.

Fliers from human rights organizations here warn that "trabajo forzado," forced labor, is illegal.

Inside the church, there are more fliers — images of Roselia Romero Ruiz and Simitrio Santiago, who have disappeared.

Arizona is the heaviest sector for the U.S. Border Patrol for illegal immigrants. Nearly half of the arrests happen here, and it's been targeted for a test of the newest technology for the year-old Secure Border Initiative. That shift in traffic to Arizona took place as the Border Patrol tried to place tourniquets in Texas and California on the migrant flow in the mid-1990s. Then came even more enforcement after the 2001 terrorist attacks on the East Coast.

Three years ago, Mexico began cracking down on top drug cartels, from Tijuana to Matamoros, freeing some routes and forcing a war among cartel leaders for more territory. As the cartels fight for plazas, slang for crucial real estate to bring drugs into the U.S., the violence has shot up.