The drivers of two vans blocked a city patrol car from entering the street.

"Go around another way" spat one of the black-clad men to the city police, gesturing with the barrel of his AK-47.

A green Jetta with three state judicial police oversaw the scene, acting as a shield for the exit of the men in black.

The local police thought it could be a bust being carried out by the state judicial police. "We could see in front of a house four men dressed in black, like the uniforms of judicial police when they are carrying out operations," wrote local officers Misael de la Cruz and José Pilar Morales.

The local officers radioed for backup, but the response was clear "Don't get close. This is a state judicial police operation."

The vans carrying the armed men who were later identified as hitmen, possibly members of the feared Zeta mercenary gang made up of ex-military special operatives in the pay of drug lord Osiel Cádenas took off at high speeds down Chichén Itzá Ave. with at least four people they had kidnapped. Those four were discovered days later burnt beyond recognition in a smoldering Dodge Stratus.

Fifteen minutes after the getaway, De la Cruz and Morales were ordered back to the scene by a different radio dispatcher. At 14 Langosta Street, they found an empty house, two dogs that had been killed by bursts from AK47s, and the doors wide open. Their boss, Felipe de Jesús Arguelles, now jailed on charges of protecting drug traffickers, was waiting in the street.

The next 10 days horrified Cancun residents: 12 bodies appeared in different spots around the city. The dead included three agents from the Federal Investigation Agency (AFI), two police informants, three businessmen and the four burned bodies.

The hired guns left a wake of death in Cancun, the tourist mecca known for its white sands and the azure waters of the Caribbean now overrun by the wheeling and dealing of the drug cartels, brought on by a bloody dispute between rival drug lords, by police corruption, and, now, by the growing local consumption of cocaine and ecstasy, according to reports drawn up by the organized crime unit of the federal Attorney General's Office (PGR).

The report, written several months ago, predicted the war between drug cartels that has erupted in Cancun and nearby Chetumal. Both cities have long appeared in PGR maps as a "reception zone" for both trafficked drugs and the trade's massive profits. There will be increasing violence in places like Cancun "for the control of the town square," the report warns.

The March 2003 arrest of Osiel Cárdenas, head of the Gulf cartel, set the stage for the current battle.

According to the report, the arrest of Cardenas "setoff a fight for the control of the Gulf zone between cartels from Jalisco, Sinaloa and Chihuahua, headed respectively by Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán Loera, Ismael 'El Mayo' Zambada García, and the Carrillo clan," the report says.

Quintana Roo has not escaped this dispute. On PGR maps the state is marked as the territory of four cartels: the remnants of the Gulf organization, Guzman's from Jalisco, Zambada's from Sinaloa, and the Arellano Félix gang based in Tijuana.

"The Carrillo Fuentes organization is considered one of the most powerful in the nation. It is dedicated to the traffic of cocaine and marijuana, as well as allowing the trafficking of heroin through its territory for a quota," the report says.

The Osiel Cárdenas group reportedly also pays quotas, but to the police for the protection of drug dealers.

Local police protect hundreds of tienditas, or little shops, dealing drugs to locals and vacationers, according to local press reports.

Official police versions confirm that a group of state judicial police, known as "The Hunters," charge the tienditas between 300,000 pesos and 350,000 pesos per week, according to criminal complaints filed by other police.

The local police chief in September said city police had identified at least 300 tienditas in the area, though local media reports the figure to be closer to 500 little shops.

Police protection of drug dealers is reflected in the growing local consumption of illegal drugs. Every year, more and more people in the Cancun area are arrested for possession of marijuana, cocaine and crack.

The most recent report from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) on Mexico says traffickers are using Cancun as a launching pad to ship ecstasy and methamphetamines to the United States and Europe.

The DEA report also says Cancun and Cozumel the destination for hordes of spring breaking U.S. college students as well as Mexican and European vacationers have become centers for consumption of ecstasy in local dance clubs and bars.

With several of the major cartels operating in Cancun, federal police forces have been corrupted, wreaking havoc within the ranks.

Several local officials of the PGR have been removed from their posts on charges of colluding with drug traffickers.

Cancun state PGR delegate Miguel Ángel Hernández Castrellón has become the most recent example, now jailed on charges of protecting local drug dealers and participating in the 12 executions of November.

A network of corruption and payoffs allow the movement of drugs through the area, mostly by the Carrillo cartel.

"Its structure is based in independent cells, controlled by trusted officials, who have generated the cartel big profits, which have been invested in other ventures (including hotels, construction companies and even airlines)," according to the PGR report.

The illegal drug trade is growing stronger in Cancun as city, state and federal authorities mutual recriminate one another.

However, the 12 executions of November suggest that officers from all three levels are complicit in the actions of the cartels and the protection of drug dealers.

That Monday night, no one dared to stop the assassins who dumped the lifeless corpses on the outskirts of the city.