CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — A new surge of killing, kidnapping and extortion is the latest sign that the violent crime wave in Mexico has not subsided since President Enrique Peña Nieto took office Dec. 1 and could grow further in the weeks to come, U.S. law enforcement officials say.

Fresh intelligence indicates that the paramilitary group known as the Zetas is pushing farther into northern Coahuila and Chihuahua states, threatening to reignite deadly violence in areas bordering Texas, including Ciudad Juárez.

Since Peña Nieto took office Dec. 1, estimates by media outlets indicate that more than 1,000 people have been killed across Mexico — a pace even faster than during the administration of his predecessor, Felipe Calderón — with many of those killings in Coahuila and Chihuahua, three U.S. law enforcement officials said. The violence threatens to overshadow the new administration’s attempt to highlight economic reforms and a growing middle class.

Ciudad Juárez, once the murder capital of Mexico, has been touted for a turnaround and is now a relative model of stability. In 2012, the city of 1.2 million people recorded 750 homicides, a substantial drop from the previous year, when 2,086 people were killed.

But a U.S. law enforcement official cautioned: “We’re witnessing the calm before the storm. It’s not over yet, not by any means.”

In the past week, according to media reports, at least four people were killed in Juárez, some with signs bearing the work of organized crime. One man appeared to have been beaten to death, one was found hanged in a motel room, and two others were shot and killed inside their vehicles.

The assessment of the U.S. law enforcement officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, is significant because they are based along the border and tend to speak more candidly than their counterparts in Mexico City or Washington.

Security steps

Their assessment comes as Peña Nieto is taking the initial steps of addressing security matters, which ranks as a priority for most Mexicans. Last month, before Mexico’s National Council on Public Security, Peña Nieto reiterated that he would focus on reducing crimes against ordinary citizens — such as murder, kidnapping and extortion — rather than pursuing top capos.

Peña Nieto and members of his Cabinet also unleashed criticism of the previous administration’s policies, which resulted in a drawn-out conflict with cartels in which more than 60,000 people were killed. Some estimates suggest that thousands more — as many as 24,000 — are missing and presumed dead.

Last week, Peña Nieto and his new ambassador to the United States, Eduardo Medina Mora, stressed the importance of positioning Mexico as a country that wants peace and is open for investment.

The focus of Peña Nieto’s security plan is the creation of a 10,000-member national paramilitary police force, designed to take back territories where local law enforcement and military forces have failed to eradicate criminal groups and where kingpins rule.

But any new measure from Peña Nieto could take months to implement because congressional approval is required, said Alejandro Hope, a former intelligence official and a security expert and columnist for the website Animal Politico.

“It’s not so much a question of whether violence will lead to a loss of political capital for Peña Nieto, but when and how much?” said Hope. “I don’t know, but I would think that much of the country’s future depends on that one answer.”

By many accounts, the current hotspot in the country is a region known as La Laguna, an area of about 1 million people made up of Torreón, Coahuila, and the adjoining cities of Gómez Palacio and Lerdo in neighboring Durango state. In 2012, an estimated 1,100 people were killed there, and more than three dozen have been killed already this year, according to media reports. Security experts say the latest bloodbath is a result of fighting between the Zetas and the Sinaloa cartel, which in some regions, including La Laguna, appears to be splintering into two rival groups.

Other security experts say the spike in violence is a result of a proliferation of criminal groups. Stephen Dudley of Washington-based Insight Crime, a research organization specializing in organized crime in Latin America, attributed the increase “to the shifting terrain in the criminal underworld: More and more groups emerge and fight for territory amidst the divisions and infighting that continues at a pace that rivals or surpasses that of the previous administration.”

La Laguna is a focus of recent violence because it serves as a smuggling corridor north to the Texas border with Ciudad Juárez.

“Anything that comes from the Pacific ports or central Mexico toward Juárez passes through here,” said Javier Garza, editor of El Siglo de Torreón. “This makes this region that much more important and lucrative. This is a bastion for smuggling.”

For months, officials on both sides of the border have been predicting the demise of the Zetas, particularly after the death in October of its leader Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano in the Coahuila town of Progreso. But while the group has been weakened, a U.S. intelligence official said, the Zetas remain a formidable force, operating increasingly in the Chihuahua city of Parral and along the isolated Texas border.

U.S officials say the group, said to be led now by Miguel Treviño and his brother Omar, has long used sparsely populated regions along the Texas border as havens but is now trying to establish a more permanent presence.

“Miguel sees the area as a lucrative region because it’s so isolated between the Valle de Juarez [just south of Ciudad Juárez] and Nuevo Laredo,” said a U.S. law enforcement official specializing in intelligence gathering.

“If you’re looking at the region from a military strategic standpoint, that area from Juárez to Nuevo Laredo is so isolated, remote and easy to defend because we’re talking about small communities. It’s wide open, there for the taking, and the Zetas are taking it, gradually moving toward Ciudad Juárez, which is still considered the crown jewel.”

Cultural differences

Law enforcement officials say that the conflict between the Zetas and Sinaloa also has cultural aspects, represented by sharp differences in music and food preferences: such as norteño vs. banda, or beef and tongue tacos vs. agua chile, a spicy seafood dish famous in Sinaloa state.

Howard Campbell, an author and anthropologist at the University of Texas at El Paso, cautioned against overstating the cultural aspects of the conflict.

Mexico has long been a country riven by regional loyalties and cultural differences that predate the Spanish conquest, he said, and these social and sometimes ethnic divisions remain strong even in the 21st century. But the conflict between the Sinaloa cartel and the Zetas and what’s left of the Juárez cartel “is not about musical and culinary preferences or differing subcultures, but about control of lucrative drug markets, trafficking routes and territory,” Campbell said.

“Yet, one important similarity between the Juárez cartel and the Zetas — that separates them from the Sinaloans — may be relevant,” he said. “The Sinaloa cartel’s primary focus is high-volume international drug-trafficking, whereas the Zetas and Juárez cartel have a strong interest in control of local drug markets and other nondrug rackets such as extortion and kidnapping.”

Corchado is author of Midnight in Mexico, to be published by Penguin Press in May. Follow him on Twitter at @ajcorchado.