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TIJUANA, Mexico, July 18 (Reuters) Sitting on a bench just yards from the rusted fence marking the US border, Ramon knows his luck is running out.

His cousin was shot dead and tossed in a garbage dump, the last marijuana load he sent to the United States was busted by border police, and now a rival drug gang is gunning for him.

''They threatened to kill my family. Then they took me, beat me and left me for dead, but I am still in the game,'' he said, his face scarred with knife wounds.

About 1,400 people have died in Mexico's drug war so far this year, including scores of police and soldiers.

Severed heads and tortured bodies appear almost daily as foot soldiers of the rising Sinaloa cartel systematically take out operators of the Arellano Felix family cartel, Mexico's oldest drug gang.

''The bad thing is that there is no-one in charge right now,'' said Ramon. ''Betrayal is the order of the day. Everyone wants to get in with the people who are moving in.'' The battle has sent a wave of fear through the underworld of Tijuana, a key border town for smuggling cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana to the United States.

Some 170 people have died on the streets of Tijuana this year, and gang hitmen along the border taunted rivals by posting gruesome images of their murdered victims on the Internet video site YouTube.

A THUG'S LIFE, AND DEATH Ramon's cousin was snatched off the streets and shot in the back of the head. Ramon -- not his real name -- was kidnapped, beaten and forced to drop his smuggling route to San Diego.

''This is all that they left me,'' he said of a pitch selling drugs from a back alley, surrounded by young children. ''I'd like to get out, perhaps this year.'' Like other traffickers, he is superstitious, asking card readers for advice on when to move a shipment. The woman who read his cards before the marijuana shipment was seized has fled for her life, he said.

Other traffickers pray to legendary outlaw Jesus Malverde, seen as a patron saint of smugglers, or follow the Santa Muerte death cult, often depicted as a cloaked figure similar to the Grim Reaper.

For some, danger and fear are no disincentive, but part of the fatal attraction of Mexico's booming drug trade, and ''mules'' still line up to smuggle loads over the border for payments of $500 to $1,000 a time.

Young men and women in trafficking gangs can make plenty of money and enjoy real power in tough neighborhoods. The lifestyle of an outlaw appeals to many, not all of them poor.

''I didn't need the money. For me, running drugs was a challenge. It carried the maximum thrill of transgressing both the law and the frontier itself,'' one smuggler, a student, said of two successful trips hauling drugs over the border.

''It was an incredible rush that you can't describe,'' he said.

''I have never known a high quite like it.'' REUTERS SW RK0923