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In Tijuana, a cartel comes tumbling down
By PAUL DE LA GARZA, Times Staff Writer For the Arellano Felix organization, Mexico's most powerful drug cartel, 2002 has gotten off to a shaky start. Last month, the group's sadistic enforcer, Ramon Arellano Felix, 37, died in a gun battle with police in the Pacific coast resort of Mazatlan. Last weekend, the family-run enterprise, a.k.a. the Tijuana cartel, took an even bigger hit. A military commando unit southeast of Mexico City raided a house and nabbed Ramon's older brother, Benjamin, the cartel boss. Benjamin, 50, reportedly had set up an altar inside the posh digs in memory of his brother, replete with photograph and burning candles. By midweek, the cartel's bad fortune continued to sour. On Wednesday, Mexican police arrested another high-ranking member of the organization, Manuel Herrera Barraza, alias "Tarzan." Herrera was responsible for transporting marijuana and cocaine from Mexico to the United States. To observers of the drug trade in Mexico, Benjamin's capture was especially huge, a devastating strike against an organization believed to ship as much as a third of all cocaine consumed in the United States. The U.S. State Department, always careful with its choice of words, summed up Benjamin's capture best: "The arrest of Benjamin Arellano Felix is the most significant arrest ever of a wanted drug trafficker in Mexico." Because of rampant government corruption, cartel leaders routinely have operated with impunity, driving through major cities in a convoy, for example, with their pistoleros, or gunmen, at their side. Which is why U.S. officials are hailing the arrests as "a new day" in Mexico, saying Benjamin's capture reflects the political resolve by the administration of President Vicente Fox to chase after the narcos. Asked if a comparable arrest would have happened during his time in Mexico several years back, a U.S. drug agent said, "You kidding me?" "There's no question but there's a new environment under new leadership (in Mexico)," said Asa Hutchinson, administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. "President Vicente Fox and his administration have made all the difference." Jose Garcia, director of the Center for Latin American and Border Studies at New Mexico State University, agreed. "This was clearly a major event in the history of the drug war," Garcia said, referring to the arrest of Benjamin. "It suggests strongly that the Fox administration has been pursuing the (Tijuana cartel) with strong commitment." As remarkable as these separate developments are, nobody really expects the cartel's woes to have much of an impact on the overall flow of drugs north, not with America's insatiable appetite to get high. That doesn't mean that things won't get ugly, as the cartel tries to regroup and figure out what to do as cocaine shipments pile up along the border. What authorities expect to see in the coming months is an organization in chaos -- and bloodshed. After all, with its proximity to the United States, to Los Angeles, to freeways, to a banking system, to lawyers, to drug mules, etc., what's at stake is one of the most lucrative drug routes in the world, known as the Tijuana Plaza, and worth billions of dollars in drug money a year. Last week, a lawyer linked to the brothers was found shot to death in a stairwell of his apartment in Tijuana. Until his retirement two years ago, Mike Garland was chief of the DEA office in Mexico City. He expects the bodies to start piling up before too long because, he says, violence is the only thing drug traffickers know. "Traditionally," Garland says, "Mexican drug-trafficking organizations don't share and play well together." As a result, he says, "What you'll see are vendetta killings and pragmatic murders as people try to take over territory." Asked what he meant by "pragmatic murders," Garland said, "As they say in The Godfather, It's not personal, it's business." Drug trafficking in Mexico goes back generations. Way before the cartels discovered cocaine, there was marijuana, and before that, liquor. The border towns have always been lawless. Tijuana, the number one tourist destination for Americans, is no exception. Even Al Capone was said to have paid the city a visit. It wasn't until the end of the 1980s, however, that Mexico started to gain prominence in the trafficking of cocaine. Once the heat got too hot in the Caribbean, Colombian drug traffickers started experimenting with new routes. At first, the Mexicans acted as mules, smuggling the drug into the United States for a fee. Eventually, they struck gold by demanding payment in cocaine. In 1989, the Arellano Felix Organization -- seven brothers and four sisters -- inherited the Tijuana cartel from an uncle, Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, who was arrested in the murder of DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena. Ramon and Benjamin, one-time liquor and cigarette smugglers, became the two most prominent members of the family, shipping tons of Colombian cocaine and Mexicanmade methamphetamine every month into the United States. U.S. officials say the organization raked in billions of dollars a year while paying out $75-million in bribes to police, judges, politicians and border officials, both Mexican and American. "These were the worst of the worse," said Donald Thornhill, a DEA agent in San Diego, across the border from Tijuana, who has spent years investigating the cartel. "Ramon was a sociopath." For fun, investigators say, Ramon would drive around Tijuana at night with his headlights off and kill the first person who flashed his headlights at him. To settle a drug score once, Ramon and his henchmen shot and killed eight children. In 1993, the cartel was implicated in the slaying of a Roman Catholic cardinal. Throughout all this, the family graced the social pages in Tijuana, and the exploits of the Arellano Felix brothers were celebrated in the so-called "narco ballads" of Mexico. Two years ago, authorities say, the enforcer, who eventually made it on the FBI's Top 10 Wanted List, went too far. Ramon and his crew used a pneumatic press to crush the skulls of two Mexican drug agents. Apparently made to watch -- before he himself was tortured and killed -- was Mexican drug prosecutor, Jose "Pepe" Patino, a darling of the DEA. After that, analysts believe, the Mexican government could no longer look away. With the violence, they called attention to themselves, said Antonio Ocaranza, a political analyst in Mexico City and the former spokesman of past Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo. "It is obvious," he said, "that the Mexican government made the Arellano Felix organization a top priority." While U.S. officials point to other prominent arrests and the recent extraditions of high-level Mexican drug traffickers to the United States as proof of the Fox administration's commitment to the drug war, Ocaranza points out that new administrations always seem to have early successes against drug traffickers. He gives full credit to Fox, but he also notes that with a change in administration, the cartels often lose their contacts in the Attorney General's Office, for example, and within the federal police. He points out that it has been the military, and not the police, notorious for being on the drug payroll, who have had success against the narcos. "Right now, the drug traffickers are trying to figure out how to conduct business," Ocaranza said. "Who do I get? Who do I bribe? Who can help me get my stuff across the border?" Jesus Blancornelas, the editor of Zeta, a muckraking magazine in Tijuana, offered yet another view on how Mexico managed to nab Benjamin. Blancornelas brings a unique view to the argument. Several years ago, cartel gunmen shot him repeatedly, in retaliation for his reporting. Blancornelas says Mexican authorities had not been able to arrest Benjamin before because he was living in the United States, in San Antonio, Texas, in fact. His mother, Blancornelas adds, was living in Beverly Hills, Calif. U.S. drug agents, who describe Blancornelas as an honorable man, dismiss his allegations as outlandish. But Blancornelas is adamant. "What I'm trying to say," Blancornelas says, "is that the DEA and the FBI did not have the political will to arrest him." He predicts that after President Bush's trip to Mexico next week, Mexico will announce yet another high-profile arrest. As for the future of the Tijuana cartel, nobody knows. The United States hopes to extradite Benjamin Arellano Felix, and some, including the DEA administrator, argue that with Ramon and Benjamin gone, the cartel is dead. Others say that it's way too powerful to just vanish. Others say it could go the way of the Colombia cartels and be replaced by scores of smaller ones. About one thing everyone agrees. So long as Americans demand drugs -- to the tune of an estimated $31-billion a year -- somebody will always be there to fill the order. "I think it's time for the U.S. to stop wagging its finger at other countries, and say we have a serious, serious, abuse problem," Garland, the former DEA chief in Mexico City, said. "Until we say that, we're never going to make headway against the drug trade."
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