Mobs Battle For Tijuana Drug Springboard -- Major Share Of Lucrative U.S. Market Is The Prize

TIJUANA, Mexico - The first sign of a mob turf war came early last year with the discovery of six bound, tortured bodies alongside Baja California highways. The victims, shot in the head at close range, were lieutenants of a drug mafia in the state of Sinaloa.

The violence escalated with a spate of machine-gun murders on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border and a commando-style raid on a Puerto Vallarta discotheque targeting Tijuana traffickers.

Then a cardinal was killed, gunned down at the Guadalajara airport last week in a luxury car that hit men apparently mistook for one belonging to Mexico's top mafia boss.

The airport assault reportedly was the work of the Arellano Felix brothers, handsome thugs who control narcotics trafficking along the Baja California border, the principal port of entry for illegal drugs shipped to the United States.

The Arellanos are multimillionaires who move tons of South American cocaine across the border each month, according to U.S. and Mexican officials. The family has employed an entourage of cops, rich kids and San Diego gang members to fend off a challenge from the nation's most powerful and sophisticated trafficker, the Sinaloa-based Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

The Arellanos belong to an old marijuana- and contraband-smuggling family from the rough-and-tumble state of Sinaloa. They are said to be related to Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, Mexico's biggest drug trafficker until he was jailed in 1989.

Francisco, 44, works primarily out of Mazatlan, where he owns a discotheque and other businesses. Benjamin, 41, is said to run Tijuana smuggling operations along with brother Ramon, 27. The youngest, Javier, works with both ends of the organization.

The Arellanos moved into Tijuana in the early 1980s and consolidated their control of the underground as the Mexican government jailed drug lords such as Felix Gallardo and Rafael Caro Quintero, convicted in the killing of U.S. drug agent Enrique Camarena. The brothers trafficked South American cocaine as well as Mexican heroin and marijuana.

They recruited a number of young men from wealthy families, known in Mexico as "Juniors," to work as their henchmen. The rich kids were attracted by the kingpins' money, their private parties and underworld notoriety. And the promise of big profits.

While their presence in Tijuana was widely known, the brothers kept a low profile, avoiding fancy restaurants and night spots, unlike the swashbuckling traffickers who may openly cruise towns like Ciudad Juarez, Hermosillo and Culiacan surrounded by gun-toting bodyguards.

But mafia chiefs must keep their heads down in Tijuana, a more cosmopolitan border city with a binational business elite and 25 million tourists a year. The onset of the kind of brazen drug slayings common in places like Sinaloa shocked and angered Tijuanans.

So did machine-gun assaults, such as the one in May 1992 when six gunmen allegedly working for the Arellanos piled out of a van and sprayed a taxi with automatic rifles. A boxing promoter and three associates reputedly involved in the drug trade were killed.

The violence also spilled across the border. Alejandro Cazares Ledesma, a prominent businessman with investments in Tijuana and San Diego, was gunned down in Imperial Beach, Calif., late last year in what officials also believe was a drug-related killing.

Chapo Guzman, the Arellanos' rival for control of the border, is the most important trafficker in Mexico, according to a U.S. official. Guzman, once also an associate of Felix Gallardo, has replaced him as the country's best-connected mob boss. "Chapo has the highest level protection in Mexico, and he provides it to others," the official said.

Observers got a hint of that protection last November when Guzman launched the spectacular raid against the Arellanos at the Christine discotheque. After arranging for the 14 Puerto Vallarta-based federal police agents to be out of town that night, about 40 of Guzman's men surrounded the disco, cut telephone lines and burst inside, claiming to be police.

They shot up the restaurant with hundreds of rounds of machine-gun fire aimed at Javier Arellano, who was partying with friends - state police and San Diego gang members among them. Six people died; Arellano escaped.

The Arellanos decided to strike back in Guadalajara. To put together their hit team, they hired Alfredo "El Popeye" Araujo, 33, a member of a well-established street gang from San Diego's Logan Heights barrio, according to U.S. and Mexican police.

Araujo recruited 15 triggermen, including at least one other known barrio Logan gang member. Guzman was the alleged target of the May 24 shootout at Guadalajara's international airport that claimed the lives of Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo and six others. The Arellanos' hit team reportedly mistook the cardinal's white Mercury Grand Marquis for one of Guzman's.

In raids following the airport assault, officials have come to understand the degree to which Guzman was challenging the Arellanos' control of the border and his position as a conduit for Colombian cocaine bound for the United States.

Mexican police have found at least 15 drug safe houses around Tijuana, about half of them belonging to Guzman. The Arellanos' fancy houses were well-stocked with weapons and police and military uniforms. The Guzman houses contained chambers beneath pull-out bathtubs, hidden money vaults and sophisticated eavesdropping equipment.

And then there is his tunnel - a 1,500-foot passage beneath the U.S.-Mexican border. The lighted, ventilated, concrete-reinforced tunnel began near Tijuana's airport at a warehouse for a construction company allegedly belonging to Guzman. It was a multimillion-dollar project that would have made much easier the movement of tons of illegal drugs into the United States.

"After the discovery of the tunnel, I see why Guzman is moving in," said a U.S. drug agent. "He has a construction company in Mexico and a tunnel. He moves drugs up to the United States and the money back. It's perfect."

But the killing of a cardinal, like the murder of a U.S. drug agent eight years ago, appears to have violated unwritten rules by which drug traffickers operate in Mexico. Generally, they are left alone to kill each other. But they suffer the government's wrath when they take down prominent outside victims.

The airport shooting was a special embarrassment to President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who was on his way to the United States to promote the North American Free Trade Agreement. He has cracked down on both smuggling organizations, costing the mafias millions of dollars, interrupting their operations and inadvertently revealing the extent of Guzman's challenge to the Arellanos, officials say.