After a Lull, Violence Resumes in Border Area
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/20030216-9999_1n16...
By Anna Cearley
February 16, 2003
Almost a year after Benjam?n and Ram?n Arellano F?lix were toppled from the drug cartel they led for more than a decade, drug trafficking violence
continues to besiege the Baja California border.
Ram?n's death and his brother Benjamin's arrest briefly raised hopes that the bloodshed would end. But after a short lull, the killings continued,
with at least nine law enforcement officials and dozens of civilians killed in the past seven months.
Some were finished off with shots to the head at close range after being riddled with bullets. Others were burned or horribly beaten. A few were
chopped to pieces.
No one knows how many of the killings were ordered by the remaining members of the Arellano cartel, which is considered one of Mexico's most ruthless
and powerful drug trafficking organizations, or how much the cartel has been weakened.
Experts on both sides of the border believe two more Arellano brothers ? Eduardo and Javier ? have stepped in as the new leaders. There also is
growing speculation that an Arellano sister might be taking a greater role.
Michael Vigil, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration office in San Diego, believes the cartel is "crippled" but admits "there
is still a lot more work to do to ensure the organization is completely immobilized."
The Arellanos developed their stronghold in Baja California by charging other traffickers to use the region to ship drugs to the United States. Those
who didn't pay risked being killed. The cartel also used bribes and threats to establish ties with police, including some at the highest levels.
Some say the Arellanos ordered some of the recent killings to warn off rivals who tried to move in when the cartel was reorganizing.
Others say rival cartels and small-time drug traffickers might be more to blame as they battle among themselves and use tactics similar to those of
the Arellanos.
Another theory hinges on police involvement.
Jes?s Blancornelas, editor of the weekly newspaper Zeta, believes rogue police officials who were once controlled by the Arellanos are now fighting
for a share of the drug profits.
The Arellanos, Blancornelas said, are just as powerful as before, but "they are now dedicated to the business aspects rather than the violence."
Because of the well-armed nature of organized crime in this popular drug smuggling corridor, police on the Mexican side of the border have always been
more likely to die on duty than those in San Diego.
In the late 1990s, for example, San Diego city police had no fatalities in a two-year period while Tijuana's city Police Department lost nine. The two
cities are roughly the same size and have about 1.4 million residents each.
Authorities say an unusually high number of state and federal officers, as well as city police, have been targeted in the past seven months.
In one recent case, a state officer and a Tijuana city cop were gunned down together Aug. 25 when they tried to stop a car that sped away from
Tangaloo, a popular disco. The men arrested for the crime allegedly told police they had been protecting someone. Blancornelas said his investigation
of the incident indicates it was a high-ranking Arellano member, perhaps one of the brothers.
In the most recent killing, on Jan. 24, federal police commander Ruben Castillo Conde, 41, was ambushed in broad daylight as he sat alone and unarmed
in his car in a Mexicali parking lot. While customers browsed through the shelves of a nearby video store and restaurant, at least seven bullets hit
Castillo through the rear passenger window of his car. One struck just underneath Castillo's ear; it was apparently the final shot, known as the tiro
de gracia and better known by the French phrase the coup de grace.
In a paid newspaper announcement of Castillo's death, his family hinted at police involvement. The style of the killing ? and Castillo's line of work
? led some to surmise that his death had something to do with drugs.
A week earlier, he had helped confiscate more than 800 pounds of cocaine flown into a secret airstrip on the outskirts of Mexicali. A federal law
enforcement official said the airstrip is in a drug corridor overseen by Arellano member Gilberto Higuera.
Another high-ranking federal official, who asked not to be identified citing security reasons, confirmed that the drug connection "is one of the lines
of investigations we are following."
But others say Castillo's death might be linked to the arrest by federal police a day earlier of Agust?n Montoya, the head of a people smuggling ring
who was wanted in Mexico and the United States.
Presuming that Castillo was honest, they say, his killing was an intimidating response to Mexican President Vicente Fox's efforts to create a clean
police force.
Castillo oversaw the Mexicali division of the Agencia Federal de Investigacion, which is sometimes compared to the U.S. Federal Bureau of
Investigation. The Fox administration created the agency two years ago to replace a succession of agencies linked to drug traffickers.
The Arellanos are blamed for many of Baja California's most brutal killings because of the bloody reputation they earned when Ram?n Arellano was the
cartel's enforcer.
Their henchmen have been known to cut and bleed victims during interrogations. They once killed the wife of a rival drug trafficker and, according to
one tale, sent her head to her husband as a warning.
The cartel was forced to rethink its approach after Ram?n died last February in a shootout, and Benjam?n, believed to be the cartel's CEO, was
arrested in March.
For a few months, law enforcement authorities detected a decline in the kinds of killings usually associated with drug traffickers ? corpses wrapped
in blankets or found with tape stretched over their eyes. During this time, experts believe, Javier and Eduardo Arellano were taking control.
Both brothers are now featured on the DEA's wanted posters at the border, along with Marcos Qui?ones, a former San Diego gang member who apparently
oversees some of the cartel's shooting crews, and Gilberto Higuera, brother of arrested alleged cartel member Ismael Higuera.
The lull ended July 25, with the ambush killing of Jos? Juan Palafox Cadena, the Tijuana head of Mexico's equivalent of the U.S. Secret Service.
Palafox had been compiling a list of corrupt police officers linked to drug traffickers, according to local news reports.
Some of the killings since then might be linked to at least six other drug trafficking groups said to operate along the Baja California border, who
might be testing the Arellanos' new leadership.
One rival group, led by Ismael Zambada Garcia and based in Sinaloa state, apparently tried to make inroads in 1999, when it used former and active
Tijuana police officers to engineer the killing of the city's police chief.
In August, a 60-year-old man believed to be related to another out-of-state drug trafficker was found wrapped in plastic in a car in Tijuana. The
local media reported the man's mouth was taped shut and his body partially burned.
The Arellanos were suspected, but no one knew for sure.
"Numerous groups work here of all different sizes, and they have been copying the same methods and procedures used" by the Arellanos, said Victor
Clark, a human rights activist who follows the world of drug trafficking.
In 2002, about 90 of the 261 homicides in the Tijuana area were attributed to organized crime, in many cases drug traffickers, according to Baja
California Assistant Attorney General Rogelio Delgado Neri. The figure is similar to that of 2001.
Blancornelas compiled a list of 27 killings in October alone. He said most seem to be the result of small-scale drug traffickers battling among
themselves.
The Arellanos' new regime, he said, isn't interested in contributing to the violence because it wants to be left alone to do business. He believes the
organization's hold on police agencies has weakened, prompting some law enforcement officials to become bolder.
"They see a drug trafficker and they grab him," and if the traffickers "want to cross drugs (to the United States), then they have to pay a certain
amount," he said.
Last month, six federal agents based in Tijuana were arrested on suspicion of trying to force a drug trafficking group to pay for the release of
nearly five tons of marijuana. State police are trying to determine if the agents are linked to any recent kidnappings or killings.
The question of who is in league with Mexico's drug traffickers creates an uneasy feeling in police agencies.
In April, 42 Baja California law enforcement officials ? including a top prosecutor and Tijuana's police chief ? were flown to Mexico City after
federal authorities identified them as having possible links with the Arellanos. Ten faced charges, but most returned to their posts within days.
Police corruption is rumored to have played a part in a grisly case involving three police officers who disappeared in October. Two were found dead in
a car trunk, their bodies sprinkled with dollar bills. The other is still missing.
A high-ranking state police official who refused to be identified, citing security concerns, said the officers were trying to extort someone.
A tip in the case led investigators to two attached houses surrounded by a high wall in the middle-class neighborhood of Colonia Ciudad Jardin. Inside
the complex, police found hundreds of cartridges littering the grounds of what appeared to be a firing range. Two secret passageways ? one through a
chimney, the other under a cabinet ? led to basements presumably used to hide people or drugs.
The state police source said police also found an identification paper belonging to a current state officer.
The case grew macabre when someone in a nearby neighborhood found several plastic trash bags containing a torso and body parts with traces of lime.
The head was missing, and the fingertips had been mutilated to mask the dead person's identity.
In December, authorities found another torso, also with traces of lime. And last month, a dog was found playing with a skull.
Though Assistant Attorney General Delgado said the body parts aren't necessarily linked to the case, the police source believes they are.
A woman identified one of the torsos as belonging to her husband, the source said, by a distinct scar on his abdomen. The woman later recanted and now
refuses to talk to police.
Police knew the man as the one who tipped them off about the walled complex.
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