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THE CARTEL REPORT

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PAY YOUR RESPECT TO MALVERDE, BEFORE READING ANY FURTHER..... ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////// NEED A JOB LOS ZETAS IS HIRING.................NOW HIRING............DRUG CARTEL JOB ADS............. ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; SINALOA CARTEL'S answer for the ZETAS is there enforcement wings divided into several groups: FEDA (Special Forces of Arturo) controlled by Arturo Beltran Leyva and Los Pelones and Los Negros controlled byEdgar Valdez Villareal "La Barbie"...................La Barbie is a highly placed leader in the Sinaloa federation of cartels and chief of its enforcement arm, Los Pelones -- the Sinaloa equivalent of Los Zetas. He previously operated out of Acapulco, where he reportedly oversaw the capture, videotaped torture and execution of a team of Zeta operatives.The video widely played on YOUTUBE but was taken down because of the overwhelming disgust and complaints of overboard violence. LA BARBIE also was said to have shot the man on camera.Rumors are abound that he has switched sides and joined the new ZETA/BELTRAN LEYVA/JUAREZ ALLIANCE that has formed due to internal strife and power struggles.;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; '''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' '''''''''''''';;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;'' UNDERWORLD POLITICS: MONEY....POWER...REVENGE...AND MURDER.... STORIES FROM THE PAST..... ............................................................ ..................... ............................................................ .......... Jesús “DON CHUY AKA EL CHUY" Labra Aviles ...,,,,,,,,VS. Rigoberto Campos Salcido ......Rigoberto Campos Salcido was an ex-federal agent, and he was a cousin to legendary drug trafficker Manuel Salcido Auzeta “El Cochiloco.” Rigoberto was all over the place, he’d operate in Sinaloa and Colima, then he wanted to do the same in Mexicali and Tijuana, and that’s when the problems arose.Rigoberto Campos started operating in San Luis Rio Colorado, Mexicali, Tecate and Tijuana, without taking into consideration the owners of the plaza. That is why he was kidnapped in Mexicali Valley; Rigoberto never saw who had captured him. He was taken to a grinder where they grinded and crushed his arms and legs.His arms were amputated; he remained hospitalized in Mexicali. The gunmen intended to finish him after all medical attentions, but they weren’t able to. A group of state policemen who worked for him protected him day and night. They transferred him to Tijuana for his recovery. The doctors did an excellent job, they saved his life.Through many struggles, patience and desperation, he managed to adjust himself to artificial arms, hands and legs. One song written about him says:“…he put artificial arms on, but you couldn’t tell, because any caliber of weapon, he was still able to fire...”That’s an exaggeration, he couldn’t grab, hold or fire any weapon; it was impossible. That is why he was always surrounded by so many gunmen, a loyal chauffer, always in a Mercury Grand Marquis, an armed convoy in a similar car leading his path, another one driving behind him.He moved with tranquility all over Tijuana, he’d go to Sinaloa whenever he wanted; he’d oversee marijuana operations down there, and with other hands, he’d handle the money. Even though he couldn’t embrace, he was never in need of lovers, as fake as his orthopedics. AT LEAST 20 GUNMEN AMBUSHED HIM...ensuring his death......... ............................................................ ........... ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; The end of the GUADALAJARA CARTEL (THE Enrique "KI KI" Camarena story)DEA AGENT KI KI CAMARENA was undercover for two years trying to infiltrate the GUADALAJARA CARTEL, at the time the biggest cartel in MEXICO.DEA. ‘Kiki’ Camarena and Mexican reconnaissance pilot Alfredo Zavala Avelar were central in taking down the centerpiece of the Caro-Quintero clan’s operations in Chihuahua, a location called ‘El Bufalo’that had 13 pot farms ranging from 500 to 1,200 acres. Each of the farms had the capability of growing over one million plants each. The DEA claimed that the raid resulted in the seizure of 8,000 tons of marijuana (sixteen million pounds). .........Michael Hooks,the man who ran the smuggling operation for the pot, laughs at that figure. “There might have been that much there,” he told the Fort Worth Weekly when he recently surfaced for a few days, “but some was still growing, some was drying, some was being cleaned. In any event, the Mexican government returned a lot of it within a week or so. And it was probably returned with apologies.” Whatever the figure, it is among the biggest pot busts in history.On February 7th 1985, DEA agent Enrique ‘Kiki’ Camarena Salazar was kidnapped, along with Alfredo Zavala Avelar, shortly after leaving the DEA Headquarters in Guadalajara on the way to meet his wife for lunch. (Two witnesses were rounded up that reported that as he left the consulate, he was surrounded by five gunmen and shoved into the backseat of a waiting car. The witnesses said the gunment appeared to be members of Mexican Secret Police.) ........When he didn’t show up, Camarena’s wife contacted US Ambassador John Gavin, who contacted Mexican authorities and asked that a search be started. The Mexican authorities weren’t quick to respond, so the US initiated Operation Camarena, stopping and searching every vehicle passing from Mexico into the US and turning the border crossing into a nightmare along its entire 2,000-mile span. One month later, on March 6th, someone tipped authorities that the bodies of both Camarena and Zavala could be found on a roadside 60 miles south of Guadalajara. The DEA soon got a copy of an audiotape of the torture session that lated for nine hours and ended with two deaths. Those who’ve heard the tape say it is unbearable to listen to. The recordings were made at an estate in Guadalajara, the prosecutors said. They said the Mexican police seized the tapes at a defendant's home in Puerta Vallarta. He was kept alive byDr. Humberto Alvarez Machain The DEA believes that respondent, a medical doctor, participated in the murder by prolonging agent Camarena's life so that others could further torture and interrogate him..........As DEA later reconstructed the events, Camanera and his pilot Alfredo Zavala Avelares who also had been captured were driven to a remote ranch owned by Rubén Zuno Arce. Over the next thirty hours both men were subjected to savage beatings as the drug lords attempted to learn how much the DEA agent knew about their enterprise. Camarena was given repeated injections of amphetamines to keep him conscious throughout the session. The interrogation and torture were tape recorded by the gang and their associates in the DFS.On the tapes, Mr. Camarena's interrogators focus on the identity of the drug agency's informers in Mexico. Mr. Camarena named two informers and told where they lived. He also gave directions to the home of a fellow agent in Mexico.Mr. Camarena is heard groaning and crying out in pain throughout the recordings, which run nearly two hours.''Don't hit me anymore,'' the agent is heard saying several times. 'No One Will Hit You'''No,'' the interrogator replies calmly. ''No one will hit you.''But later in the tape Mr. Camarena is heard moaning in pain.''Don't hurt my family, please,'' Mr. Camarena is heard saying in a quiet voice.''No one is going to hurt your family,'' the interrogator replies. ''Forget about that. They are not to blame for anything.''''You just keep on remembering, that is all,'' the interrogator goes on. ''I am not going to hit you or anything. O.K.?'' 'I Don't Know Any'Much of the interrogation dealt with questions about how much Mr. Camarena knew about Mr. Caro's Mexican drug empire. Mr. Camarena said he knew little, not even where Mr. Caro lived.''Give me people that go around with Caro,'' the interrogator asks at one point.Mr. Camarena replies: ''I don't know any, commander. If I knew I would tell you, sir. I tell you that I am here with fear.''Drug lords used a Mexican physician to bring Camarena back, time after time, during the cruel torture regime.Eventually, in response to U.S. pressure, a Mexican court issued an order for Caro Quintero's arrest. Nevertheless, a few days later,Caro Quintero and a half-dozen of his pistoleros, all armed and carrying official papers identifying them (falsely) as Mexican police, appeared quite openly at the Guadalajara airport to board the drug king's private plane. While sixty state and federal cops looked on, Caro Quintero consulted briefly with First Comandante Jorge Armando Pavon Reyes, head of the police detail, handed him a check for sixty million pesos (then worth about U.S. $265,000), and flew off to Costa Rica. On the way, Caro Quintero stopped to pick up his teenage paramour, Sara Cristina Cosio Martinez.The DEA picked up the trail through her telephone calls to her parents. In April 1985, Costa Rican police arrested them, and they were flown to jail in Mexico. Sara Cristina, as a minor, was returned to her parents, insisting that she had been kidnapped. Shortly thereafter, another suspect in the Camarena murder, Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo aka DON NETO, sixty, a relative of Caro Quintero and his mentor in the drug business, was arrested in Puerto Vallarta with 23 followers. Fourteen of these turned out to be policemen on his payroll. Fonseca Carrillo and Caro Quintero between them employed more than one hundred cops or ex-cops, according to the DEA.Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo is the uncle of AMADO CARILLO FUENTES aka The Lord of the Skies, He was widely seen as a mentor to his nephew, one of Mexico's most important drug traffickers before he died during surgery to change his appearance in 1997According to Mexican officials, Fonseca told them last week that he had seen Camarena and Caro Quintero at the ranch the day after the kidnapings. Fonseca said that he and Caro Quintero were angry with the agent over a police and army raid on a plantation in Chihuahua, owned by the two drug dealers, in which 8,000 tons of marijuana were burned. Fonseca added that the intention had been to question Camarena and offer him a bribe. He also claimed that he was too drunk to talk to Camarena until the next day, when Caro Quintero allegedly told him, "Well, see if you can still reach him, because he is no longer speaking." The agent, Fonseca explained, had been brutally beaten, but was still alive. "Now you have done it!" Fonseca said he screamed. He claimed that he slapped Caro Quintero and called him a pig.In all, 22 people were indicted in connection with the deaths of Mr. Camarena; his pilot, Alfredo Zavala Avelar, and two tourists mistaken for United States law-enforcement agents.other participants apprehended and sentenced.................Ruben Zuno Arce,Federal prosecutors had portrayed Mr. Zuno, the brother-in-law of former President Luis Echeverria Alvarez, as the intermediary between narcotics traffickers working out of Guadalajara, Mexico, and corrupt Mexican officials with high positions in law enforcement and the military.Mr. Zuno played a critical role in a marijuana and cocaine ring working out of Guadalajara from 1982 to 1985.Witnesses said Mr. Zuno had provided Mexican federal police with credentials for members of the drug ring and on two occasions received suitcases full of American money from a leader of the organization. They also testified that he participated in meetings where Mr. Camarena's abduction was planned.''Zuno agreed that the agent should be picked up,'' Mr. Medrano told jurors.According to other testimony, Mr. Zuno attended a party for Mr. Rafael Caro Quintero, a leader of the drug ring, who was smoking a cocaine-base cigarette while making a horse dance to Latin music.''Caro came down off the dancing horse and gave Zuno a big abrazo, a hug,'' the prosecutor told jurors to show the close ties between Mr. Zuno and the drug ring. ..........MIGUEL ALDANA IBARRA, former commander of Operation Pacifico, the Federales' antidrug unit and his cousinManuel Ibarra Herrera, ex-director of the Federal Judicial Police. Ibarra and Aldana were stars of President Miguel de la Madrid's "permanent campaign" against drugs. But DEA agents believe that they, along with other top law-enforcement, intelligence and military officials, orchestrated the Camarena kidnaping because they feared that the DEA was about to expose their involvement in trafficking. Entries in Camarena's work diary show that at the time of his death he was following leads linking Aldana to the cartel.U.S. investigators say they now have witnesses who can testify that in October 1984 Aldana and Ibarra, his boss, met with Caro Quintero and other Guadalajara drug chieftains and plotted to kidnap Camarena. Aldana, who currently heads Mexico City's bar association, denied the charges last week.While the indictments of Aldana and Ibarra shocked many Mexicans, U.S. officials suspect the plot may have involved even more powerful Mexican officials. Among those still under investigation are Mexico's former Defense Minister and the former chief of the Federal Security Police........................................ ............................................................ ....................... JUAN JOSE ESPARRAGOZA MORENO aka EL AZUL, Esparragoza's trafficking career dates back to the Guadalajara Cartel under Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, Rafael Caro Quintero and Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo. Following the arrest of Gallardo, it is believed Esparragoza moved to the leadership role within the Guadalajara Cartel prior to its dissolution. Gallardo bestowed upon his nephews who operated the Juarez Cartel, the location and operations of the Guadalajara Cartel.Esparragoza was believed to have had a role in the death of United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Enrique Camarena. In 1982, Camarena was informed of a large scale marijuana growing operation in which Carrillo, Esparragoza and Quintero, had turned 220 acres of land near San Luis Potosi, Mexico into a sensimilla marijuana field. The DEA began to do aerial reconnaissance and eventually committed to raiding the field, seizing 200 tons of marijuana. The DEA however failed to apprehend anyone, rumored to be due to a FJP officer informing the cartel members of the pending operation................................................... .........THE GODFATHER of MEXICAN COCAINE................ MIGUEL FELIX GALLARDO In the 1970s Gallardo was a Sinaloa State Police officer who helped Rafael Caro Quintero and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo rise to superstardom in the Guadalajara drug trade. After serving as a police officer he became employed as a bodyguard to Governor Leopoldo Sanchez Celis, where he was able to meet powerful politicians and influential socialites in Sinaloa who enabled his drug empire to flourish. Gallardo used his connections to benefit Caro Quintero and Fonseca Carrillo, earning him the nickname of "El Padrino," godfather of the Guadalajara drug cartel.Gallardo revolutionized the drug industry of Mexico after realizing that the future lay in cocaine, and not marijuana or heroin. Refined cocaine arriving from the laboratories of Colombia was nearly impossible to detect, while marijuana crops were easily detected, even from the air. Gallardo joined forces with Honduran chemist Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros and established Mexico as the "pipeline" to the States, making Felix Gallardo the most powerful cocaine trafficker in the Western Hemisphere and his drug cartel virtually unstoppable. The arrests of Quintero and Carrillo for the murder of a DEA agent Enrique Camarena barely affected Gallardo's empire. Instead it enabled him to expand his operations to include distribution centers in Europe and Tegucigalpa, Honduras, where his old partner Matta Ballesteros lived.The Gallardo-Matta Ballesteros connection was responsible for 1/3 of the coke consumed in the US in the early 1980s. Gallardo contributed money and arms to the Contras and recruited other traffickers into the contra supply apparatus in exchange for CIA protection. Rafael Caro Quintero, one of the traffickers, allowed the CIA to run a Contra training camp at his ranch in Veracruz, Mex.In 1982, the DEA learned that Felix Gallardo was moving an astonishing 20 million a month in a single account at the Bank of America in San Diego.Félix Gallardo was caught in Guadalajara on April 8, 1989 by Special Agent Guillermo González Calderoni. The drug lord tried to bribe the agent with a promise of five million dollars, as the AK-47 barrel tinkered with his teeth and gums, Agent Calderoni refused the offer, removing the AK-47 and announcing " You're under arrest".JUAN RAMON MATTA-BALLESTEROS "THE HONDURAN"One of the first traffickers to move cocaine through Mexico and to the U.S. was Juan Ramon Matta-Ballesteros, a Honduran, who, from the mid-'70s to the mid-'80s, was actively involved with the Mexican Guadalajara Cartel.The DEA first arrested Matta in 1970 at Dulles International Airport in Washington, DC with 54 pounds of cocaine, but that was in his small-time early days. After his escape from the Federal prison camp at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida where he had been serving a three-year sentence for passport violations and illegal entry into the United States, Matta was widely known as one of the key players in the establishment of the "Mexican Trampoline”… the bouncing of cocaine from the Medellín cartel into the United States via their base in Guadalajara, Mexico.In 1978, it was rumored that Matta had become business partners with General Policarpo Paz García, and had directly financed the Honduran "Cocaine Coup" that brought Paz into power. It is thought that from this relationship, Matta became involved in the Nicaraguan Contra movementthe Honduran airline SETCO "was the principal company used by the Contras in Honduras to transport supplies and personnel for the FDN carrying at least a million rounds of ammunition, food, uniforms and other military supplies for the Contras from 1983 through 1985. SETCO received funds for Contra supply operations from the Contra accounts established by Oliver North.”In a 1983 U.S. Customs Investigative Report found that “SETCO stands for Services Ejectutivos Turistas Commander and is headed by Juan Ramon Matta-Ballestros, a class I DEA violator.” The same report states that according to the Drug Enforcement Agency, “SETCO aviation is a corporation formed by American businessmen who are dealing with Matta and are smuggling narcotics into the United States.” Matta had been identified by the DEA in 1985 as the most important member of a consortium moving a major share (perhaps a third, perhaps more than half) of all the cocaine from Colombia to the United States. The DEA also believed that Matta was behind the kidnapping of a DEA agent in Mexico, Enrique Camarena, who was subsequently tortured and murdered.The report went on to conclude that "the Colombian-Mexican relationship, developed by Juan Ramon Matta-Ballesteros, a Honduran with close ties to the Medellín groups, led to an explosion of cocaine shipments through Mexico, with cocaine seizures in that country rising from 2.3 tons in 1985 to 9.3 tons in 1987."Following such notable players in the Camarena case, like Rafael Caro Quintero, Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo and Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo before him, Matta was eventually convicted as one of the masterminds behind the 1985 kidnapping, torture and murder of U.S. DEA Agent Enrique Camarena in Guadalajara, Mexico........................THE MEETING................................................ Two witnesses claiming to have been present at the alleged meeting where the disscussion to murder DEA agent Camarena was planned by the drug cartel leaders and members of Mexico's Special Police. Also present at this session was Juan Ramon Matta-Ballesteros.One of the witnesses, Hector Cervantes Santos was at an October 1984 meeting when cartel leaders discussed how to deal with Camarena. Cervantes said it was clear to him that the cartel had fairly detailed knowledge of Camarena's comings and goings and his key contacts. The DEA concluded that the cartel either had a mole in the Guadalajara office or that the office had been bugged. Cervantes recalled that at one point during the meeting, Matta suggested that Carmarena should be captured and killed. "Silence is golden" Matta said.Another witness, Enrique Plascencia Aquila says he saw Matta at a meeting at Ernesto Carrillo Fonseca's house in December 1984, where Camarena's photograph was passed around. Plascencia also said the drug lords reviewed a file compiled by the DFS. According to Plascencia, the details of the kidnapping of Camarena were planned at this meeting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THE CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY.........THE GUADLAJARA CARTELAt that time, an American citizen named John Walker was living in Guadalajara, Mexico and writing a novel. In December 1984, Alberto Radelat, a legal resident alien in the United States, travelled to Guadalajara to visit his friend Walker. Radelat was a photographer. Neither Walker nor Radelat had any apparent association with the DEA or with any drug-related activities.On the night of January 30, 1985, members of the "Guadalajara Narcotics Cartel" gathered at a Guadalajara restaurant known as "La Langosta." The cartel members at this gathering included Rafael Caro-Quintero, Ernesto Fonseca-Carillo, and Javier Barba-Hernandez, all well-known drug dealers in Guadalajara, the appellant Vasquez-Velasco, and other members of the cartel.That night Walker and Radelat went to the La Langosta restaurant at approximately 7:00 p.m. Soon after they entered, they were grabbed by ten to fifteen members of the cartel and beaten with fists and guns. They were subsequently carried to a storage room in the back of the restaurant while the beating continued. Vasquez-Velasco assisted in carrying and beating the two men. The two men were tortured until one of them admitted that they were police. Both were later killed in a field outside of Guadalajara. The next day Vasquez-Velasco informed Barba-Hernandez that both tourists had died. In June 1985, the bodies of Walker and Radelat were found in Primavera Park outside of Guadalajara. '''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' '''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;THE ARELLANO-FELIX BROTHERS aka THE TIJUANA CARTEL The ARELLANO family, composed of seven brothers and four sisters, inherited the organization from Miguel Angel FELIX-Gallardo upon his incarceration in Mexico in 1989 for his complicity in the murder of DEA Special Agent Enrique Camarena.The AFO also maintains complex communications centers in several major cities in Mexico to conduct electronic espionage and counter surveillance measures against law enforcement entities. The organization employs radio scanners and equipment capable of intercepting both hard line and cellular phones to ensure the security of AFO operations. In addition to technical equipment, the AFO maintains caches of sophisticated automatic weaponry secured from a variety of international sources.In May 1993, according to Mexican authorities, the group attempted to assassinate a rival trafficker, Joaquin GUZMAN-Loera, at the Guadalajara Airport. During the ensuing gun battle, Cardinal Posadas Ocampo was accidentally murdered as he rode through the airport in a vehicle similar to that of the intended target. As many as six gang members involved in the shoot-out were Mexican Americans from a San Diego street gang called "Logan Calle 30," which had been recruited as bodyguards for the ARELLANO-Felix higher-ups. Another example of the group's violence occurred in June 1994 when they set off a bomb at the Camino Real Hotel in Guadalajara. The intended target was a rival trafficker who was hosting a party for his 15-year-old daughter. Two men were killed and 15 others wounded. More recently, on September 14, 1996 MFJP Comandante Ernesto IBARRA-Santes and two Tijuana based MFJP Agents were shot and killed in Mexico City. Comandante IBARRA had recently assumed the duties of Subdelegado of the Procuraduria General De La Republica in Tijuana, Baja California/Norte.Officials believe that following Carrillo's death in a woman's clinic in Mexico City on July 4, 1997, the Tijuana group banded with the Ciudad Juarez-based narcotrafficker, Rafael Munoz TalaveraMunoz Talavera was making a run at the leadership of the Juarez cartel until he was shot to death about a month ago in Ciudad Juarez.Rafael Munoz had his Jeep Cherokee armored, but it didn't help. The Mexican drug lord, who once got caught with 21 tons of cocaine in a California warehouse and beat the rap, couldn't beat this. Authorities in Ciudad Juarez on the Mexican-U.S. border found him in the backseat of his Jeep, riddled with slugs in the head and chest and wrapped in a plastic bag. The assassination was ordered by the new higher-ups in the Juarez Cartel, who viewed Rafael Munoz as expendable and should be dealt with accordingly.Ramon Eduardo ARELLANO-Felix, (Aliases: Gilberto Cammacho Roderiguez, Ramon Torres-Mendez, El Comandante Mon, El Walin Ray) considered the most violent brother, organizes and coordinates protection details over which he exerts absolute control. The AFO maintains well armed and well-trained security forces, described by Mexican enforcement officials as paramilitary in nature, which include international mercenaries as advisors, trainers and members. Ramon ARELLANO's responsibilities consist of the planning of murders of rival drug leaders and those Mexican law enforcement officials not on their payroll. Also targeted for assassination are those AFO members who fall out of favor with the AFO leadership or simply are suspected of collaborating with law enforcement officials. He oversees and directs the recruitment of enforcers and hit teams. Enforcers are often hired from violent street gangs in cities and towns in both Mexico and the United States in the belief that these gang members are expendable. They are dispatched to assassinate targeted individuals and to send a clear message to those who attempt to utilize the Mexicali/Tijuana corridor without paying the area transit tax demanded by the AFO trafficking domain.RAMON ARELLANO-FELIX would drive around in a red Porsche, garishly dressed in a mink jacket and heavy gold jewellery, cruising the streets of Tijuana where his cocky style became a magnet for the bored sons of the city's rich. Several of them became Ramon's "narco-juniors", trust-fund hitmen who, when they were not killing for business, killed simply for the jell of it. "Wherever there is danger, that's where you'll find Ramon," a former "narco-junior", Alejandro Hodoyan, told Mexican narcotics agents in 1996 in a taped interview later obtained by the Mexican newspaper, Proceso. "In 1989 or 90, we were at a Tijuana corner without anything to do and he told us... 'Let's go kill someone. Who has a score to settle?' Cars would pass and he'd ask us who we knew. The person we pointed out would appear dead within a week."Don Thornhill, a DEA officer who witnessed the AFO's handiwork on both sides of the border, says: "In my 17 years in this job, I've never seen a more violent group. They would kill people who didn't cooperate. They would kill people who didn't pay a fee or a toll (for moving drugs through their territory). They would kill people who were not necessarily disloyal to them. They killed them to set an example."The AFO set its bloodiest example in a fishing village called El Sauzal, which had the misfortune to be home to a minor-league drug smuggler called Fermin Castro. Castro paid his dues in full and on time, but the AFO evidently decided that he might become too competitive. So on September 17 1998, gunmen arrived in the middle of the night, lined up every man, woman and child they could find against a wall and shot them. A 15-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy were the sole survivors.Ramon and his narco-juniors did not just murder. They developed a taste for torture and mutilation. One of Thornhill's Mexican colleagues, a prosecutor named Jose Patino Moreno, disappeared from a Tijuana street in April 2000, along with two aides, a special prosecutor, Oscar Pompa Plaza, and a Mexican army captain, Rafael Torres Bernal When their bodies were found near Patino's wrecked car, they were unrecognisable. Almost every bone in their body had been broken ("They were like sacks of ice cubes," a policeman said at the time) and their heads had been crushed in an industrial press.Ramon's own demise was suitably flamboyant. On February 10 he drove a Volkswagen full of narco-juniors down to the beach town of Mazatlan, intending to kill a rival gang leader at the height of the Mardi Gras carnival. But they drove the wrong way down a one-way street into a police patrol who spotted their guns. A shoot-out ensued and the day ended with three corpses on Mazatlan's festive streets.One of bodies was carrying an identity card in the name of Jorge Perez Lopez (a Mexican version of John Smith) but by the time the police realised that the card was bogus, the body had vanished. Some "relatives" had taken it off the hands of the local undertaker, who had been reduced to silent fear by the encounter.It was only when the police looked closely at the photographs from the crime scene that they realised that they might have killed Ramon Arellano Felix, one of the FBI's 10 most-wanted fugitives, and the most prolific murderer in modern Mexican history. ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;; (DRUG CARTEL GUNS--EXOTIC ONES);;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE QUEEN OF THE PACIFIC Known as the Queen of the Pacific, Avila Beltrán earned her nickname in part by allegedly helping to develop smuggling routes along Mexico’s Pacific Coast for Colombia’s Valle del Norte cartel as far back as the 1990s. "It’s unheard of in the sense that we haven’t seen a woman inside the organized crime cartels reach such an exalted position in decades," says Mexico’s assistant secretary for public security Patricio Patiño. "Sandra’s rise basically has to do with two circumstances: her ties to a family that has been involved in drug trafficking over three generations, and a physical beauty that made her stand out as a woman." Avila Beltrán’s love life was also a key factor in her allegedly meteoric ascent. In the late 1990s she became involved with Colombian trafficker Juan Diego Espinoza Ramírez and through him met Diego Montoya, the head of Colombia’s Valle del Norte cartel who was arrested by the authorities in that country last month. Avila Beltrán became a kind of "transmission belt" between Montoya’s syndicate and Mexican cartels based in the state of Sinaloa, on the Pacific Coast, and Ciudad Juárez, along the U.S. border, says Patiño. Avila Beltrán moved money between the two countries and organized logistics for the safe delivery of cocaine shipments from Colombia. Her underworld godfather, according to Patiño, was the formidable Sinaloa-based trafficker Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada García,who was indicted by a federal grand jury in Washington four years ago on charges of conspiring to import and distribute 2,796 kilos of cocaine with an estimated value of $47.4 million. Avila Beltrán had a brief affair with Zambada after she took up with Espinoza Ramírez, says former DEA official Vigil, and she also worked with other Sinaloa-based syndicates loosely grouped under the so-called Federación alliance. "She was very well tutored by her Colombian boyfriend, and he gave her a lot of latitude on the coordination and smuggling of drugs across the U.S. border," notes Vigil. "Sandra is attractive and charming and was able to develop a lot of political contacts [inside Mexico], and as an individual she provided tremendous assistance to Espinoza Ramírez’s Colombian colleagues."Family connections have certainly played a major role in the saga of Mexico’s reigning drug queenpin. Officials in that country say Avila Beltrán is the niece of Miguel Angel Félix Gallardo, the onetime godfather of the Mexican drug trade who is serving a 40-year sentence for the murder of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent in 1984. Her great uncle Juan José Quintero Payán was extradited to the States on drug trafficking charges in January. On her mother’s side, the Beltráns got involved in heroin smuggling in the 1970s and later diversified into cocaine as the U.S. market for that drug exploded, according to Michael Vigil, a former chief of international operations at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Vigil, who spent 17 years investigating Mexican narcos, says Avila Beltrán never shrank from employing the violence that comes with the turf. "Sandra was very ruthless," says Vigil, who is now retired. "She used the typical intimidation tactics of Mexican organizations."She managed to stay behind the scenes until 2001. A few months after the cocaine seizure, her teenage son was kidnapped in Guadalajara and she contacted authorities for help. The size of the ransom demanded, which police said was $5 million, raised more suspicion among authorities.Avila Beltran ended up saying she would handle the kidnapping negotiations herself. Patino said she paid $3 million for her son's safe return. She says it was less.The December 2001 seizure of the multiton consignment of cocaine aboard the vessel Macel in the Mexican Pacific port of Manzanillo bolstered the evidence against her, because cell phone records found on the boat subsequently tied the cargo toAvila Beltrán and Espinoza Ramírez, who was also arrested in Mexico City on the night of her capture two weeks ago. In 2002 Avila Beltrán’s teenage son by Fuentes was kidnapped in the city of Guadalajara, and the $5 million ransom demanded by the boy’s captors raised the eyebrows of police officials assigned to the case when she reported the abduction. In the event, Avila Beltrán personally took charge of the negotiations with her son’s kidnappers and procured his release in exchange for a payment of $3 million, says Patiño.Mexican lawmen then took a much closer look at her finances and business activities. In October 2002 the federal attorney general’s office issued a bulletin accusing Avila Beltrán of having laundered money of Colombian origin through the purchase of 225 real-estate lots, two houses and a tanning salon in the city of Hermosillo. The break in the case came three months earlier with the arrest of two Colombian women at Mexico City’s international airport in July of that year who were found to be carrying over $2 million in cash. That led authorities to Avila Beltrán’s beau Espinoza Ramírez, because one of the detained couriers was married at the time to a half-brother of El Tigre. Evidence and information obtained from the two women helped uncover Avila Beltrán’s extensive money-laundering operation in Hermosillo.Her penchant for a specific Thai restaurant and two high end beauty parlors is what caused her to be nabbed. More than 30 federal agents arrested her Sept. 28 as she drank a cup of coffee at a diner, but she didn't lose her poise. She charmed investigators into letting her apply makeup before police videotaped her transfer to a women's jail.In the footage, Avila Beltran, wearing spiked heels and skintight jeans, tosses her hair and smiles to the camera while walking downstairs on the arm of a federal agent. She then laughingly makes small talk with two female guards handcuffing her.A few hours after Beltran’s arrest, her lover, Juan Diego Espinoza Ramirez,was also apprehended. Allegedly, Ramirez, a.k.a. "The Tiger", is one of the top Colombian drug traffickers and is listed as a fugitive by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency in Miami.The only other woman believed to be part of a cartel's leadership is Avila Beltran's distant relative Enedina Arellano Felix, who experts say took over the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix cartel after one of her brothers was killed in a police shootout and her other brother was arrested.Mexican media have said Avila Beltran had love affairs with other drug lords, as well, which helped catapult her into the elite of drug trafficking. Among the purported lovers were Ismael Zambada, a leader of the Sinaloa cartel, and alleged methamphetamine kingpin Ignacio Coronel. //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// //////////////////////////////////;''''''''''''''''''''''''' '''''''''''''''''''''';;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ............................................................ ........ JUAN JOSE ESPARRAGOZA MORENO AKA EL AZUL (THE BLUE) is a former Mexican Federal Judicial Police (FJP) officer turned drug trafficker. Esparragoza was born in Badiraguato, Sinaloa, Mexico. Esparragoza's nickname, "El Azul", derives from his complexion, he is said to be so dark his skin appears to be blue.he is believed to have diabetes, say those who knew him have in the past. Far from taking the stamp of classic drug traffickers, wearing boots and jewelry, plus huge escorts, Esparragoza Moreno, hides his personality in denim pants and some tennis. EL AZUL'S trafficking career dates back to the Guadalajara Cartel under Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, Rafael Caro Quintero and Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo. Following the arrest of Gallardo, it is believed Esparragoza moved to the leadership role within the Guadalajara Cartel prior to its dissolution. Gallardo bestowed upon his nephews who operated the Juarez Cartel, the location and operations of the Guadalajara Cartel.Esparragoza was believed to have had a role in the death of United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Enrique Camarena. In 1982, Camarena was informed of a large scale marijuana growing operation in which Carrillo, Esparragoza and Quintero, had turned 220 acres of land near San Luis Potosi, Mexico into a sensimilla marijuana field. The DEA began to do aerial reconnaissance and eventually committed to raiding the field, seizing 200 tons of marijuana. The DEA however failed to apprehend anyone, rumored to be due to a FJP officer informing the cartel members of the pending operation.Camarena, along with his pilot, Alfredo Zavala, were kidnapped on February 7, 1985 and tortured by the Guadalajara Cartel for his role in hindering their operations.Esparragoza is believed to have joined the Juarez Cartel (Carrillo Fuentes Organization) in 1993 where he operated as a top lieutenant and operations chief. The cocaine and trafficking connection he created in Peru and Colombia are believed to have made him a primary leader in the Juarez Cartel.[4][6]In addition to cocaine contacts, Esparragoza is also known as a peace maker, forging alliances between other major cartels and resolving disputes. Most recently he has been linked to negotiating peace deals in Nuevo Laredo between the Juarez Cartel and Heriberto Lozcano of Los Zetas as well as Jorge Eduardo Costillo-Sanchez of the Gulf Cartel.(These are just assumptions based on MEXICAN GOVERNMENT AND FEDERAL AGENTS AND DEA SOURCES....nobody is for sure what side of what was he is on, all that is known is that he was a definite in the Juarez Cartel, and has contacts and allies in the SINALOA CARTEL........in due time, intel work on this matter will detail his role in the underworld.)Juan Jose Esparragoza is a man of legend in the world of drug trafficking in Mexico. His life of crime has fallen in the lyrics of the corridos. Some of his personality have been woven stories and even executions are attributed by some police chiefs. ........................................................ .......................... ............................................... REVENGE IS A DISH SERVED SINALOENSE STYLE... In mid-1986, Juan Jose Esparragoza is detained in a safe house near the Cerro de Campos, in Queretaro. Through an operation of the Federal Judicial Police, under the command of the late Florentino Ventura and Guillermo Robles Liceaga, EL AZUL is arrested and jailed in the Prison South.The capture also involved the commander Isaac Sanchez and Eduardo Perez Yan, Hector Correa Zetina and Juan Carlos Ventura (son of Florentino) In the Plaza de Queretaro was on Yanqui, the commander Ruben Castillo Conde, recently executed in Mexicali, Baja California.EL AZUL was arrested along with his wife and son, who were mistreated by Florentino Ventura and Guillermo Robles Liceaga, reports of electric rod torture, provoked the wrath of The Blue.Esparragoza Moreno, never forget these humiliations. NOT only didhe endure seven years in prison, but had the patience to wait to collect his departing vendettas. Some, perhaps, are coincidences, but most men who participated in his capture, was found dead.THE legendary Mexican police, Florentino Ventura, kills himself after murdering his wife in front of Perisur in September 1988. His friends and colleagues, claim that this was a settling of accounts and died bullet riddled. But he did not. This columnist (then as a reporter for the newspaper Unomásuno), was in front of the corpse of Ventura, who found the body with no bullet wounds, except for one, which occurred in the head.Later, in front of his home in Puente de Alvarado in the Federal District, commander Isaac Sanchez Perez was gunned down and more recently former commander of the Federal Judicial, Guillermo Robles Liceaga, who was under orders from Undersecretary of Public Security City, Raymundo Collins. . The latter crime was attributed to the banda de narcos operating in Nezayork headed by Mom Beker.To make matters worse, another of the men responsible for the capture of the blue, riddled with impunity in his car in Mexicali, Baja California. THE commander of the Federal Investigation Agency (AFI), Ruben Castillo Conde was preparing to return to Mexico City, was killed January 24.Guillermo Gonzalez Calderoni is murdered by a bullet in the head in Mc Callen, Texas, where he lived since he was persecuted by former solicitor Berrinchitos, Jorge Carpizo, during the six years Carlos Salinas, Chiquifiurer.They say what they know that, Esparragoza Moreno, is the intellectual author of all these executions. Coincidence or not, all these police chiefs participated in one way or another in the capture of the blue.During his confinement in the Middle Prison in the eighties, Esparragoza Moreno, known in prison to two members of the Mexican Clika operating in the northern border: Lauro Gonzalez and Osiel Cardenas, arrested by Guillermo Gonzalez Calderoni.The Lord of Matamoros, Osiel Cardenas,did not yet play a major role in the Gulf Cartel, only reaching the rank of Burrero, however Lauro Gonzalez dominated several regions of the U.S. border with Matamoros.This alliance which culminated in ties between compadrazgo Esparragoza Moreno and Osiel Cardenas, helped put a price on the lives of Gonzalez Calderoni.

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Member Since: 4/8/2008
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Band Members:SINALOA CARTEL leader Joaquin Guzman-Loera, a.k.a. "Chapo" Guzman or "El Chapo." He got his start with the Guadalajara Cartel in the 1980s, Guzman-Loera was associated with ,Miguel Angel Felix-Gallardo a.k.a. El Padrino, head of the most powerful drug trafficking group in Mexico at that time. Miguel Angel Felix-Gallardo was apprehended in 1989, dividing the cartel into three. 1st the TIJUANA CARTEL run by his nephewsthe ARELLANO-FELIX BROTHERS, 2nd the SINALOA CARTEL headed up by former lieutenantsLuis Hector Palma Salazar andJoaquin Guzman Loera. The 3rd and final cartel to emerge from the dissolution of the Guadalajara Cartel was the JUAREZ CARTEL headed up byPablo Acosta, then taken over by the legend himselfAmado Carrillo Fuentes aka "The lord of the Skies". The GULF CARTEL also gains a foothold into the narcotics trafficking corridors in key logistics areas headed byJuan Garcia Abrego until his arrest in 1996, the next to ascend to the top after of coup wasOsiel Cardenas until he was captured by the Mexican Army in a battle between Gulf Cartel soldiers and the Mexican Army on March 14, 2003 in Matamoros, Mexico. At the present time LOS ZETAS leaderHeriberto “Lazca” Lazcano controls the functions of GULF CARTEL AND LOS ZETAS along withJorge Eduardo “El Coss” Costilla Sanchez......................new reports suggest thatJuan Jose "El Azul" Esparragoza Moreno is now officially capo of the JUAREZ CARTEL brokering a peace alliance with LOS ZETAS leader Heriberto Lazcano as they're joint venture is to hold off the SINALOA CARTEL from taking over the entire drug trade.....................................reports from TIJUANA suggest that the SINALOA CARTEL has infilitrated the TIJUANA CARTEL causing a division within the organization, with some siding with the pressures from the SINALOA CARTEL, while others maintain there loyalty to the ARELLANO-FELIX BROTHERS. (The recent shootouts in the morning hours is an indication of this on-going struggle.),,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,When EL CHAPO was arrested in 1991, the drug boss pulled $50,000 from a suitcase and dumped it on the desk of the Mexico City police chief. He later walked out a free man. Another time, he provided a Jalisco police commander with $1 million and five Dodge Ram Charger SUVs to allow a pair of cargo planes to land without any interference.EL CHAPO became MEXICO'S MOST WANTED MAN, after escaping from the maximum security prison Puente Grande in 2001, days before being extradited to the US, by bribing over thirty prison guards, several top prison officials and receiving outside help from Ismael Zambada,the Beltran Leyva brothers and several other drug traffickers. the total cost of escape, believed to be around $500,000 US.The closest the MILITARY has gotten to EL CHAPO was in November 2004, 200 paramilitary swooped on his Sierra Madre stronghold in Blackhawk helicopters. His voice had been heard on a tapped phone line half an hour earlier, but the drug king got away. All the paramilitary could do was blow up his Hummer and Dodge Ram pick-up truck.In June 2005, they grabbed his brother, son, two nephews and a niece. They also seized nine houses and six vehicles. But once again they missed out on the main man. Also in NOVEMBER, 2005 EL CHAPO was seen dining out at one of his favorite resturants with his gunmen. Here is the accounts given about that paticular night. “Gentlemen, please. Give me a moment of your time. A man is going to come in, the boss. We ask that you remain in your seats; the doors will close and nobody is allowed to leave. You will also not be allowed to use your cellulars. Do not worry; if you do everything that is asked of you, nothing will happen. Continue eating and don’t ask for your check. The boss will pay. Thank you.”The diners stayed where they were, surprised, expectant.It was one of the first days of November. Eight at night. The restaurant, Las Palmas, on Xicoténcatl Boulevard, in Colonia Las Quintas, was suddenly filled with people.Fifteen men entered the restaurant; including the boss, el patrón, Joaquín Guzmán Loéra, El Chapo; and his hitmen, his pistoleros.The diners sat still, stupefied, embarrassed, and frightened. The fear and the paralysis, an attack of the heart; here in this tiny space, amidst the tables and wooden chairs, plates piled high with cabrería, bottles of cold beer, plates of pulpo and camarón.It’s said that El Chapo came in through the front door. He walked among the tables, squarely between the patrons; his entry more stalking than walking; tranquil and proud.He greeted each person there. “Hello, nice to meet you.” “How are you?” “I’m Joaquín Guzmán Loéra. A pleasure.” “At your service.”He circled the room full of occupied tables, filled with families, couples, business men, associates who had gathered to eat and to drink. Nobody was spared the greeting, the squeezing of the hand, the benediction.El Chapo retired to the private salon inside the restaurant where the house specialties are expensive cuts of beef and large shrimp.A group of his collaborators and gunmen followed him into the salon. The other half sat with the diners, watching and speaking in low voices.He spent two hours locked in the salon, dining on shrimp and pulpo, plates piled high with red steaks and chiles, sweating with their heat.The meal ended finally. El Chapo left without fanfare; a moment later his gunmen left as well.Then, the settling of accounts; before he left, he paid everyone’s bill. ............................................................ ......................In the 1980s, the DEA said, he was the first trafficker to export cocaine in fire extinguishers.Later he developed alternative drug routes through Central America to thwart Mexican radar systems. He also pioneered the use of sophisticated, carefully engineered tunnels to shuttle drugs under the border. the US DRUG ENFORCEMENT AGENCY has issued a $5,000,000 reward to any information on the whereabouts of EL CHAPO, no one brave enough or stupid enough will try and accept the reward money, due to retaliation from the cartel................................ Now with the split withn the Sinaloa Cartel, the Beltran-Leyva brothers have seperated and joined in an alliance with the ZETAS and Juarez Cartel, a new mega cartel battling EL CHAPO for the plaza in Juarez and several key locations throughout Mexico, pressure by the Government has presented the traffickers with new problems as well................ARELLANO-FELIX BROTHERS VS. EL CHAPO GUZMAN..............The blood-feud between the ARELLANO-FELIX BROTHERS and EL CHAPO is deepseeded in the roots of the Guadalajara Cartel, they were allies but uneasy at best, see the ARELLANO-FELIX BROTHERS were middle/upper class and educated unlike EL CHAPO and the majority of the narco-traffickers that have risen to power. So once the bond that held together was broken by the destruction of the Guadalajara Cartel, all bets were off and the rivalry began. Reports have indicated that EL CHAPO refused to pay the ARELLANO-FELIX BROTHERS taxes on cocaine being transported through TIJUANA. Basically thumbing his nose at them, EL CHAPO started building a sophisticated, nearly mile-long, air-conditioned and lighted tunnel from Tijuana to a warehouse in Otay Mesa in the early 1990s to sneak his drug loads under the noses of the Arellanos and police.The tunnel was uncovered by U.S. anti-drug authorities with help from informants that Mexican police say were provided by the Arellanos. That was the last straw for the ARELLANO-FELIX BROTHERS who felt disrespected to the point that they couldn't hold back there grudges against EL CHAPO GUZMAN and immediately sought to strike back. The TIJUANA CARTEL hired out hitmen from the SAN DIEGO gangs, espically the CALLE TREINTA paying out thousands in retainers, there big payday at the time was the contract on EL CHAPO, $30,000....................... U.S. agents believe a Calle Treinta assassination squad led one of the first strikes against Guzman in early 1992. Six of Guzman's top lieutenants were tortured, shot in the back of the head and then dumped along the side of a Tijuana highway, still bound and gagged. This massacre was a blow against Guzman's second in command. Hector Luis Palma Salazar, who reportedly had betrayed the brothers' drug-lord mentor, by supposedly losing a cocaine shippment worth several millions of dollars. The Arellano cartel next enlisted a Venezuelan to seduce Palma's wife and spirit her to San Francisco, where she withdrew $7 million from her bank account. The Venezuelan then murdered her and sent her head to Palma in a box. He reportedly finished the job by tossing Palma's toddler son and daughter off a bridge.EL CHAPO Guzman retaliated that November at a Puerto Vallarta discotheque where Javier and Ramon Arellano-Felix were partying with their San Diego mercenaries and some of the Mexican state police on the Arellano payroll. Before attacking, EL CHAPO Guzman ordered the fourteen-member Puerto Vallarta federal police contingent--which was on his payroll--to leave town that night. Then about 40 of Guzman's men, disguised as police, stormed the discotheque firing machine guns. Six people were killed, but the brothers reportedly escaped by crawling through an air-conditioning duct in the bathroom.............................................What happened next was unimaginable. Authorities say that, in late May 1993, the Arellanos learned that Guzman was in Guadalajara, so one or more brothers flew in with at least eight of their Calle Treinta mercenaries. When they spotted Guzman's entourage at the airport, they opened fire and a wild gun battle erupted. .........................................One of the innocent bystanders caught in the cross fire wasCardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo of Guadalajara. Andrea A. Reding, a writer on Mexican politics, testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations about this incident. In a recent interview, he detailed what happened next:"One of the Arellano's gunmen opened the cardinal's door," Reding says. "The cardinal was dressed in black and was wearing a prominent pectoral cross. The gunmen opened fire with an automatic weapon at a range of three feet. The cardinal was riddled with fourteen slugs." Also killed were the cardinal's driver and five others..........................EL CHAPO Guzman, escaped from the Guadalajara airport in a taxi, drove to Mexico City and then fled into the mountains of neighboring Guatemala. Two weeks later, he is apprehended and given a 20-year sentence.......................SINALOA CARTEL VS JUAREZ CARTEL (after Amado Carrillo Fuentes dies)The once very much aligned cartels known as the FEDERATION seem to have fallen apart after the death of The Lord of the Skies aka AMADO CARRILLO FUENTES in the summer of 1997 due to complications undergoing plastic surgery. Some reports suggest that the TIJUANA CARTEL might have influenced either the doctors or the bodyguards to diabolically murder the reigning king of the drug trade. ..........................After his death in 1997, the Tijuana Cartel attempted to gain a foothold in Juarez cartel controlled Sonora published reports indicate. ........................................ The uneasy alliance between to the two cartels has been strained since one of the Carrillo Fuentes brothers, Rodolfo, was assassinated in September 2004, officials say. Gunmen killed a boss of one of Mexico's main drug cartels and two other people in an ambush at a cinema complex in the northwestern town of Culiacán on Saturday night, and five of the assailants were killed in shootouts with the police shortly afterward.EL CHAPO Guzman is widely believed to have been behind the killing.One theory holds that the tension reached a breaking point when Ismael Zambada refused to pay the Juarez Cartel a tax for smuggling drugs through its area.Since then, EL MAYO Zambada and EL CHAPO Guzman have begun an offensive against the Juarez Cartel, intended to take over their drug smuggling routes and control of corridors................................................... .........................the GULF CARTEL & ZETAS VS EL CHAPO GUZMAN..........Sensing a void in the Gulf Cartel after Osiel Cardenas' arrest, the Sinaloa Cartel, headed by EL CHAPO Guzmán, began to move into Gulf Cartel territory. This prompted Cardenas to employ a group of former Mexican military men known as LOS ZETAS to keep EL CHAPO Guzman from entering Gulf Cartel territory. Both DTO'S have been battling each other in the city of Nuevo Laredo since then, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of people including civilians, police and journalists.Los Zetas is a group of mercenaries operating along the Texas-Mexico border region. The group is believed to be led by Heriberto “LAZCA” Lazcano. The Zetas are unique among drug enforcer gangs in that they operate as a private army under the orders of the Gulf Cartel.Los Zetas are primarily based in the border region of Nuevo Laredo where it is believed they have carved the city into territories, placing lookouts at arrival destinations such as airports, bus stations and main roads.Los Zetas has been known to hire local gangs such as Mexican Mafia, Texas Syndicate, MS-13 and Hermanos Pistoleros Latinos, to carry out contract killings.Los Zetas is believed to be responsible for the assassination of police chief Alejandro Dominguez 6 hours after the swearing in ceremony............................................Jorge Eduardo “El Coss” Costilla Sanchez,......believed to be the Gulf cartel’s top leader,and Heriberto “Lazca” Lazcano, who controls the Zetas.New years eve 2004,Arturo Guzmán Loera, EL CHAPO'S brother, was being held at La Palma, when he was shot several times at point-blank range in the prison visiting area. Reports indicate that the shooter was ordered by Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, leader of the GULF CARTEL to murder the target along with two other members of the SINALOA CARTEL................................The Hierarchy of the Sinaloa Cartel ............... Leaders: Joaquín Guzmán Loera, El Chapo. Ismael Zambada, El Mayo Lieutenants: The brothers Arturo y Héctor Beltrán Leyva, dealers in Sonora and all the Federal District (Rumored to have formed an alliance with the ZETAS and were the principle authors of the EDGAR GUZMAN assassination in a Sinaloa Shopping mall parking lot, where authorities recovered more than 500 AK -47 shells and what looked to be a damaged wall hit with a RPG. Ignacio Coronel Villarreal, Nacho Coronel. Representative for Guadalajara, Head of Finance for the cártel.Edgar Valdés Villarreal, La Barbie, texan, Boss of the foot soldiers in Nuevo Laredo. (Rumored to have switched alliances)Otto Herrera García, El Licenciado, guatemalteco, responsable for fast launches and logistics (apprehended)Manuel Alejandro Aponte Gómez, El Bravo, Head of Security for El Chapo.Gustavo Inzunza Inzunza, El Macho Prieto. Head of Security for El Mayo.Vicente Zambada Niebla, son of El Mayo. Logistics for distribution of cocaine from Columbia ............................................................ .....................................THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SINALOA CARTELHECTOR LUIS "EL GUERO" PALMA SALAZAR, headed the SINAOLA CARTEL in its infancy alongside EL CHAPO GUZMAN. He too worked for the Guadalajara Cartel under Miguel Angel Felix-Gallardo. Palma splintered from the group which was handed down to Gallardo's nephews in Tijuana, who later formed the Tijuana Cartel (Arellano Felix Organization). In 1986, EL GUERO met a Venezuelan trafficker named Rafael Enrique Clavel recruited by the TIJUANA CARTEL to infiltrate and seduce EL GUERO'S wife Guadalupe Leija Serrano, as an act of revenge for lost shippments of cocaine. According to the files of the Attorney General's Office, Eduardo Retamoza, alias El Lobito, and El Guero Palma were part of the Guadalajara Cartel. When the two lost a cocaine shipment that was valued at several millions of dollars, they blamed Retamoza and killed him. Miguel Angel Gallardo also blamed El Guero Palma for the loss of the cocaine. Though pardoned, Palma felt at risk, so he made a deal with the rival organization of Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, that of Joaquin Guzman- Loera, alias El Chapo of the SINALOA CARTEL. EL GUERO Palma discovered his wife, Guadalupe Leija Serrano, had run off with Clavel and taken their two kids. Clavel forced Guadalupe to withdraw 7 million from a bank account and later decapitated her, shipping her head back to Palma. The two children, Jesus & Nataly were taken to Venezuela and dropped off of a bridge. In retaliation, Palma executed Gallardo's lawyer and Clavel's three children. ............................................................ .......EL GUERO PALMA was apprehended in 1995 as he was flying in his private jet to a wedding ceremony, engine troubles caused the leer jet to crash land. Palma survived the crash and was later arrested by Mexican military officers, originally evading capture by traveling in full uniform as a Federal Judicial Police officer complete with identification and armed caravan of FJP personnel ................................................ .;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; THE LIFE AND MUSIC OF VALENTIN ELIZALDE (A Mis Enemigos or To My Enemies)................ ......................was a popular Mexican banda music singer gunned down in an ambush. Known by the nickname "El Gallo de Oro" (The Golden Rooster), his biggest Banda hits included "Vete Ya," "Ebrio de Amor", " Vete Con El", "Vuelve Cariñito", "Como Me Duele", "Vencedor", " Mi Virgencita", and "Soy Asi."Some of his songs were narcocorridos, and it appears he was murdered by drug trafficking gangs. His death is said to be related to Los Zetas, a mercenary force employed by the Gulf Cartel, killing him outside a palenque.He also wrote lyrics honoring one of Mexico's most notorious drug lords, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, leader of the Sinaloa Cartel. Last year, he sang one of his narcocorridos, ballads honoring the exploits of drug dealers, to a crowd of more than 3,000 convicts at the Puente Grande prison in the central state of Jalisco.Guzman escaped from a neighboring prison in 2001 and remains at large.Elizalde, his manager (and best friend) Mario Mendoza Grajeda, and driver Reynaldo Ballesteros were gunned down in an ambush after a concert in the border city of Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas in an apparent gangland hit Saturday, November 25. Tano, his cousin, was also shot several times on the arm.The 27-year-old Valentin Elizalde was killed about 20 minutes after performing at a local fair.According to media reports, two vehicles chased Elizalde's black 2007 Chevrolet Suburban as he left the concert and opened fire with automatic weapons as dozens of witnesses looked on. As many as 70 bullet cartridges were found scattered on the street around Elizalde's car. According to media reports, Elizalde was shot 8 times.After his death,a controversy occurred as his autopsy was videotaped and posted on video streaming sites. The two men who violated the human rights were jailed....................this is the alleged killer of VALENTIN ELIZADE and his companions.....remember allegedlly.......His name is Raúl Hernández Barrón, known as El Flander I, again allegedlly a member of the ZETAS. ............................................................ ..;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; THE STORY OF THE TEENAGE ZETAS OPERATING IN TEXAS(2006) Miguel Trevino Morales a co-leader of the newly independent ZETAS CARTEL recruited teenage hitmen to settle scores in Nuevo Laredo and also across the border in TEXAS. This is also the tale of a 17-year old Houston native that participated in more than 30 cartel killings, his first kill was at the age of 13, his name Rosalio RetaBy July 28, 2006 – one day after his 17th birthday – when Laredo police charged him with the contract killing of Noe Flores in Laredo, Mr. Reta had been involved with 30 murders, Mexican and Texas investigators believed. All were on behalf of the Zetas, the ruthless enforcement arm of Mexico's Gulf Cartel drug smuggling operation.All the teenagers were trained by the former Mexican Army soldiers, known as the ZETAS currently employed as Gulf Cartel enforcers, training him in marksmanship and grenade-throwing at a boot camp south of the border. Mr. Reta told Laredo authorities he spent months training under Mateo Díaz López, "Comandante Teo,"an alleged top Zeta member arrested last year in the state of Tabasco on drug and weapons charges.Mr. Reta's confession led to the discovery of three clandestine cells in Laredo, allegedly carrying out assignments for reputed cartel leader Miguel Treviño.His trial last summer for the Flores killing offered tantalizing glimpses into the shadowy workings of the Zetas and the inroads of cartel violence into this border city.Court records revealed a portrait of a group of young American killers who were well-paid to do one thing: kill people the Zeta leadership in Nuevo Laredo wanted dead. And they highlighted a group of young killers who followed orders from Mexican drug lords with ruthless efficiency while often behaving like teens with poor impulse control.Mr. Reta sought his own extradition for the murder. He called a DEA agent and Laredo homicide Detective Roberto Garcia from a prison in Mexico, saying he wanted to stand trial in Texas for two homicides.He told U.S. investigators he feared reprisals from the Zetas over a botched hit in Monterrey – a grenade attack on one of the city's nightclubs that killed four and injured 25. He was supposed to kill only one person, police said, but had missed the target.Laredo police had already identified Mr. Reta as one of three people responsible for the Flores killing. Their investigation had linked him to one of three three-member scicarias, or hit man cells, the Zetas had set up in Laredo.They believed Mr. Reta was responsible for at least five killings in the city – either as a shooter or organizer.After he was charged in Laredo, Mr. Reta gave a statement to Detective Garcia, detailing the Flores killing and his role in it.Mr. Reta told police he drove on the night of Jan. 8, 2006, when his three-man cell hit Mr. Flores in a Laredo residential neighborhood.He described how one of his cell members, Gabriel Cordona, walked up to Mr. Flores and calmly fired eight bullets into his body – three of them into his head. And he told how the third member, Jessie Hernandez, panicked and began firing while in the car, shooting out the rear window.But the wrong guy got killed. Mr. Flores had no criminal history and was just visiting a family birthday party.The Zeta commander for Nuevo Laredo – Miguel Treviño Morales, a fugitive wanted on five state warrants for murder, kidnapping and organized crime – was believed to have ordered a hit on Mike Lopez, Mr. Flores' step-brother.Mr. Treviño was angry at Mr. Lopez for dating a woman he was interested in. A month after the Flores murder, on Feb. 26, 2007, another group of Zeta gunmen killed Mr. Lopez, according to Laredo police.Much of the specifics of the inner workings of Zeta operations in Laredo came out during testimony of prosecution witness David Martinez, a former Zeta gunman serving a federal sentence for weapons violations.He provided details on how the cartel set up three cells, composed of three people each, who were on retainer at $500 a week, just to wait for instructions. Sometimes they were called on to buy cars for gang use. Other times, to perform killings.Orders were normally passed from Mr. Treviño, the Zeta commander known by the nickname "El Cuarenta," to Lucio Velez Quintero, another fugitive known as "El Viejón" and also wanted on murder, kidnapping and organized crime warrants. Mr. Velez would, in turn, pass the orders on to one of the cells, Mr. Martinez testified.For a contract killing, the cell leader received $10,000 or more, which was to be spread among the other members.On Dec. 8, 2005, according to investigators, Mr. Velez gave an order to Mr. Reta's cell to hit the next target: Moises Garcia, a gang member who had angered the cartel.They tracked Mr. Garcia's white Lexus sedan to the parking lot of the Torta Mex Restaurant in Laredo. Mr. Reta got out, witnesses said, walked to the Lexus' driver side and shot Mr. Garcia five times in the face.Mr. Reta received $10,000 and two kilos of cocaine for the Garcia hit, according to cell member Cordona, now serving 80 years for his role in the Flores killing.The next time the Zetas called, it was to order the hit that resulted in Mr. Flores' murder.Half of you thinks, 'what a tragedy at so many levels this kid is.' But the other half looks at what he's done and you think there's something evil at work, that somehow, the morality switch never got turned on," Mr. Guillen said."He told us he liked the killing. It didn't make him sick," Mr. Guillen said. "He liked it. And for us to take that away from him was like taking candy from a baby."Mr. Reta's trial ended abruptly – after just three days of testimony – when he quit cooperating with his attorney and pleaded guilty to murder for a 40-year sentence."The Zetas wanted him to shut up and do his time," Mr. Peña said. "They don't like outsiders knowing about their business. Rosalio wasn't too happy about the appeal. Neither, I understand, are the Zetas."Mr. Reta is resigned to serve his time, Mr. Peña said."He was afraid the Zetas would go after his family," he said. "He knows it is a miracle if he can get out of this alive.";;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; THE ORIGINAL ZETAS (LEADER Z-1 aka ARTURO GUZMAN DECENA) In early 1997, the Gulf Cartel began to recruit military personnel to overlook and protect their drug shippments and also provide other vital functions. His top recruit, Lieutenant Arturo Guzmán Decenas, brought with him approximately 30 other deserters enticed by salaries substantially higher than those paid by the Mexican government. The original defectors, whose nicknames include “El Winnie Pooh,” “The Little Mother,” and “El Guerra,” had belonged to the 15th and 70th Infantry Battalions and the 15th Motorized Cavalry Regiment. Once Cardenas Guillen consolidated his position, he expanded the role of Los Zetas to collecting debts, securing cocaine supply and trafficking routes known as plazas, discouraging defections from the cartel, and executing its foes—often with grotesque savagery.He was killed in a shootout with army soldiers at a Matamoros restaurant in 2002.Soon after, flowers appeared outside the restaurant with a card saying, "You will always be in our hearts. From your family, the Zetas." After the fall of Z-1, ROGELIO GONZALEZ PIZANA aka EL KELIN FAKE LAW ENFORCEMENT ID took over the ZETAS untill his demise in 2004 after a raging gunfight that included gerndes, machine gun volleys and rocket lancher bursts. Mr. González Pizaña, tried to escape in an armored Volkswagen Passat, throwing grenades at agents and soldiers in his path. He was shot through the left side of the chest in the ensuing firefight. One federal agent, Omar García Jara, 28, died, along with two suspected members of Mr. Gonzalez's gang, one of whom burned to death in the Volkswagen.The shoot-out started after a 30-man police convoy approached the Covacha bar, one of the places where authorities had a tip that members of the Zetas a vicious gang of hit men formed by deserters from an elite Mexican army unit purportedly gathered.The suspected drug traffickers were just pulling into the cantina when the convoy arrived, but quickly tried to flee as they opened fire on the authorities.Officials say González Pizana oversaw the shipping of cocaine from Colombia, and purportedly participated in the brief 1999 detention of two U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents when Cárdenas' henchmen surrounded the agents' car on a Matamoros street and forced them to stop at gunpoint.In the 1999 incident, the gunmen some wearing Mexican police uniforms kept their assault rifles trained on the DEA agents and their Mexican informant until a man identified as Cardenas emerged from the crowd. He demanded that the U.S. agents hand over the informant for execution."This is my territory," he was quoted as telling the agents. "You can't control it." The Americans refused to hand over the informant to certain death and eventually were allowed to drive away reportedly after telling Cárdenas it would be a bad idea to kill U.S. agents.González Pizana was himself arrested in 2001, but managed to break out of prison purportedly with the help of guards in 2002. In 2004 after EL KELIN was sitting in a Mexican Federal holding center, HERIBERTO LAZCANOtook control over the ZETAS as well as the some of the operations of the GULF CARTEL untill 2008, when he and fellow ZETA Miguel Treviño Morales decided to take the ZETAS into the major leauge as they expanded their ambtions and have formed an alliance with the BELTRAN-LEYVA BROTHERS.
Influences: ........THE CARTEL REPORT.... UNDERWORLD INSIDER........ RAMON ARELLANO-FELIXVS Ismael Zambada García aka EL MAYO There rivalry is due to the fact that EL CHAPO GUZMAN and EL MAYO ZAMBADA are blood related, and EL MAYO has begun to try and take over the TIJUANA drug routes, considered to be at the time the most lucrative of all the corridors."There were financial problems between the (Arellano Felix organization) and the Colombians," Chavez said, noting that as the Arellano Felix brothers fell, "bills went unpaid and the Colombians sought other trafficking organizations they trusted more.""They sought out El Mayo."Zambada formed close ties to a Colombian cocaine producing organization believed to be run by twin brothers: Miguel Mejia Munera.....................................andVictor Mejia Munera(recently killed by Columbian Special Forces), also known as "THE TWINS", U.S. investigators say.Zambada's rise to the top of Mexico's drug ranks began in February 2002, as he lured Arellano-Felix to his home turf in a complex trap thought up, and executed by his nephew Jesus Zambada-Guzman, although Mexican officials won't confirm that. Zambada has never been charged in the case................Ramon Arellano-Felix died when a policeman he had mortally wounded managed to squeeze off a last return shot. And in a final twist, authorities from both MEXICO and the DEA were left hanging when his body was spirited away from a local funeral home and cremated. Only with the capture of his brother,Benjamin Arellano-felixseveral weeks later and DNA tests on a blood stain in Mazatlan did authorities confirm he was indeed dead....................... ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; .............TIJUANA CARTEL and GULF CARTEL ALLIANCE (SHORT LIVED)...Benjamin Arellano-Felix, was arrested on 3 March 2002 in Puebla, Mexico and sent to a maximum security prison in La Palma. Benjamin’s arrest shook the foundation of the cartel, but it managed to survive despite the best efforts of rival criminal organizations and law enforcement to undo the Arellano-Felix family’s hold on the drug trafficking routes that pass through Tijuana into San Diego.Osiel Cardenas was captured by the Mexican Army in a battle between Gulf Cartel soldiers and the Mexican Army on March 14, 2003 in Matamoros, Mexico. Though subsequently incarcerated at La Palma, México's top security prison, it was widely believed that he continued to have control over Gulf Cartel business from within prison walls.In 2004, two years after entering prison, Benjamin Arellano-Felix formed a strategic alliance with the leader of the so-called Gulf Cartel, Osiel Cardenas Guillen. For a number of months, the Tijuana Cartel used the help of the Gulf Cartel to defend its turf from rivals, notably Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.Mexican prison authorities place the end of the Tijuana-Gulf Cartel alliance in January 2005. Cardenas ordered a severe beating of Benjamin after the two had a personal disagreement. Without the alliance, the Tijuana Cartel was again on its own.By February 2005, the Arellano-Felix family, once considered Mexico’s most powerful drug trafficking organization, was under attack from two separate criminal organizations. Such was the earning power generated by smuggling cocaine across the Tijuana-San Diego border.Osiel Cardenas’ henchmen, known collectively as Los Zetas, were dispatched to Baja California to remove both the remnants of the Tijuana Cartel, as well as Zambada’s organization, now know as the Sinaloa Cartel. This battle rages on today in Nuevo Laredo and Acapulco as the Gulf Cartel struggles against the Sinaloa Cartel, also run by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, for domination of the Mexican drug trade................................Francisco Javier Arellano Félix aka "El Tigrillo" was captured August 16, 2006. ............................................Eduardo Arellano Félix has allegedly become the leader of the TIJUANA drug cartel after his brother, Francisco Javier Arellano Félix was arrested by U.S. authorities. ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;; ARELLANO-FELIX ORGANIZATION aka THE TIJUANA CARTELSince the mid 1980's, the AFO have been one of the most powerful and aggressive trafficking networks in Mexico. Operating out of various strongholds in Tijuana and Mexicali, the AFO orchestrates the transportation, importation and distribution of multi-ton quantities of cocaine and marijuana and large quantities of heroin and methamphetamine into the United States.During the mid-1990's, the AFO converted TIJUANA into an open-territory open to the use of various cartels. They operated a fee-based system that premitted criminal groups from Chihuahua, Sinaloa, Colima, Tamaulipas, Nayarit, Michoacan and Oaxaca to operate on the Baja California border. According to an unnamed Mexican police official, the AFO charged 6o percent, led to unprecedented warfare durning the latter 1990's when several emerging drug organizations including the ZAMBADA organization refused to pay the AFO'S fees.The AFO suffered severe setbacks in 2002, with the murder of RAMON ARELLANO-FELIX the cartel's chief enforcer in February and the apprehension of the overall chief of operations BENJAMIN ARELLANO-FELIX in March. In addition to these losses in the top tier of the cartel, In June, the Mexican Attorney General claimed that more than 2,000 AFO-affiliated personnel have been arrested or detained in a 18-month span.The Arellano Felix brothers won their first big break in 1989, when their uncle went to jail. Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo ran a drug trafficking business out of Tijuana and had employed his nephews from Sinaloa state after they showed early promise smuggling consumer electronics over the border. When Uncle Miguel's luck ran out and he was caught, they inherited the drug route, and turned it into a billion-dollar franchise.From the start, Benjamin and Ramon led the enterprise - El Min and El Mon they called themselves, in a childlike abbreviation of their names. Benjamin had brains and a certain strategic flair, while Ramon, 11 years his junior, was the enforcer - a task to which he was perfectly suited.One of nature's sociopaths, he seemed to thrive on murder. He would drive around in a red Porsche, garishly dressed in a mink jacket and heavy gold jewellery, cruising the streets of Tijuana where his cocky style became a magnet for the bored sons of the city's rich. Several of them became Ramon's "narco-juniors", trust-fund hitmen who, when they were not killing for business, killed out of simple ennui."Wherever there is danger, that's where you'll find Ramon," a former "narco-junior", Alejandro Hodoyan, told Mexican narcotics agents in 1996 in a taped interview later obtained by the Mexican newspaper, Proceso. "In 1989 or 90, we were at a Tijuana corner without anything to do and he told us... 'Let's go kill someone. Who has a score to settle?' Cars would pass and he'd ask us who we knew. The person we pointed out would appear dead within a week."Don Thornhill, a DEA officer who witnessed the AFO's handiwork on both sides of the border, says: "In my 17 years in this job, I've never seen a more violent group. They would kill people who didn't cooperate. They would kill people who didn't pay a fee or a toll (for moving drugs through their territory). They would kill people who were not necessarily disloyal to them. They killed them to set an example."The AFO set its bloodiest example in a fishing village called El Sauzal, which had the misfortune to be home to a minor-league drug smuggler called Fermin Castro. Castro paid his dues in full and on time, but the AFO evidently decided that he might become too competitive. So on September 17 1998, gunmen arrived in the middle of the night, lined up every man, woman and child they could find against a wall and shot them. A 15-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy were the sole survivors.Ramon and his narco-juniors did not just murder. They developed a taste for torture and mutilation. One of Thornhill's Mexican colleagues, a prosecutor named Jose Patino Moreno, disappeared from a Tijuana street in April 2000, along with two aides, a special prosecutor, Oscar Pompa Plaza, and a Mexican army captain, Rafael Torres Bernal When their bodies were found near Patino's wrecked car, they were unrecognisable. Almost every bone in their body had been broken ("They were like sacks of ice cubes," a policeman said at the time) and their heads had been crushed in an industrial press.Ramon's own demise was suitably flamboyant. On February 10 he drove a Volkswagen full of narco-juniors down to the beach town of Mazatlan, intending to kill a rival gang leader at the height of the Mardi Gras carnival. But they drove the wrong way down a one-way street into a police patrol who spotted their guns. A shoot-out ensued and the day ended with three corpses on Mazatlan's festive streets.One of bodies was carrying an identity card in the name of Jorge Perez Lopez (a Mexican version of John Smith) but by the time the police realised that the card was bogus, the body had vanished. Some "relatives" had taken it off the hands of the local undertaker, who had been reduced to silent fear by the encounter.It was only when the police looked closely at the photographs from the crime scene that they realised that they might have killed Ramon Arellano Felix, one of the FBI's 10 most-wanted fugitives, and the most prolific murderer in modern Mexican history.With Ramon's death the AFO seems to have lost its sheen of invincibility. The spell was broken and Benjamin Arellano Felix clearly knew it. He had his bags packed and was ready to flee with a wallet stuffed with $100 notes when the soldiers came for him in the early hours of Saturday morning. Inside the house in Puebla, they also came across a shrine to Ramon.The AFO is attempting to gain sway in Sonora, said John Bryfonski, acting assistant special agent in charge of the Tucson Drug Enforcement Administration office. After the death in 1997 of Juárez Cartel's Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the Tijuana Cartel attempted to gain a foothold in Sonora, sensing a void in the power structure, leading to numerous drug-related murders and gun battles.
Sounds Like: THE CARTEL REPORT..........Presents The Lord of the Skies............AMADO CARRILLO FUENTES aka The Lord of the Skies, got his name from the revolutionary method of using727's to transport Colombian cocaine to municipal airports, and dirt airstrips around Mexico, including Ciudad Juárez, he also bribed his way to the top of the drug trade, corrupting local police forces, Mexican Special Police, Military Generals and High-level government officials. 500 million in bribe money insuring him untouchable status throughout Mexico, elimination of his rivals, security on his drug shipments and freedom to operate his billion dollar business. He got his start with his uncle the legendary Guadalajara Cartel leader, Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo aka DON NETO. Ordered to Ojinaga in the early 1980's to oversee his boss's cocaine shipments, and to learn about border operations from Pablo Acosta and Juarez cartel founder Rafael Aguilar Guajardo.He kept such a low profile that 1985 DEA documents listing more than 200 members of Acosta's organization don't include his name.Carrillo-Fuentes took control of the Ojinaga operation after Acosta was killed during a 1987 police raid, funded by Amado Carrillo Fuentes.The same year, Carrillo-Fuentes helped broker a deal that brought the Colombian cocaine cartels into international heroin trafficking. The Colombians had sought him out to help arrange meetings with leaders of the Herrera family of Durango.The Colombians wanted to get into the heroin business. The Herrera family had been in the heroin trade for generations and had expertise the Colombians wanted.Carrillo-Fuentes arranged the meetings in Torreon.Details of the deal are not known. But today, most of the heroin seized on the U.S. eastern seaboard is produced in Colombia. The Colombians apparently agreed to stay out of the traditional Herrera heroin markets in the Midwest and Chicago areas.As his rivals the Arellano-Felix brothers and the Gulf cartel started to rise in the ranks of the top-tier drug networks, AMADO CARRILLO sensed a time for a changing of the guard. He decided to get rid of Pablo Acosta and takeover the Ojinaga, Chihuahua, Mexico, PLAZA. Bribing Mexican drug agentGuillermo González Calderoni with one million dollars to carry out the execution ofPABLO ACOSTA in 1987. The same year, AMADO CARRILLO FUENTES had his first and last brush with Mexican law enforcement when he was arrested in Guadalajara. He gave police a statement claiming he was in the cattle business and owned ranches in northern Mexico.He admitted smuggling marijuana with the late Pablo Acosta but didn't implicate his uncle or any other member of the Mexican Federation in his statement.Mexican officials confiscated several of his airplanes, and he spent a few weeks in jail. He was charged with crimes against the public health and possession of illegal weapons but was never brought to trial.After his release, Carrillo-Fuentes continued to play the role of coordinator for Pablo Acosta's successor, Rafael Aguilar-Guajardo, a former high-ranking Mexican enforcement official in Juarez.Carrillo-Fuentes' involvement in the drug trade continued to expand when in 1991 he added the Colombian Cali Cartel to his list of clients.He was one of the few smugglers who handled cocaine loads for the rival Medellin and Cali cartels.In 1993, Aguilar-Guajardo was gunned down in Cancun after threatening to go public with allegations of payoffs to Mexican officials. The heir apparent to Aguilar-Guajardo disappeared, and his body was found 10 months later -- leaving no doubt that Carrillo-Fuentes was in charge in Juarez.While Carrillo-Fuentes' influence in the Juarez Cartel and the Mexican Federation grew, an internal war among members of the Sinaloa Cartel in western Mexico helped catapult him to the top of the Federation.The shooting began shortly after Miguel Angel Felix-Gallardo was imprisoned in 1989. His cousins, the Arrellano-Felix brothers, went to war against Felix-Gallardo's former partners.The trail of kidnappings, beheadings, bombings and assassinations ended in a shootout that began at the Christine Discotheque in Puerta Vallarta, Jalisco, in November 1992. It included the murder of Cardinal Juan Jesus Pasados Ocampo at the Guadalajara airport.With the exception of the Arrellano-Felix brothers, surviving participants aligned themselves with Carrillo-Fuentes.In fact, the Arrellano-Felix brothers tried to have Carrillo-Fuentes killed after he lost a load of cocaine that belonged to the brothers.In 1993, at the Bali Han Resturant in Mexico City, a reported 12 gunmen affiliated with the AFO burst into the private room unleashing a barrage of a hundred shots killing three bodyguards and two associates of AMADO CARRILLO FUENTES who managed to duck under the tables. Several gunmen were shot dead by enforcer ex-police officerAlcides Ramon Magana aka EL METRO, who had a van parked outside of the resturant with a cache of weapons, while several others were captured and tortured to give up the identity of the authors of the botched assassination attempt, the names revealed were Ramon Arellano-Felix and Benjamin Arellano-Felix.Carrillo-Fuentes survived the shootout in a Mexico City restaurant because assassins working from an old photograph shot the wrong man.The Juarez Cartel is associated withRodriguez-Orejuela organization................ ............................................................ .................................................and the Ochoa brothers, from Medellin. Carrillo's organization is involved in heroin and marijuana trafficking and handles large cocaine shipments from Colombia. Their regional bases in Guadalajara, Hermosillo and Torreon serve as storage locations where later the drugs are moved closer to the border for eventual shipment into the United States.The scope of the Carrillo-Fuentes'network is staggering; he reportedly forwarded $20-30 million to Colombia for each major operation, and his illegal activities generated tens of millions per week.At the height of his career, In Morelos, Mexico he bought several mansions and a rural hacienda, surrounding them with armies of gunmen. Newspaper reports have recounted how the trafficker began landing his jets at the main Morelos airport and his helicopters at the hacienda, and how he established a friendship with a senior Morelos police commander, Armando Martinez.As AMADO CARRILLO'S strength and power grew, so did his contacts and with the money he was dishing out to the local police forces and members of the special police it was only a matter of time before his currency reached the government apparatus and military personnel, who would of thought he could buy off a general.General Gutierrez Rebolloarmed with inside information that the General had a love for horses, he used that angle to win over his cooperation. The father of one of Mr. Carrillo Fuentes's top associates owned a farm adjacent to the base in Guadalajara commanded by the general, and starting in 1995, General Gutierrez began to buy alfalfa from the father, who soon began sending sweet corn and tomatoes as gifts.Those early offerings paid off in late 1995, when gunmen working for the Arellano Felix organization ambushed the farmer's son and granddaughter, wounding them both.After that attack, the son, Eduardo Gonzalez Quirarte, limping on crutches, visited General Gutierrez at his downtown Guadalajara offices and offered information on the Arellano Felix organization. At that time, Mr. Gonzalez Quirarte was not widely known as a drug trafficker.From that beginning grew ties that went far beyond the normal relationship between an investigator and his informant: the general became the instrument of one drug organization against another and, prosecutors assert, he received a variety of gifts.Immediately after Mr. Gonzalez Quirarte volunteered his services, the general ordered a team of his plainclothes officers to Tijuana, where they worked with Mr. Gonzalez Quirarte and others to spy on the Arellano Felix operations.These actions culminated in March 1996 in a army sweep by hundreds of soldiers through several Tijuana neighborhoods. The raid was seen as one of Mexico's most important anti-drug operations last year.In testimony, the general's aides have said that in Guadalajara he adopted a lavish style, assigning soldiers as cooks, drivers and gardeners not only to his wife's household but also to two lovers' homes. General Gutierrez acquired a fleet of cars and armored Jeeps and purchased two thoroughbreds.AMADO CARRILLO'S influence stretched even into the AIRFORCE, a flight specialist under interrogation, acknowledged that he had been guiding the trafficker's planes into Guadalajara airports.After Arellano Felix gunmen killed one of General Gutierrez's closest intelligence aides last July, and later assassinated police commanders in Tijuana and Mexico City, the army's cooperation with Mr. Carrillo Fuentes deepened.General Gutierrez's subordinates, working with Mr. Carrillo Fuentes's eavesdroppers and gunmen, detained and interrogated dozens of suspected Arellano Felix associates, the testimony indicates.Several army officers described to prosecutors how Mr. Gonzalez Quirarte and other traffickers participated in questioning the suspects.Before one joint operation, the traffickers briefed one of the general's subordinates, showing him a file of reconnaissance photos of Arellano Felix associates and their residences, as well as tape recordings of telephone conversations the traffickers had intercepted, the testimony indicates.In early January, for instance, General Gutierrez ordered a raid on a party that Amado Carillo Fuentes was attending in the state of Sinaloa. Three hundred troops wound up crashing the wedding reception of Carillo's sister in an effort to catch her brother--who had been tipped off and had already left.On February 6, 1997, General Guterrez was called into the military HQ to answers some routine questions he thought, but instead was interrogated by uncorrputed elements of the government and military. After a brief barrage of questions by the Defense Minister Gen. Enrique Cervantes it was clear that the General was working for Amado Carrillo Fuentes.The Minister of Defense revealed that since December of 1996, the fallen general had lived in a Mexico City luxury apartment, given to him by Eduardo González Quirarte, the alleged right hand of Amado Carrillo and wanted by the FBI since 1994. The "Lord of the Skies" had lived in this apartment until November 23, 1993, when a shoot-out broke out between a hit team sent by the AFO and Juarez Cartel bodyguards and gunmen in a capital city restaurant. Amado Carrillo Fuentes survived the hit, because the shooters were using an old photo, killing the wrong people.A high-ranking Mexican official revealed that authorities taped one of Gutiérrez's conversations with Amado Carrillo in which they discussed the bribes he would receive for covering up the criminal group's activities. According to Minister Cervantes, Gutiérrez, in his dual role as drug czar and Carrillo's protector, had hired army deserters. His son-in-law, Capt. Horacio Montenegro (currently in custody) was his main collaborator.But officers have named at least four generals, in addition to General Gutierrez, as collaborators with Mr. Carrillo Fuentes.In one case, the trafficker was said to be using an air base commanded by one of his military associates to land drug planes.November 1995 A large cargo plane used to transport drugs from Mexico to the U.S. is found in Baja, California. The airplane reportedly transported 17 tons of cocaine originally from Colombia. The plane was loaded and off-loaded with the assistance of Mexican State and Federal Police. The investigation results in 20 arrest warrants against Mexican Police officials.After another general died in an air crash in September 1995, Mr. Carrillo Fuentes and his wife were photographed at his funeral, according to the testimony. ............................................................ ........... ............................................... ............ DEATH OF THE KING........................................ The last months for the LORD OF THE SKIES were spent traveling the world abroad. From Russia to Chile to Cuba, searching for a safe haven for himself and his family. Secret reports indicate that AMADO CARRILLO FUENTES was trying to make a deal with the Mexican Government before his death. On July 3rd, 1997 he entered the Santa Mónica Hospital in Mexico City, during the eight-hour operation, he apparently died of complications caused either by a medication or a malfunctioning respirator. Two of Carrillo's bodyguards were in the operating room during the procedure. It is unclear whether the lethal dose of the drug Dormicumwas administered intentionally or in error, by the surgeons or the bodyguards. There are, in fact, many possible ways he could have died: shock or heart attack caused by the medicine alone or in conjunction with cocaine in Carrillo's system, by the bodyguards or by the surgeons, or by the malfunction of the respirator. Emergency doctors claim he was already dead when they were summoned to the operating room at 6:06 a.m., July 4. Carrillo's mother identified the horribly mutiliated face and body as that of her son that same day. The U.S. DEA was the first to confirm the dead body belonged to Amado Carrillo, four days after his alleged death, using fingerprints positively matched to an old U.S. immigration card. Mexican authorities disputed the accuracy of this method, however, and said they could not confirm the body as Carrillo's until further toxicological, DNA, and other tests. Finally, on July 11, Mariano Herran Salvatti,special anti-drug prosecutor in the Mexican Attorney General's Office, announced that the body was that of Carrillo, based on forensic tests including DNA, fingerprints, blood samples, scars, and ear shapes. However, Salvatti said he was still not sure if the death was caused by homicide or medical malpractice.As of July 22, officials were still debating whether it was the Dormicum, accidentally or intentionally administered, or the respirator. Nevertheless, the PGR has begun an investigation, beginning with Carrillo's surgeon, Pedro López Saucedo aka Pedro Rincon, to determine the degree of responsibility of Santa Mónica Hospital in the drug lord's death, according to Salvatti. Murder charges were filed against the surgeons, only to find Jaime Godoy Singh and Ricardo Reyes Rincon who were partly encased in cement, were blindfolded and handcuffed, and had been burned, battered and strangled.In February, Mr. Carrillo Fuentes visited Cuba and Chile, where he made investments aimed at establishing a residence. Traveling with him were several top aides, including Dr. Pedro Rincon, a Colombian-born surgeon who attended medical school at the Autonomous University of Guadalajara. Chilean authorities have said the trafficker considered undergoing plastic surgery in Cuba.López Saucedo aka Pedro Rincón, left the site of the operation immediately, according to sources from the Santa Mónica Hospital quoted in El Diario.According to an earlier, less detailed report published April 11, Rincón is in the U.S. with his family under the Witness Protection Program. According to an anonymous U.S. official, Rincón said that Carrillo had hepatitis when he arrived at the hospital, and that upon being given an anesthetic drug, he died. In addition, Rincón knew Amado Carrillo and had operated on many of Carrillo's friends."There are no arrest or search warrants for Amado Carrillo Fuentes in Juárez now or before his death," Chihuahua State Police spokesman Ernesto Garcia said July 21. "As far as we know, he has not committed or been a part of any illegal activities here."......................MAIN SUSPECTS............ THE TIJUANA CARTEL headed by ARELLANO-FELIX BROTHERS, THE GULF CARTEL, GOVERNMENT SPECIAL OPS and the newest twist, the OCHOA CLAN part of the Medellin Cartel hierarchy. This is the tale of one Castor Alberto Ochoa-Soto uncle to the Ochoa brothers and a major player in the Medellin Cartel. ............................................................ ....... .................................. THE MEDELLIN CARTEL ANGLEWhen Castor Alberto Ochoa-Soto, 53 at the time, walked across the Paso del Norte Bridge to Mexico at about 11 a.m. on Saturday, Feb. 11, 1995, he likely didn’t realize he was a marked man. American immigration authorities were expelling him from the U.S., but he himself had elected to be returned to Mexico instead of his native Colombia. He had told a federal immigration judge in El Paso that he preferred to be “voluntarily returned” to Mexico instead of being shipped on a plane back to Colombia, since he had a young Mexican wife waiting for him, as well as two places of residence: a city home in Hermosillo, Sonora, and a sprawling agricultural ranch in Chetumal, Quintana Roo.Four days earlier, in the federal courthouse in El Paso, a federal jury had declared him not guilty of bringing into the U.S. a six-ton shipment of cocaine. An immigration judge then ordered Ochoa expelled from the U.S.His Colombian lawyers had advised him to take up the immigration judge’s offer to be deported to Colombia. They had warned him not to return to Mexico. But Ochoa’s Mexican lawyer, Antonio Tarazón-Navarro, had told him he would be safe. After all, Tarazón had been a Mexican federal attorney for many years before returning to private practice, and he knew the ropes, and had many powerful contacts in the Mexican government. Ochoa had weighed all the advice and recommendations. And then he had made his decision: He would agree to be “voluntarily returned” to Ciudad Juárez, where he had 22 tons of cocaine stored and where he had previously brokered so many high-volume drug deals with his old friend Carrillo, who controlled the city’s drug trade.What Ochoa couldn’t have known that Saturday morning as he walked south on the downtown international bridge was that his “old friend” had already ordered his death.Ochoa met Tarazon at the highpoint of the Paso del Norte Bridge, under the flags from both countries. After shaking and walking no more than 20 steps into Mexico, the Colombian and his lawyer were intercepted by a group of armed Mexican federal policemen in a blue Suburban.With pistols and machineguns in hand, the federales ordered the Colombian and his lawyer to get in the Suburban, which headed south into Juárez, going against the bridge traffic, which was conveniently being ordered out of the way by other federal agents on foot stationed at the toll booths and at 50-foot intervals on the bridge itself, thus opening up a lane for the Suburban to return back down the Mexican side of the bridge. Needless to say, at 11 a.m. on a Saturday, all this was witnessed by numerous people, including motorists driving north on the bridge toward El Paso, as well as the regular tollbooth employees, according to press accounts. No investigations into those accounts were undertaken, and when I went to interview witnesses several days later, they refused to answer my questions.Ochoa, balding and soft-spoken, was a high-ranking member of the Medellín Cartel, uncle to Fabio Ochoaand his brothers, the leaders of the cartel’s inner circle, who had at one time been close associates of the cartel’s former leader, the late Pablo Escobar.Ochoa first arrived in Mexico in 1984, when he was in charge of coordinating and overseeing the safe transport and delivery of the cocaine shipments coming from the main Colombian narcotraffickers. He traveled frequently to Ojinaga to coordinate and oversee the shipments of cocaine into the U.S. That’s where he meet Carillo, who was then a young man in Ojinaga, earning his keep and learning the trade as a handyman and hired gun under “El Pablote,” Pablo Acosta, who had been the first Mexican narcotrafficker to work with the Medellín cartel.By late 1987, the cocaine trade was booming in other areas of Mexico, and Ochoa had decided to center his operations in Hermosillo, Sonora. In 1989 Amado arrived to take over the family business after his older brother Cipriano Carrillo-Fuentes, the top drug capo in the region, was murdered in 1989.By then Ochoa, settled in Hermosillo, divorced his Colombian wife – an act that had generated many problems inside the Ochoa clan back in Colombia – and married a beautiful young local named Nora Sandoval, a move that made him appear more trustworthy in the eyes of his Mexican colleagues. He had four residences in four different Mexican states, all strategically located very close to clandestine airfields where small, Cessna-type planes loaded with cocaine landed on a regular basis. His favorite property was in the southern state of Quintana Roo, where along with a large agricultural farm, he also enjoyed the benefits of a government contract, with state-government financing, in which he used his heavy equipment machinery to execute a regional reforestation project.Amado’s close friendship with Ochoa at this time was a great help to the Mexican drug capo when it came to understanding the intricate details of international narcotrafficking. DEA sources explained that, back then, the Colombians never divulged any secrets about their business to their Mexican counterparts quite simply and frankly because they just didn’t trust them.Ochoa was an expert in the distribution and transportation of cocaine, and had worked in that capacity for all the main Colombian drug cartels. He knew all the angles, all the connections between producers, packers, and all the intermediaries who move shipments or loads throughout Mexico. He also knew quite a bit about the distribution contacts, networks and routes in the U.S. So in all those aspects, he greatly to Amado’s understanding of how the whole business worked.In early 1994 Ochoa traveled to Juárez to look up his old friend to ask for help in crossing a 28-ton shipment of cocaine into the U.S. In June, Ochoa was arrested while waiting inside the U.S. Immigration office located at the Paso del Norte Bridge to pick up an entry visa he had illegally “bought” through a man he thought was an American drug dealer, but who in reality was a DEA informant. The DEA had surveillance videotapes of a six-ton shipment of cocaine being crossed into the U.S. through the bridge in several vehicles. The DEA also had audiotapes of the meetings in Juarez between the informant and Ochoa, where all the logistics of the crossings had been ironed out.Amado thought this meant he could safely keep the 22 tons of cocaine left behind after Ochoa. Carillo, like the U.S. prosecutor on the case, never expected that the Colombian would eventually be declared not guilty by a U.S. court. When it happened, Carillo took matters into his own hands secure the cocaine, which was worth about $3 billion.Ochoa was not inconsequential, however, and neither was the value of the cocaine. And there was another aspect of the killing that caused a great deal of unease and ill will among narcotrafficking circles in Colombia and Mexico -- the crime was seen as the end of the Colombian cartels’ upper hand and control when it came to the cocaine trade between Mexico and the U.S.Carrillo, for his part, denied to the Colombians he was responsible, and told them that Ochoa had absconded with his own cocaine. In response, according to confidential informants who had formerly been members of the Juárez cartel, Fabio Ochoa-Vásquez,one of the three brothers who had inherited Pablo Escobar’s leadership role (Fabio Ochoa later arrested and sent to prison in the U.S.), sent a conciliatory message to Juárez: “What has happened, has happened. We feel for our uncle’s untimely death. Perhaps it was bad luck, perhaps it wasn’t. In any case, we’re not interested in revenge.”Nevertheless, sources close to the Ochoa family in Medellín said that underneath the apparent calm, family members were furious, according to press accounts by Hermosillo journalists after the arrest of Colombian narcotraffickers who were arrested in Hermosillo. They just weren’t capable of retaliating, and much less of starting a war between Colombian and Mexican narcotraffickers. So the Ochoa clan sent back word to Amado that they were willing to let bygones by bygones, and continue doing business with him. Privately, a source close to the Ochoa family said that they were merely biding their time, lying low, patiently waiting for their moment of vengeance.That longed-for moment might have been July 4, 1997, when Carrillo died on an operating table in a second-rate hospital in Mexico City, while he was having plastic surgery to change his face, in an attempt to evade capture by the U.S. and Mexican authorities once and for all.The official report said that Amado had died as a result of the anesthesia — that the anesthesiologist had applied too much of it. Curiously, several nurses and other hospital personnel present during the surgery told the authorities that an “unknown doctor” had walked into the operating room several times, and then disappeared. Also, two Colombians were among the team of doctors performing the surgery. One of the three plastic surgeons who performed the operation on Carrillo, Pedro López Saucedo, also known as Pedro Rincón, is alive and living in the U.S. as a member of the Witness Protection Program “in exchange for information on the Cartel de Juárez.”In the end, with the major actors dead, one, Ochoa, was left alone and unclaimed, in a Juarez morgue, shrunken and stuffed in a locker. His body, and that of his lawyer, Tarazon, was found in 1999, buried in a ranch owned by one of Carrillo’s subordinates.The other actor, Carrillo, had a different kind of send off. In fact, he may have received more attention from Ochoa’s family than did Ochoa.In Guamuchilito, Sinaloa, the rural Mexican hamlet where Amado was born, the Jefe de Jefes’ funeral was held in mid-July of 1997.The Carrillo-Fuentes family had received many, many floral arrangements and funeral wreaths, but in their grief, they had let some of the village people set these next to the coffin without reading the cards to see who they came from. “The whole village was there at the funeral,” said a villager with whom I spoke on a visit to Hermosillo. They were there, he said, to honor the memory of one who, to them, had been a hero: He built outdoor cement basketball courts and several other sports playing fields; he had renovated the village church; he had personally paid for the medical treatments of many villagers, including expensive surgeries in faraway hospitals; and his family had employed and helped almost everyone in Guamuchilito.“After the funeral, when some of us were helping the family clear away the funeral wreaths, we couldn’t help ourselves and out of curiosity started reading the cards that accompanied these wreaths. Somebody noticed that one of the cards said ‘All good things come to those that know how to wait’ and near the bottom of the card, right before an illegible signature, ‘Greetings from the Ochoa family in Colombia.’ We thought we should notify one of Amadito’s brothers or sisters about this card.“After they read it, they asked us to point out the wreath that had come with this card. It was composed entirely of black roses. One of Amadito’s brothers, and one of his sisters, quickly picked up the wreath, set the card back on it, and then took into the house. This was the only wreath they kept. All the other ones were thrown away and eventually burned.”.................................................. ...................... ............................................................ ................................ ..........THE FUNERAL OF THE KING.....................
Record Label: MUSIC BY THE HIERARCHY all rights reserved....2008
Type of Label: Major

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THE CARTEL REPORT: ANOTHER COP DIES IN JUAREZ....WHERES THE MILITARY???

JULY 10, 2008 An investigative police officer was killed in Juárez early Thursday morning, announced Juárez police today. According to police, Omero Chavira Márquez, 35, was gunned down at his home ...
Posted by THE CARTEL REPORT on Fri, 11 Jul 2008 06:42:00 PST

THE CARTEL REPORT: JUAREZ DRUG WAR CONTINUES TO ADD TO BODY COUNT

JULY 10, 2008 Street shootings, a buried body and a narco-message were parts of at least eight homicides Tuesday and Wednesday in Juárez, Chihuahua state police said. The decomposing body of an unide...
Posted by THE CARTEL REPORT on Thu, 10 Jul 2008 09:06:00 PST

THE CARTEL REPORT: MORE BODIES TURNING UP IN DRUG WAR,,,

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Posted by THE CARTEL REPORT on Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:37:00 PST

THE CARTEL REPORT: UPDATE ON BURNING BODIES IN TIJUANA

JULY 8, 2008 UPDATE ON 6 CHARRED BBQ BODIES LEFT IN TIJUANA   Personnel of Baja California state attorney's office wrap the body of one out of six persons found dead on July 7, 2008, in Tijuana,...
Posted by THE CARTEL REPORT on Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:35:00 PST

THE CARTEL REPORT: CHARRED BODIES DUMPED IN TIJUANA......DRUG WAR CONTINUES..

JULY 7, 2008   Police found six charred bodies, one still on fire, dumped on a street in the northern Mexican city of Tijuana on Monday, in the latest brutal killing on the U.S.-Mexico border.A ...
Posted by THE CARTEL REPORT on Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:31:00 PST

THE CARTEL REPORT:PAST WEEK IN REVIEW....

JULY 7, 2008 DRUG CARTEL INTELLIGENCE GATHERING... Fernando Martinez Sanchez, aka "El Chiquis," and Roberto Jorge Jarquín Paz were arrested July 1 after they were spotted surveilling the movements and...
Posted by THE CARTEL REPORT on Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:40:00 PST

THE CARTEL REPORT : UPDATE ON COMMANDER KILLED AT LUNCH, 5TH TOP COP KILLED IN 13 MONTHS

JULY 6, 2008 Police officers guards an ambulance carrying the bodies of federal police officers killed in a restaurant in Mexico City on Thursday, June 26, 2008. Gunmen killed a top federal police of...
Posted by THE CARTEL REPORT on Sun, 06 Jul 2008 06:23:00 PST

THE CARTEL REPORT: KEY COLUMBIAN CARTEL ASSOCIATES CAPTURED.....

JULY 5, 2008 Colombian police on Saturday captured a leading drug trafficker who is also wanted in the U.S., a police commander said. Oscar Varela Garcia, who uses the alias "Capachivo," is an al...
Posted by THE CARTEL REPORT on Sun, 06 Jul 2008 09:15:00 PST

THE CARTEL REPORT: JUAREZ MURDERS CLIMBING AND CLIMBING...

JULY 5, 2008 Deaths fueled in part by the drug cartel war in the Juárez area are approaching the 600 mark and at least one expert says the violence is not likely to end soon. The nearly 560 homicides...
Posted by THE CARTEL REPORT on Sun, 06 Jul 2008 05:07:00 PST

THE CARTEL REPORT: 4 DECAPITATED BODIES IN THE STREETS OF CULICAN....

JULY 3, 2008 Four decapitated bodies were found on a street in the Mexican city of Culiacan, blocks away from their severed heads. Three of the beheaded bodies were found inside black, plastic bags o...
Posted by THE CARTEL REPORT on Fri, 04 Jul 2008 10:03:00 PST