Tijuana Cartel

Tijuana Cartel
Ramón Arellano Félix, one of the former leaders of the organization
In	Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico
Territory	Tijuana
Ethnicity	Mexican
Membership	Estimated to have well over 1,000 foot soldiers. Command and control elements are much more limited.
Criminal activities	Cocaine transportation, cocaine wholesaling, controls numerous plazas/drug trafficking corridors, kidnapping, murder.
Rivals	Sinaloa Cartel, Juárez Cartel

The Tijuana Cartel (Spanish: Cártel de Tijuana) is a Mexican drug trafficking cartel based in Tijuana, Baja California. It covers the northwestern part of Mexico and competes with three other major cartels: the Juárez Cartel of Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, and Navojoa, Sonora (center), the Gulf Cartel (east), and the Sinaloa Cartel of Culiacán, Sinaloa. The cartel has been described as "one of the biggest and most violent criminal groups in Mexico".^[1] The Tijuana Cartel was featured battling the rival Juárez Cartel in the 2000 motion picture Traffic.

Organization

The Tijuana Cartel from the time that it became led by the family of Ramón Eduardo Arellano Félix. The Tijuana Cartel has high-level contacts within the Mexican law enforcement and judicial systems and is directly involved in street-level trafficking within the United States. This criminal organization is responsible for the transportation, importation, and distribution of multi-ton quantities of cocaine and marihuana, as well as large quantities of heroin and methamphetamine.^[2]

The Arellano family was initially composed of seven brothers and four sisters, who inherited the organization from Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo upon his incarceration in Mexico in 1989 for his complicity in the murder of DEA Special Agent Enrique Camarena.

The organization has a reputation for extreme violence. Ramón ordered a hit which resulted in the mass murder of 18 people in Ensenada, Baja California, on September 17, 1998. Ramón was eventually killed in a gun battle with police at Mazatlán, Sinaloa, on February 10, 2002.

The Arellano Félix family has seven brothers:

• Francisco Rafael Arellano Félix (born 24 October 1949) Captured & Released
• Benjamín Arellano Félix (born 3 December 1952) - Captured
• Carlos Arellano Félix (believed to be born 20 August 1955) Captured
• Eduardo Arellano Félix (born 11 October 1956), - Captured and being held pending extradition to the United States
• Ramón Eduardo Arellano Félix (born 31 August 1964) - Deceased, shot by police in 2002
• Luis Fernando Arellano Félix (believed to be born 26 January 1966)
• Francisco Javier Arellano Félix (born 11 December 1969) - Captured

They also have four sisters, where Alicia and Enedina are most active in the cartel's affairs. The family inherited the organization from their uncle Miguel Ángel Félix upon his incarceration. Eduardo Arellano Félix was captured by the Mexican Army after a shootout in Tijuana, Baja California, on October 26, 2008;^[3] he had been the last of the Arellano Félix brothers at large. According to a Mexican official, Enedina's son, Luis Fernando Sánchez Arellano, has taken over the cartel's operations.

Activities

After the death in 1997 of the Juárez Cartel's Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the Tijuana Cartel attempted to gain a foothold in Sonora.^[1]

Fourteen Mexican drug gang members were killed and eight others were injured in a gun battle in Tijuana near the U.S. border on Saturday, April 26, 2008 that was one of the bloodiest shootouts in the narco-war between the Tijuana Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel.

Rival factions of the local Arellano Félix drug cartel in Tijuana on the Mexico-California border fought each other with rifles and machine guns in the early hours of the morning, police said. A fierce power struggle ended in many dead

Captures and trial

Wanted poster for the Arellano-Felix organization.

In October 1997, a retired U.S. Air Force C-130A that was sold to the airline Aero Postal de Mexico was seized by Mexican federal officials, who alleged that the aircraft had been used to haul drugs for the cartel up from Central and South America, as well as around the Mexican interior. Investigators had linked the airline's owner, Jesús Villegas Covallos, to Ramón Arellano Félix.^[1]

On August 14, 2006, Francisco Javier Arellano Félix was apprehended by the United States Coast Guard off the coast of Baja California Sur.

See also

• Mérida Initiative
• Vicente Carrillo Fuentes
• Teodoro Garcia Simental
• Gulf Cartel
• Juárez Cartel
• Los Zetas
• Joaquín Guzmán
• War on Drugs
• Los Negros
• Narcotrafficking in Colombia

References