Pubdate: Mon, 05 Aug 2002
Source: Arizona Daily Star (AZ)
Copyright: 2002 Pulitzer Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://www.azstarnet.com/star/today/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/23
Author: Will Weissert, The Associated Press

BLOODLINES LONG FOR MEXICAN DRUG RING

When police killed one brother and captured another, it looked like the end 
of the line for the Arellano Felix drug gang.

But the Arellano Felixes are a big family.

Mexican and U.S. authorities expect Francisco Javier Arellano Felix - one 
of six siblings still at large - to take control of Mexico's largest 
drug-smuggling syndicate.

"It's like pruning a tree," said Jesus Blancornelas, a Tijuana magazine 
editor who has survived Arellano Felix-engineered assassination attempts. 
"You cut off a branch if one Arellano dies or another is captured, but the 
family will always grow new branches."

The gang uses hundreds of couriers to carry cocaine and marijuana across 
Tijuana's crowded border to distributors in California and as far east as 
the Midwestern United States.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration estimates the group supplies a 
third of all the cocaine on America's streets, either by smuggling it 
across the border directly or by charging other traffickers fees to use 
Tijuana's drug routes.

The group also is believed to have carried out more than 300 murders on 
both sides of the border.

In February, police officers in the resort city of Mazatlan gunned down the 
man behind many of those murders, feared enforcer Ramon Arellano Felix. A 
month later federal authorities captured his brother Benjamin, the gang's 
operations chief.

Despite those blows, authorities say the family's control of Tijuana and 
its lucrative drug corridors hasn't wavered.

"It's constant," said Mexico's top anti-drug prosecutor, Mario Estuardo 
Bermudez. "Control of Tijuana means they are a very dangerous group."

A college graduate known as "El Tigrillo," or "Little Tiger," Francisco 
Javier is believed to have played a role in Ramon's ruthless enforcement 
wing of the gang. Authorities say that he is more even- tempered than Ramon 
and less of a risk-taker than Benjamin, and that he should run a less 
ruthless drug-smuggling ship with the help of his brother Eduardo, a 
physician, and his sister Enedina, an accountant.

"There is a new level of tolerance now that Ramon Arellano is gone," 
Bermudez said. "Ramon was a man who was characterized by his violent 
actions and who often personally led attacks on other organizations. El 
Tigrillo is different."

Blancornelas said the gang is now "less violent and more intelligent."

"They aren't out to settle personal scores first and make money later like 
they were under Ramon," he said.
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