Pubdate: Mon, 06 Sep 2010
Source: Houston Chronicle (TX)
Copyright: 2010 Houston Chronicle Publishing Company Division
Contact:  http://www.chron.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/198
Author: Dane Schiller

THE MOST WANTED WARLORDS IN THE HEMISPHERE

Their names change, but all meet the same end: dead, in jail or on the
run

One by one, Mexico's notorious warlords have come and gone - household
names and nightmares with a modern-day twist.

Instead of Al Capone or John Gotti, they are drug cartel kingpins with
private armies and nicknames like Shorty, Blondie, Friend Killer and
most recently, Texas-born La Barbie.

Part terrorist. Part rock star. Part legend. But eventually they all
meet the same fate, ending up dead, in prison or on the run for life.

They share notoriety south of the border as well as across it - having
pushed illegal drugs through Texas and other states, some ending up in
shackles on extradition flights headed to Houston or beyond.

"I have watched this for 20 years. There are no old, retired drug
traffickers," said Drug Enforcement Administration agent Steve
Robertson, of the Houston Division. "Violence is the nature of their
business."

Now, nearly two decades since the Mexicans took over from Colombian
Pablo Escobar - the world's first true drug kingpin - a review of
Mexico's top gangsters over the years traces their rise, reign and
nearly inescapable fall.

Many have been sent to the U.S., landing in federal courtrooms from
Texas to California to either stand trial on drug trafficking charges
or take a deal: Snitch on cartel comrades - and forfeit some of the
riches earned through drugs and blood - in exchange for leniency.

Borderland butchery

About a dozen major Mexican drug traffickers are in American prisons
and many more of their underlings are imprisoned on both sides of the
border.

Hundreds are vying to work their way up the ranks to take their
places. But times are changing. The celebrity status may be wearing
out as an estimated 28,000 people have died in Mexico's drug war since
2006.

Gangsters have taken butchery to a new level by hacking off heads and
body parts, killing rivals by the dozens at a time, and breaking the
oldest code of organized crime: Killing family members and civilians.

The most infamous of warlords on the run is Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman,
whose nickname translates as "Shorty." He has defied all odds by
breaking out of a Mexican prison nearly a decade ago and taking his
Sinaloa Cartel to the top of Mexico's organized crime world.

Guzman is the most wanted man in Mexico and rubbed salt in President
Felipe Calderon's wounds in 2009 by landing on Forbes magazine's list
of billionaires.

He is wanted in the U.S. on drug trafficking and conspiracy charges,
and there's a reward of up to $5 million for his capture.

Keeping it in the family

Amado Carrillo Fuentes, known as the "Lord of the Skies," took the
most unique path to his demise. He died from complications of plastic
surgery intended to make him less recognizable.

The doctors who did the deed were killed and their bodies stuffed in
drums.

His brother now runs the business, but the Juarez cartel, based in
Ciudad Juarez across the border from El Paso, has shifted away from
the smuggling of planes that gave Lord of the Skies his name and moved
on to the cartels' new normal of barbaric crimes.

Amado Carrillo's contemporary, Juan Garcia Abrego, known as "El Senor"
among other names, was the first Mexican drug boss to make the FBI's
Ten Most Wanted list. He refused a plea bargain and was found guilty
in a Houston court on an array of conspiracy, drug trafficking and
money laundering charges. He is serving multiple life sentences in the
federal Supermax prison in Colorado.

His Gulf Cartel, which is based out of Monterrey near South Texas,
gave birth to perhaps the most merciless thugs of them all, the Zetas.
An assassination hit squad that grew into a full-fledged cartel, the
Zetas introduced beheadings and other such savageries to Mexico's drug
war and are blamed for the slaughter of 72 immigrants last month on a
ranch.

Just to name a few.

Price on their heads

"You can go on and on and on. Taking out the head (cartel leader) is
not enough," Steve McCraw, head of the Texas Department of Public
Safety, said of destroying a cartel. "You have to take out an entire
organization, and you'll need to take out the ability of the entire
organization to profit."

In fact, not one cartel has been eradicated.

Francisco Javier Arellano Felix, who comes from a band of brothers who
led the Tijuana Cartel, was arrested in 2007 by the Coast Guard on a
boat south of the Mexican coastal resort of Cabo San Lucas. The
playboy of the family, he rose to power when few were left to take the
helm. He is imprisoned in California.

Miguel Trevino Morales, known as "Comandante 40," is a Zetas boss
believed to be responsible for much of the mayhem on the South
Texas-Mexico border in recent years. He is a fugitive from charges in
the U.S. and has a $5 million price on his head.

The same reward looms over other top-tier traffickers, including
former soldier Heriberto Lazcano and Antonio Ezequiel Cardenas
Guillen, whose brother was the Gulf Cartel's chief leader.

Osiel Cardenas Guillen, considered the most diabolical of drug bosses,
once put a gold-plated AK-47 to the heads of two U.S. federal agents
working an operation in Mexico.

He was arrested by the Mexican military in a shootout. After doing
time in a Mexican prison, from which he continued to run his cartel,
he was extradited to Houston.

He offers his fellow gangsters perhaps the best example for
self-preservation. By cooperating with the U.S. government, and
offering information secreted in sealed court documents, he took a
deal to do time in prison and go free 14 years from now.

"You become a target, just like the gangsters from 1920s Prohibition
in the United States," said Larry Karson, a retired Customs Service
agent who is now a criminal justice lecturer at the University of
Houston-Downtown.

Karson said the government went after Al Capone because he was getting
too big to be tolerated: "I believe the president of the United States
himself said, 'Get Capone,' because he became bigger in the public eye
than many people thought was appropriate for a gangster."

Mexico's war continues

The Capone of cartels was Colombia's Escobar, known for his
overwhelming wealth and power. He also spent millions on taking care
of the poor, who in turn took care of him.

At one point Escobar surrendered and agreed to imprisonment in his own
customized, luxurious prison, before deciding later to escape.

He died in a rooftop shootout in Medellin. Officers posed for photos
standing over his body.

And so it goes in Mexico, where President Calderon has continued his
all-out war on the cartels and noted in his annual state of the union
address that three major traffickers have been captured or killed in
the last year.

Edgar Valdez Villarreal, who was born in Laredo and is nicknamed "La
Barbie" for his light hair and eyes, was arrested in Mexico last week.
He did not look fearful of his fate and even smirked when paraded in
front of reporters while flanked by masked federal agents.

His Houston lawyer, Kent Schaffer, said he'd been working for his
client for months to explore options should he be captured. He
wouldn't discuss negotiations.

Beto Cardenas, a Houston lawyer from Laredo who went to school with La
Barbie, said it steams him that anyone would look up to the mobsters
who ride herd over the borderland bloodshed.

"Celebrity status for criminals is based on a path of destruction and
greed," Cardenas said. "No comparison of heroic, folklore or legendary
status is justified. Heroes save lives, they do not take them; legends
earn respect with honest, hard work completed each day for the
betterment of all."

Or, put another way by the DEA's Robertson, "These are not Robin
Hoods. They are hard-core, violent criminals - animals who should be
put in a cage."
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MAP posted-by: Matt