TIJUANA — The first sign of a mob turf war came early last year with the discovery of six bound, tortured bodies alongside Baja California highways. The victims, shot in the head at close range, were lieutenants of a drug mafia from the state of Sinaloa.
The violence escalated with a spate of machine-gun murders on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border and a commando-style raid on a Puerto Vallarta discotheque targeting Tijuana traffickers.
Then a cardinal was killed, gunned down at the Guadalajara airport last week in a luxury car that hit men mistook for one belonging to Mexico's top mafia boss.
The airport assault reportedly was the work of the Arellano Felix brothers, handsome thugs who control narcotics trafficking along the Baja California border, the principal port of entry for illegal drugs shipped to the United States.
The Arellanos are multimillionaires who move tons of South American cocaine across the border each month, according to American and Mexican officials. The family has reportedly employed an entourage of police, rich kids and San Diego gang members to fend off a challenge from the nation's most powerful and sophisticated trafficker, the Sinaloa-based Joaquin (El Chapo) Guzman.
"Tijuana is the most-used port on the border, and everyone wants a piece of it," said an American drug official. "The Arellanos insist the northwest is theirs and no one is going to operate there without going through them. Guzman is arrogant. No one is going to tell him what to do. . . . The Arellanos survive not because they are smarter, but because they are more violent."
Little is known about the shadowy Arellano family, who, unlike many other drug-dealing barons, have not strutted their wealth and influence. But a glimpse of the brothers as brutal businessmen locked in a deadly drug war emerges from conversations with American and Mexican officials and Tijuana journalists.
The Arellanos belong to an old marijuana and contraband smuggling family from the rough-and-tumble state of Sinaloa. They are said to be related to Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, Mexico's biggest drug trafficker until he was jailed in 1989.
Officials are uncertain whether the Arellanos ever worked for Felix Gallardo, but they believe the four brothers now answer to a silent boss who is more worldly than they are and who has his own bankers and legitimate businesses. Sources declined to reveal the identity of the reputed leader.
