TIJUANA — He was the muscle for Mexico's most feared drug cartel, and he was looking to use it. As revelers filled the streets of Mazatlan for its annual carnival, Ramon Arellano Felix cruised the beach strip like a shark, hunting for a rival.
Instead, he ended up the victim, killed in a shootout with police who had stopped his white Volkswagen for driving in the wrong lane. Officially, it was a chance confrontation: The officers opened fire after Ramon brandished a weapon and ran. But some think the police were gunning for the 37-year-old enforcer, possibly as proxies for Ismael Zambada, the rival drug boss whom Ramon was in town to kill.
Either way, the death of Ramon Arellano Felix on Feb. 10, followed by the capture of his brother Benjamin, 50, in Puebla on March 9, was stunning proof that the luck of the world's most wanted drug traffickers had taken a wrong turn after a decade of seeming invincibility.
Throughout the 1990s, the Arellano Felix gang had maintained an iron grip on the smuggling of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamines up the Tijuana-San Diego corridor. They had corrupted officials and police with millions of dollars in bribes and intimidated others with spectacular killings, of police chiefs, prosecutors and even children.
The demise of the brothers, literally or figuratively, made law enforcement officials happy and hopeful that the government of President Vicente Fox was finally delivering on its promise of a crackdown on drug trafficking.
But the victory over the Arellano Felixes has its dark side. Authorities on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border predict a bloody struggle for dominance over this key piece of "narco-geography." Challenges to their cartel will come from outside and within, said Michael G. Garland, former head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's Mexico unit.
"You can expect a period of violence, first to settle vendettas and then as people try to position themselves to take over," said Garland, who said he believes that the Arellano Felix organization has been "mortally wounded."
Struggle Seen as Having Little Effect on Supply
The first victim apparently has already fallen. Rodolfo Carrillo Barragan, a law professor and attorney who represented the Arellano Felix clan in its dealings around Mexico, was found dead in the garage of his Tijuana condominium Monday night with a bullet wound to the head.
