Cartel

Last of four parts Reporting from Calexico, Calif., and Badiraguato, Mexico T he towering iron gates opened onto a palm-lined driveway that led past the family church, a twisting water slide and two man-made lakes, one stocked with fish, the other with jet skis. With its soaring twin bell towers, each topped by a cross, the estate in the emerald hills outside Culiacan, Mexico, had an almost surreal grandeur. It reminded Carlos "Charlie" Cuevas of Disneyland, without the smiles.

SAN DIEGO - Alleged drug kingpin Victor Emilio Cazares, among the most wanted trafficking suspects in the United States, has been arrested in Mexico, U.S. and Mexican officials say, despite having changed his appearance through plastic surgery. A senior U.S. law enforcement official in Mexico confirmed this week that Cazares was captured April 8 at a highway checkpoint near the western city of Guadalajara. Mexican authorities on Friday confirmed Cazares was in custody. Mexican authorities did not make the arrest public at the time, and it has not been previously reported.

In what was billed as the largest U.S. dragnet in the war on drugs from the Southwest border, senior federal law enforcement officials said Thursday that they had arrested more than 2,200 people including a top Mexican cartel leader, seized nearly 75 tons of drugs and confiscated $154 million in cash. The massive takedown, dubbed "Project Deliverance" and executed around the United States, was hailed as part of a nearly two-year, multi-agency operation in the Obama administration's effort to fight Mexican drug trafficking operations.

Adali Gutierrez rarely mentioned his scarred and disfigured chin. He kept quiet about the mangled lower lip that twisted when he talked. A 21-year-old raising four orphaned siblings had bigger worries. Today, however, he speaks without hesitation. A plastic surgeon has fashioned him a new lip and smoothed over the divots in his skin. Faded are the lesions that reminded him constantly of the night his parents were gunned down in Mexico. It was January 2010. Maria and Guillermo Sr. had arrived at a police station to bail out Adali, who had been stopped for drunk driving.

The number of bodies pulled from mass graves in northeastern Mexico has risen to 145, officials said Friday, following the arrest of 16 police officers for allegedly providing cover to drug-cartel gangsters suspected in the grisly slayings. Morelos Canseco, a senior government official for the state of Tamaulipas where the clandestine burials were discovered, said another 23 bodies were extracted Thursday. Unlike the previous victims who are thought to be passengers kidnapped recently from buses, the latest corpses had apparently been buried for a much longer time, Canseco said in a radio interview.

A federal judge sentenced Benjamin Arellano Felix to 25 years in prison Monday, rejecting a last-ditch plea by the former Mexican drug kingpin to reduce a punishment that has already been criticized as too lenient. Arellano Felix's rambling statement in federal court provided an unexpected climax to a historic case that targeted the cartel that bears his family name, once Mexico's most powerful organized crime group. Arellano Felix admitted in a plea agreement in January that he headed the cartel that terrorized rivals and turned Tijuana into a major drug-trafficking corridor into the United States.

This time, Mexican authorities took their prey alive. Monday's bloodless capture of Edgar Valdez Villarreal, a fair-haired Texan accused of helping run a murderous drug-trafficking gang in Mexico, could yield more breakthroughs by giving Mexican and U.S. authorities a deeper look into the workings of Mexico's drug underworld, analysts said Tuesday. In addition, Valdez's status as an American citizen may ease his possible handover to the United States, where he is wanted on cocaine-smuggling charges, by allowing authorities to skip or shorten the often-lengthy extradition process.

Gunmen targeting a rival drug cartel opened fire in a crowded bar in the northern city of Monterrey, killing at least 20 people and wounding several, authorities said Saturday. The attack occurred late Friday in the Sabino Gordo bar in downtown Monterrey, a prosperous and once-orderly industrial hub that has been buffeted by more than a year of fighting between the Zetas, known as the country's most violent drug gang, and the Gulf cartel. Authorities said most of the dead — four of them women — were bar employees.

Pope Benedict XVI traveled to Mexico on Friday, urging this nation's Catholics to resist the temptations of violent drug traffickers and calling for change in Cuba. This is Benedict's first voyage to the Spanish-speaking Americas; after three days in Mexico, he continues to Cuba, the first papal visit to the island nation since John Paul II's historic trip to Havana in 1998. Landing on a sun-drenched afternoon in Mexico's conservative and traditionally Catholic midsection, Benedict was greeted by President Felipe Calderon.

MEXICO CITY - Mexican authorities responding to an anonymous tip discovered about 50 mostly mutilated bodies dumped on the side of a highway between Monterrey and the U.S. border, a region where rival gangs are battling for control over a lucrative drug-trafficking corridor. The bodies of at least 43 men and half a dozen women were found Sunday in plastic garbage bags near the town of Cadereyta Jimenez, the location of a large state-run oil refinery, officials in the state prosecutor's office told The Times.

MEXICO CITY - Mexican authorities responding to an anonymous tip discovered about 50 mostly mutilated bodies dumped on the side of a highway between Monterrey and the U.S. border, a region where rival gangs are battling for control over a lucrative drug-trafficking corridor. The bodies of at least 43 men and half a dozen women were found Sunday in plastic garbage bags near the town of Cadereyta Jimenez, the location of a large state-run oil refinery, officials in the state prosecutor's office told The Times.

WASHINGTON — Police and federal agents pulled the car over in a suburb north of Denver. An FBI agent showed his badge. The driver appeared not startled at all. "My friend," he said, "I have been waiting for you. " And with that, Jesus Audel Miramontes-Varela stepped out of his white 2002 BMW X5 and into the arms of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Over the next several days at his ranch in Colorado and an FBI safe house in Albuquerque, the Mexican cartel chieftain — who had reputedly fed one of his victims to lions in Mexico — was transformed into one of the FBI's top informants on the Southwest border.

A federal judge sentenced Benjamin Arellano Felix to 25 years in prison Monday, rejecting a last-ditch plea by the former Mexican drug kingpin to reduce a punishment that has already been criticized as too lenient. Arellano Felix's rambling statement in federal court provided an unexpected climax to a historic case that targeted the cartel that bears his family name, once Mexico's most powerful organized crime group. Arellano Felix admitted in a plea agreement in January that he headed the cartel that terrorized rivals and turned Tijuana into a major drug-trafficking corridor into the United States.

SAN DIEGO - For years, Benjamin Arellano Felix eluded U.S. law enforcement while running a Mexican drug cartel that terrorized rivals and poured hundreds of tons of cocaine into the country. So when the handcuffed kingpin arrived in San Diego aboard a government plane last year, U.S. authorities gathered on the tarmac, sharing hugs and handshakes as he was handed over to his longtime pursuers. But the sense of triumph has turned to disappointment in some quarters as Arellano Felix approaches his judgment hour in court Monday.

Six men, including a former soldier, have been arrested in the border town of Laredo, Texas, in connection with drug trafficking and an alleged murder-for-hire plot, according to federal officials. The arrests culminate a months-long federal sting operation in which the suspects allegedy helped hatch a plan to purchase weapons for drug cartel members in exchange for money and drugs. Kevin Corley, 29, and Samuel Walker, 28, both of Colorado Springs, Colo., and Shavar Davis, 29, of Denver were arrested over the weekend in Laredo,  according to a statement released by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Pope Benedict XVI traveled to Mexico on Friday, urging this nation's Catholics to resist the temptations of violent drug traffickers and calling for change in Cuba. This is Benedict's first voyage to the Spanish-speaking Americas; after three days in Mexico, he continues to Cuba, the first papal visit to the island nation since John Paul II's historic trip to Havana in 1998. Landing on a sun-drenched afternoon in Mexico's conservative and traditionally Catholic midsection, Benedict was greeted by President Felipe Calderon.

Adali Gutierrez rarely mentioned his scarred and disfigured chin. He kept quiet about the mangled lower lip that twisted when he talked. A 21-year-old raising four orphaned siblings had bigger worries. Today, however, he speaks without hesitation. A plastic surgeon has fashioned him a new lip and smoothed over the divots in his skin. Faded are the lesions that reminded him constantly of the night his parents were gunned down in Mexico. It was January 2010. Maria and Guillermo Sr. had arrived at a police station to bail out Adali, who had been stopped for drunk driving.

Second of four parts G abriel Dieblas Roman took orders from cartel bosses in Mexico, hard men who ruled by fear, but he wouldn't approve a shipment without talking to a plucky, middle-aged woman from Compton. Guadalupe "Lupita" Villalobos ran a storefront botanica where Virgin of Guadalupe statuettes sat beside grinning Saint Death skeletons. She would threaten to turn neighbors into toads, and her clients believed she could divine the future by studying snail shells scattered on a tabletop.

No taco stand was too small for Juan Arturo Vargas, alias "The Rat. " Every week, Vargas would shake down the businesses in Nicolas Romero, a working-class town an hour outside the Mexican capital. His take: anywhere from $25 to several hundred dollars. His leverage: Pay up, or your kids will get hurt. The Rat, police and prosecutors say, worked at the low end of a vast spectrum of the fastest-growing nonlethal criminal enterprise in Mexico: extortion. From mom-and-pop businesses to mid-size construction projects to some of Mexico's wealthiest citizens, almost every segment of the economy and society has been subjected to extortion schemes, authorities and records indicate.

War without end Re " A drug war success story? ," Opinion, Feb. 29 William C. Rempel's Op-Ed article on the 1989 cocaine bust in Sylmar that ultimately strengthened the Mexican drug cartels illustrates the folly of the continuing war on drugs. This war is an arms race in which the opponent has no morals and no qualms about a scorched-earth strategy. Increasingly, the casualties are innocent people and entire economic sectors, such as Mexican tourism and trips by charitable organizations to the country.