The Aid to "El Teo" Falls in Ensenada

Luis Gilberto Sánchez Guerrero "El Gil" was a former Tijuana municipal police and was involved in crimes such as kidnapping, murder and protecting small shops where drugs were sold.

Tijuana, BC - Authorities of the State Preventive Police (PEP) arrested former municipal police officer Luis Gilberto Sánchez Guerrero "El Gil", an alleged associate of Teodoro Garcia Simental "El Teo", whom authorities identified as part of a command that had attempted to assassinate the Secretary of Local Public Safety, Julian Perez Leyzaola.

This arrest represents a serious blow to the structure of criminal gangs operating in the state, as the suspect confessed that he commanded at least ten criminal cells, said Public Safety Secretary of State, Daniel de la Rosa Anaya.

At the time of arrest he was in possession of two handguns, one known as "matapolicías" (police killer), with 58 cartridges and a bulletproof vest.

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New Drug Cartel Generation Emerges in Tijuana

The Tijuana cartel, one of the most powerful in the past three decades, has suffered a major blow that has broken it up but its main operational structure remains intact along with money laundering, now under the leadership of a new generation of drug traffickers led by Luis Fernando Sanchez Arellano, who is known as "El Alineador."

According to data confirmed by the Attorney General's Office (PGR), Sánchez Arellano is the son of Alicia Arellano, who along with Enedina Arellano Felix was involved in money exchange operations and managed real estate companies, businesses created under criminal avtivities in the '80s and '90s by two brothers Ramon and Benjamin who fell in disgrace.

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Mexican Drug Cartel Founders

Beltrán-Leyva Cartel Founders: Marcos Arturo Beltrán Leyva • Alfredo Beltrán Leyva • Mario Alberto Beltrán Leyva • Carlos Beltrán Leyva • Héctor Beltrán Leyva •

La Familia Cartel Founders: Nazario Moreno González • Carlos Rosales Mendoza • José de Jesús Méndez Vargas • Julio César Godoy Toscano • Enrique Plancarte • Arnoldo Rueda Medina • Servando Gómez Martínez • Dionicio Loya Plancarte • Rafael Cedeño Hernández •

Gulf Cartel Founders: Juan Nepomuceno Guerra • Juan García Abrego •
Current leaders: Osiel Cárdenas Guillen • Antonio Ezequiel Cárdenas Guillen • Jorge Eduardo Costilla •

Juárez Cartel Founders: Pablo Acosta Villarreal • Amado Carrillo Fuentes • Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo • Rafael Caro Quintero • Miguel Caro Quintero • Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo •
Current leaders: Vicente Carrillo Fuentes • Juan Pablo Ledesma •

Sinaloa Cartel
(Armed wing: Los Negros) Founders: Pedro Avilés Pérez • Héctor Luis Palma Salazar • Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo •
Current leaders: Joaquín Guzmán Loera • Ismael Zambada García • Ignacio Coronel Villarreal • Édgar Valdéz Villarreal (Los Negros) • Teodoro García Simental • Juan José Esparragoza Moreno •

Tijuana Cartel Founders: Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo •
Current leaders: Luis Fernando Sánchez Arellano • Ramón Arellano Félix • Eduardo Arellano Félix • Francisco Javier Arellano Félix • Edgardo Leyva Escandon •

Los Zetas Founders: Arturo Guzmán Decena • Jesús Enrique Rejón Águila • Jaime González Durán • Heriberto Lazcano • Miguel Treviño Morales
Current leaders: Heriberto Lazcano • Miguel Treviño Morales •

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Calderon’s Success Story

Since taking office in December 2006, Mexican President Felipe Calderon has undertaken extraordinary measures in pursuit of the country’s powerful drug trafficking organizations. The policies enacted by Calderon saw some progress during his first year in office, although it has only been during the past year that the continued implementation of these policies has produced meaningful results in the fight against the cartels.

One important result has been the large quantities of illegal drugs and weapons seized by federal authorities. In November 2007, customs officials in Manzanillo, Colima state, seized 26 tons of cocaine from a Hong Kong-flagged ship that had sailed from Colombia.

The seizure was the largest in Mexican history, more than double the previous record of 11 tons recovered that October in Tamaulipas state. In July 2007, the Mexican navy captured a self-propelled, semisubmersible vessel loaded with nearly 5 tons of cocaine off the coast of Oaxaca state, the first such capture by Mexican authorities.

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Arellano Felix Organization The Tijuana Cartel

The AFO, also known as the Tijuana cartel, has been weakened almost beyond recognition over the past year due to the efforts of both U.S. and Mexican law enforcement to capture several high-ranking leaders. The most symbolic was the October arrest of Eduardo “El Doctor” Arellano Felix, the only original Arellano Felix brother who had evaded capture.

Fighting among the various factions of the cartel itself has led to hundreds of deaths in the Tijuana area over the past 12 months and resulted in the splitting of the cartel into two factions. One is led by Fernando “El Ingeniero” Sanchez Zamora, a nephew of the original Arellano Felix brothers. Eduardo Teodoro “El Teo” Garcia Sementa, who served as an enforcer under the Arellano Felix brothers, controls the rival faction. Disagreements over authority reportedly led to much of the violence between the two factions in the first half of 2008. The violence peaked on April 26 when three separate and prolonged gunbattles erupted on the streets of Tijuana, leaving 13 people dead and five wounded.

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Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman

Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman

Alias: El Chapo (Shorty)
Cartel: Sinaloa
Born: La Tuna, Sinaloa, 1957
Rewards: $5 million (FBI), $2 million (Mexican PGR)

Bio: Hunted from city mansions to mountain caves but always disappearing in a puff of smoke, the 5-foot-6-inch king of kingpins is indisputably the most high-profile drug trafficker in Mexico today.

Growing up in a ramshackle village in the wild Sierra Madre mountains, Guzman is said to have apprenticed in the drug world under the legendary smuggler Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, alias “The Godfather.”

Following Felix’s 1989 imprisonment for ordering the murder of a Drug Enforcement Administration agent, Guzman emerged as one of the top trafficking powers, waging a bloody war against the Tijuana Cartel for control of smuggling routes into California and Arizona.

In 1993, Tijuana Cartel gunmen shot dead Catholic Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo in Guadalajara airport. Prosecutors then said the killers had been after Guzman but got the wrong man.

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The Capture of El Gilillo

A fourth leader of the Arellano Félix Organization falls as Mexican and U.S. law enforcement make unprecedented strides together to crush the cartel.

In the pre-dawn darkness of Aug. 22, an elite team of heavily armed Mexican federal agents surrounded a house in a small town east of the Baja California capital of Mexicali. At a pre-arranged signal, the masked agents burst into the home. Inside, they found their quarry – a long-hunted narco-trafficker under indictment in both the United States and Mexico. The U.S. government had posted a $2 million reward for information leading to his capture.

The suspect and an alleged accomplice were arrested, handcuffed and whisked away to the Mexicali airport. The entire operation, carried out with textbook precision and without a shot fired, was over in a mere three minutes.

In San Diego, jubilant agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration stamped "captured" over their wanted-poster photograph of Gilberto "El Gilillo" Higuera Guerrero, formerly a top lieutenant of the Tijuana-based Arellano Félix drug-trafficking cartel.

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