Death sets off drug turf war

Mexico cocaine trade worth billions

BY DOUGLAS FARAH
AND MOLLY MOORE
Washington Post

The death of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, one of the most powerful drug
traffickers in the world, has set off a bloody struggle for control of
Mexico's multibilliondollar cocaine trade, according to U.S. and
Mexican law enforcement officials.

Carrillo died July 4 in a hospital after undergoing plastic surgery and
liposuction. The following day, Tomás Colsa McGregor, wellknown to U.S.
law enforcement as the top money launderer for Carrillo's drug cartel,
was dragged from his Mexico City home, tortured and shot in the head
several times.

Over the next two weeks, five other midlevel cartel henchmen were gunned
down in Juárez, Mexico, the center of Carrillo's drug empire, according
to Mexican authorities.

Carrillo's organization, which controls illegal drug shipments across
the Mexican border from Texas to Arizona, is the largest
cocainesmuggling group shipping narcotics to the United States. Over
the past several years, it took over much of the U.S. drug distribution
once managed by Colombian organizations such as the Cali cartel and had
recently gained control over the huge New York market, according to U.S.
sources.

No clearcut decision

U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials say it is still too soon to
tell who will inherit the mantle of leadership in Carrillo's
organization or even who is gaining the upper hand.

It is not entirely clear whether the killings are the result of
infighting within Carrillo's Juárez cartel or the work of rival drug
groups, particularly the Arellano Félix organization, based in Tijuana.
The Arellano Félix organization, led by five brothers, controls the
California border area and part of Arizona.

U.S. and Mexican intelligence sources said that if a fullscale war
broke out between the organizations, it would probably be along the
Arizona border, where the Juárez cartel had been trying to displace the
Arellano Félix groups.

``We can foresee a period of violence as people try to take over or
prevent people from taking over what is a multibilliondollar
business,'' said a Mexicobased official of the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration. ``There's always a state of flux after a change like
this. You can only guess what will happen. . . . No one knows. The
traffickers don't know.''

Cartel `disjointed'

Mariano Herran Salvatti, Mexico's antidrug chief, said in a television
interview over the weekend that the Juárez cartel is ``disjointed; it
doesn't have a head.''

He said that, if a consensus on a leader is not reached, ``you could
have the disintegration of the cartel.''

If the killings are the result of the Arellano Félix brothers trying to
move into territory and routes traditionally controlled by Carrillo, the
war could be especially bloody, because the two organizations have a
long history of violence.

So far, the slayings have been brutal. Saturday, Juan Eugenio Rosales, a
convicted drug trafficker and associate of Carrillo known as ``the
Genius,'' died in a hail of bullets while driving his car into his
garage, Mexican police said. A man and a woman were found dead in the
trunk of a stolen car in Juárez with ropes tied around their necks,
plastic bags taped over their heads and their feet bound with wire,
police said.

``There will never be peace between the Carrillo organization and the
Arellano Félix organization,'' said a senior U.S. law enforcement
official who has monitored the Mexican cartels for years. ``There is
just too much bad blood there. They have killed each other's wives and
children; they have passed on intelligence about each other to law
enforcement. It is personal, not business. Business they could work
out.''

Published Wednesday, July 23, 1997, in the San Jose Mercury News