Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Gulf Cartel is now in the Philippines (Filipinas) and Worldwide

Gulf Cartel is now in the Philippines (Filipinas) and Worldwide

Founded 1970s
Founding location Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico
Years active 1970s-present
Territory Mexico:
Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Nuevo León
United States:
Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Illinois, Florida
Ethnicity Mexican, Guatemalan
Criminal activities Drug trafficking, people smuggling, money laundering, extortion, kidnapping, racketeering, theft, murder, arms trafficking, bribery, prostitution, counterfeiting, police impersonation.
Allies Sinaloa Cartel, Knights Templar
Rivals Los Zetas, Juárez Cartel, Beltrán-Leyva Cartel, Tijuana Cartel, Los Negros

The Gulf Cartel (Spanish: Cártel del Golfo, Golfos, or CDG) is a criminal syndicate and drug trafficking organization in Mexico, and perhaps the oldest organized crime group in the country. It is currently based in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, directly across the border from Brownsville, Texas.

Their network is international, and are believed to have dealings with crime groups in Europe, West Africa, Asia, Central America, South America, and the United States. Besides drug trafficking, the Gulf Cartel operates through protection rackets, assassinations, extortions, kidnappings, and other criminal activities. The Gulf Cartel is known for intimidating the population and for being “particularly violent.”

Although its founder Juan Nepomuceno Guerra smuggled alcohol in small quantities to the United States during the epoch of Prohibition, it was not until the 1970s that the cartel was formed and shifted to drug trafficking —primarily cocaine— under the command of Juan Nepomuceno Guerra and Juan García Ábrego.
History
Foundation: 1970s–1996
Juan Nepomuceno Guerra began smuggling alcohol across the border into
the United States during the Prohibition era; once it ended in 1933, he created a criminal syndicate (known as el cártel de Matamoros) and controlled gambling houses, a car theft network, prostitution rings, and other illegal smuggling. Nonetheless, it was not until the 1970s when his nephew Juan García Ábrego founded the Gulf Cartel and started to dedicate primarily to drug trafficking. The origins of the cartel are accredited to the legendary contrabandist Juan Nepomuceno Guerra, who died on 12 July 2001 due to a cardiac arrest. Juan Nepomuceno Guerra was considered a high-profile leader among several people in the community of Matamoros, Tamaulipas because he would help the neediest and would punish those who committed any abuse to the poor families. Poor people sometimes even made huge lines in ‘Piedras Negras,’ a restaurant of Nepomuceno Guerra, to ask him for favors.
Juan Nepomuceno Guerra, founder of the organization.Although it was never proven that he smuggled liquor, arms, tobacco, and even drugs, Juan is considered the “godfather” of the Gulf Cartel. Along with his two brothers Arturo and Roberto, Juan Nepomuceno Guerra started smuggling alcohol into the United States in the 1930s.Soon after the conclusion of the Prohibition, Don Juan, as he was widely known, dedicated himself to another completely different illicit occupation—drug trafficking. Nepomuceno Guerra also amplified his ascendancy through the incorporation of gambling houses, prostitution, human trafficking, and car theft. His nephew, Juan García Ábrego, worked along his tutelage, and slowly began taking over the drug business in the 1970s.

By the 1980s, García Ábrego began incorporating cocaine into the drug trafficking operations, and started to have the upper hand on what was now considered the Gulf Cartel, the greatest criminal dynasty in the US-Mexico border.By negotiating with the Cali Cartel, García Ábrego was able to secure 50% of the shipment out of Colombia as payment for delivery, instead of the $1,500 USD per kilo they were previously receiving. This renegotiation, however, forced Garcia Ábrego to guarantee the product’s arrival from Colombia to its destination. Instead, he created warehouses along the Mexican’s northern border to preserve hundreds of tons of cocaine; this allowed him to create a new distribution network and increase his political influence. In addition to trafficking drugs, García Ábrego would ship cash to be laundered, in the millions. Around 1994, it was estimated that the Gulf Cartel handled as much as “one-third of all cocaine shipments” into the United States from the Cali Cartel suppliers. During the 1990s, the PGR, the Mexican attorney general’s office, estimated that the Gulf Cartel was “worth over $10 billion US dollars.”

After the apprehension of García Ábrego in 1996, a power vacuum was left and several top members fought for leadership until Osiel Cárdenas Guillén became the undisputed leader. As confrontations with rival groups heated up, Osiel Cárdenas sought and recruited over 30 deserters of the Mexican Army’s elite Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (GAFE) to form part of the cartel’s armed wing. Los Zetas, as they are known, served as the hired private mercenary army of the Gulf Cartel. Nevertheless, after the arrest and extradition of Osiel Cárdenas, internal struggles led to a rupture between the two.

Osiel Cárdenas’ brother, Antonio Cárdenas Guillén, and Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sánchez, a former policeman, filled in the vacuum and became the leaders of the Gulf Cartel. The death of Tony Tormenta, the nickname given to Antonio Cárdenas for his explosive behavior, allowed for Costilla Sánchez to become the co-leader of the Gulf Cartel and head of the Metros, one of the two factions within the Gulf Cartel. Mario Cárdenas Guillén, brother of Osiel and Antonio, is the other leader of Gulf Cartel and head of the Rojos, the other faction within the Gulf Cartel and the parallel version of the Metros.

Presence in the U.S.The Gulf Cartel has important cells operating inside the United States—in Mission, Roma, and Rio Grande City—for example, and their presence is expanding. Thomas A. Shannon, a U.S. diplomat and ambassador, stated that criminal organizations like the Gulf Cartel have “substantially weakened” the institutions in Mexico and Central America, and have generated a surge of violence in the United States. The U.S. National Drug Threat Assessment mentioned that the drug trafficking organizations like the Gulf Cartel tend to be less structured in U.S. than in Mexico, and often rely on street gangs to operate inside the United States. The arrest of several Gulf Cartel lieutenants, along with the drug-related violence and kidnappings, have raised concerns among Texan officials that the drug war in Mexico and the drug cartels are taking hold in Texas. The strong ties the Gulf Cartel has with the prison gangs in the United States have also raised concern to American officials.Reports mention that Mexican drug cartels operate in more than 1,000 cities in the United States.
Samuel Flores Borrego, former Gulf Cartel high-ranking member.The debates over whether the violence in the McAllen metropolitan area should be considered an actual “spillover” from Mexico’s drug war reignited when a sheriff from Hidalgo County, Texas was wounded in a shooting with members of the Gulf Cartel. According to the sheriff, after the death of Flores Borrego, drug dealers traced a stolen load of narcotics from a circle of sellers in Elsa, Texas, and sanctioned a prison gang known as Partido Revolucionario to pretend to buy the drugs from the sellers in order to learn the location of the stash house. The plan did not go as expected, and the hired gang members kidnapped the drug dealers. Consequently, the sheriff received a anonymous call about a alleged kidnapping and tracked down the criminals, who shot and wounded him. After this incident, Todd Staples, a Republican party Commissioner of the Texas Department of Agriculture, set up a website asking the federal government to back state efforts to curb illegal activities along the Mexican border, and especially drug trafficking. With the support of two retired U.S. generals, Staples announced that Mexican drug cartels are seeking to create their own turf in the United States, but especially on the South Texas, which they consider “vulnerable.” Henry Cuellar, a Democratic party member and a U.S. Representative, strongly disagreed with Staples’ assessment that the Texas border is a war zone or an area overrun by the Mexican criminal groups, and claimed that such claims simply create “confusion” and unnecessary alarmist reactions.

On early November 2011, Greg Abbott, the Texas Attorney General, informed media outlets of a letter he sent to President Barack Obama on his failure to protect the border, and warned him that the drug violence from Mexico isincreasingly “spilling over” the border, and urged Obama to “immediately dedicate more manpower to border security.” In the letter, Abbott wrote about the shootings and kidnappings that have been occurring in the Rio Grande Valley, and how these incidents are a “threat to national security.” Lupe Treviño, the sheriff that was wounded, disagreed with Abbott’s statements in a meeting at the White House with several Department of Homeland Security agencies and Janet Napolitano, and claimed that he has implemented a four-step program designed to have all of his deputies undergo a special tactical training designed to apply SWAT-style techniques to tackle any violence along the border. He explicitly said that the “[U.S] border is not in chaos,” and that the claims by the Republicans were “untrue and unfairly painted.”Nevertheless, Carlos Cascos, the current Cameron County judge, questioned Treviño’s comments through Facebook, and mentioned that if South Texas didn’t have drug violence issues (as Treviño claimed in Washington), then Treviño’s travel to Washington D.C. was completely unnecessary, which indicates that the sheriff’s actions contradicted his statements.

Presence in Europe
The Gulf Cartel is believed to have ties with the ‘Ndrangheta, an organized crime group in
Italy that also has ties with Los Zetas. Reports indicated that the Gulf Cartel was using the BlackBerry smartphones to communicate with ‘Ndrangheta, since the texts are “normally difficult to intercept.” In 2009, the Gulf organization concluded that expanding their market opportunities in Europe, combined with the euro strength against the U.S. dollar, justified establishing an extensive network in that continent. The main areas of demand and drug consumption are in Eastern Europe, the successor states of the Soviet Union. In Western Europe, the primarily increase has been in the use of cocaine. Along with the market in the United States, the drug market in Europe is among the most lucrative in the world, where the Mexican drug cartels are believe to have deals with the mafia groups of Europe.

Presence in Africa
The Gulf Cartel and other Mexican drug trafficking groups are active in the northern and western parts of Africa.Although cocaine is not grown in Africa, Mexican organizations, such as the Gulf Cartel, are currently exploiting West Africa’s struggling rule-of-law caused by war, crime and poverty, in order to stage and expand supply routes to the increasingly lucrative European illegal drug market.

In 2003, the arrest of several high-profile cartel leaders, including the heads of the Tijuana Cartel and Gulf Cartel, Benjamín Arellano Félix and Osiel Cárdenas, turned the war on drugs into a trilateral war. While in prison, Cárdenas and Arellano Félix formed an alliance to defend themselves from the Sinaloa and Juarez Cartel, who had also formed an alliance with each other, and were planning to take over the smuggling routes and territories of the Gulf and Tijuana Cartel. After a dispute, however, Osiel Cardenas ordered Benjamin Arellano Felix beaten, and the Gulf-Tijuana alliance ceased to exist at that point. It was reported that after the fallout, Cárdenas ordered Los Zetas to Baja California to wipe out the Tijuana Cartel.

The Sinaloa-Juarez alliance ceased to exist as well due to an unpaid debt in 2007, and now the Sinaloa and Juarez Cartel are at war against each other.Since February 2010, the major cartels have aligned in two factions, one integrated by the Juárez Cartel, Tijuana Cartel, Los Zetas and the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel; the other faction integrated by the Gulf Cartel, Sinaloa Cartel, La Familia Cartel (now extinct) and the Knights Templar Cartel.

Juárez Drug Cartel is now in the Philippines (Filipinas)

Juárez Drug Cartel is now in the Philippines (Filipinas)

Founding location Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico
Years active 1970–present
Territory Mexico:
Chihuahua.
United States:
Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico
Ethnicity Mexican
Criminal activities Drug trafficking, people smuggling, money laundering, extortion, kidnapping, racketeering,
murder, arms trafficking, bribery.
Allies La Linea (armed wing)
Rivals Sinaloa Cartel

The Juárez Cartel (Spanish: Cártel de Juárez), also known as the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes Organization, is a Mexican drug cartel based in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico, across the border from El Paso, Texas.

The cartel is one of several ruthless drug trafficking organization that has been known to decapitate their rivals,mutilate their corpses and dump them in public places to instill fear not only to the general public, but to locallaw enforcement and their rivals, the Sinaloa Cartel. The Juárez Cartel has an armed wing known as La Línea, a Juarez street gang that usually performs the executions.

The Juárez Cartel was the dominant player in the center of the country, controlling a large percentage of the cocaine traffic from Mexico into the United States. The death of Amado Carrillo Fuentes in 1997, however, was the beginning of the decline of the Juárez cartel, as Carrillo relied on ties to Mexico’s top-ranking drug interdiction officer, division general Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo.

In September 2011, the Mexican Federal Police informed that the cartel is now known as “Nuevo Cartel de Juárez” (New Juárez Cartel). It is alleged that the ‘New Juárez Cartel’ is responsible of recent executions in Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua.

History
The cartel was founded in the 1970s by Rafael Aguilar Guajardo and handed down to Amado Carrillo Fuentes in 1993 under the tutelage of his uncle. Amado brought his brothers in and later his son into the business. After Amado died in 1997 following complications from plastic surgery, a brief turf war erupted over the control of the cartel, where Amado’s brother —Vicente Carrillo Fuentes— emerged as leader after defeating the Muñoz Talavera brothers.

Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, who remains in control of the cartel, then formed a partnership with Juan José Esparragoza Moreno, his brother Rodolfo Carrillo Fuentes, his nephew Vicente Carrillo Leyva,Ricardo Garcia Urquiza, and formed an alliance with other drug lords such as Ismael “Mayo” Zambada in Sinaloa and Baja California, the Beltrán Leyva brothers in Monterrey, and Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán in Nayarit, Sinaloa and Tamaulipas.

When Vicente took control of the cartel, the organization was in flux. The death of Amado created a large power vacuum in the Mexican underworld. The Carrillo Fuentes brothers became the most powerful organization during the 1990s while Vicente was able to avoid direct conflict and increase the strength of the Juárez Cartel. The relationship between the Carrillo Fuentes clan and the other members of the organization grew unstable towards the end of the 1990s and into the 2000s. During the 1990s and early 2000s, drug lords from contiguous Mexican states forged an alliance that became known as ‘The Golden Triangle Alliance’ or ‘La Alianza Triángulo de Oro’ because of its three-state area of influence: Chihuahua, south of the U.S. state of Texas, Durango and Sinaloa. However, this alliance was broken[when?] after the Sinaloa Cartel drug lord, Joaquín Guzmán Loera (aka: Shorty), refused to pay to the Juarez Cartel for the right to use some smuggling routes into the U.S.

In 2001 after Joaquín Guzmán Loera ‘El Chapo’ escaped from prison, many Juárez Cartel members defected to Guzmán Loera’s Sinaloa Cartel. In 2004, Vicente’s brother was killed allegedly by order of Guzmán Loera. Carrillo Fuentes retaliated by assassinating Guzmán’s brother in prison. This ignited a turf war between the two cartels, which was more or less put on hold from 2005-2006 because of the Sinaloa Cartel’s war against the Gulf Cartel.

After the organization collapsed, some elements of it were absorbed into the Sinaloa Cartel, an aggressive organization that has gobbled up much of the Juárez Cartel’s former territory. The Juárez Cartel has been able to either corrupt or intimidate high ranking officials in order to obtain information on law enforcement operatives and acquire protection from the police and judicial systems.

The Juárez cartel has been found to operate in 21 Mexican states and its principal bases are Culiacán, Monterrey, Ciudad Juárez, Ojinaga, Mexico City, Guadalajara, Cuernavaca and Cancún. Vicente Carrillo Fuentes remains the leader of the cartel. Members of the cartel were implicated in the serial murder site in Ciudad Juárez that wasdiscovered in 2004 and has been dubbed the House of Death.[15] The Juárez Cartel was featured battling the rival Tijuana Cartel in the 2000 motion picture Traffic. The Australian ABC documentary La Frontera (2010) described social impact of the cartel in the region.

Since 2007, the Juárez Cartel has been locked in a vicious battle with its former partner, the Sinaloa Cartel, for control of Juárez. The fighting between them has left thousands dead in Chihuahua state. The Juárez Cartel relies on two enforcement gangs to exercise control over both sides of the border: La Linea, a group of corrupt (current and former) Chihuahua police officers, is prevalent on the Mexican side, while the Barrio Azteca street gang operates in Mexico and in Texan cities such as El Paso, Dallas and Austin, as well as in New Mexico and Arizona. On July 15, 2010, the Juarez Cartel escalated violence to a new level by using a car bomb to target federal police officers.

In September 2011 banners were displayed, publicing the return of the extinct cartel. They were signed by Cesar “El Gato” Carrillo Leyva, who appears to be the son or a close relative of the late drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes.

Prior to 2012, the Juárez Cartel controlled one of the primary transportation routes for billions of dollars worth of illegal drug shipments annually entering the United States from Mexico. Since then, however, control of these areas has shifted to the Sinaloa Cartel.

Current alliances

Since March 2010, the major cartels have aligned in two factions, one integrated by the Juárez Cartel, Tijuana Cartel, Los Zetas and the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel; the other faction integrated by the Gulf Cartel, Sinaloa Cartel and La Familia Cartel.

Sinaloa Drug Cartel is now in the Philippines (Filipinas) and Worldwide

Sinaloa Drug Cartel is now in the Philippines (Filipinas) and Worldwide

(Pacific Cartel,
Guzmán-Loera Cartel) Founded 1989
Founding location Culiacan, Sinaloa
Years active 1989–present
Territory Mexico:
Sinaloa, Sonora, Nayarit, Chihuahua, Durango, Jalisco, Colima, Chiapas,TamaulipasGuerrero,
Zacatecas, Baja California, Baja California Sur, Oaxaca, Guanajuato, Querétaro, Tlaxcala,
Puebla, Morelos, Mexico City
United States,
Central America
South America
Ethnicity Mexican
Criminal activities Drug trafficking
Allies Gulf Cartel, Knights Templar,
Rivals Los Zetas, Juárez Cartel, Tijuana Cartel

The Sinaloa Cartel (Spanish: Cártel de Sinaloa or CDS) is a drug-trafficking and organized crime organization based in the city of Culiacán, Sinaloa, with operations in the Mexican states of Baja California, Durango, Sonora and Chihuahua. The cartel is also known as the Guzmán-Loera Organization and the Pacific Cartel, the latter due to the coast of Mexico from which it originated. The cartel has also been called the Federation and the Blood Alliance. The ‘Federation’ was partially splintered when the Beltrán-Leyva brothers broke apart from the Sinaloa Cartel.

The United States Intelligence Community considers the Sinaloa Cartel “the most powerful drug trafficking organization in the world” and in 2011, the Los Angeles Times called it as “Mexico’s most powerful organized crime group.”

The Sinaloa Cartel is associated with the label “Golden Triangle”, which refers to the states of Sinaloa, Durango, and Chihuahua. The region is a major producer of Mexican opium and marijuana. According to the U.S. Attorney General, the Sinaloa Cartel is responsible for importing into the United States and distributing nearly 200 tons of cocaine and large amounts of heroin between 1990 and 2008.
Background
Pedro Avilés Pérez was a pioneer drug lord in the Mexican state of Sinaloa in the late 1960s. He is considered to be the first generation of major Mexican drug smugglers of marijuana who marked the birth of large-scale Mexican drug trafficking. He also pioneered the use of aircraft to smuggle drugs to the United States.

Second generation Sinaloan traffickers such as Rafael Caro Quintero, Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo and Avilés Pérez’ nephew Joaquín ‘El Chapo’or “Shorty” Guzmán would claim they learned all they knew about narcotrafficking while serving in the Avilés organization. Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, who eventually founded the Guadalajara Cartel, was arrested in 1989. While incarcerated, he remained one of Mexico’s major traffickers, maintaining his organization via mobile phone until he was transferred to a new maximum security prison in the 1990s. At that point, his old organization broke up into three factions: the Tijuana Cartel led by his nephews, the Arellano Félix brothers Cartel, and the Sinaloa Cartel, run by former lieutenants Héctor Luis Palma Salazar, Adrián Gómez González and Joaquín Guzmán Loera (El Chapo).

Leadership
Sinaloa Cartel hierarchy in early 2008The Sinaloa Cartel used to be known as La Alianza de Sangre (“Blood Alliance”). When Héctor Luis Palma Salazar (a.k.a. El Güero) was arrested on 23 June 1995, by elements of the Mexican Army, his partner Joaquín Guzmán Loera took leadership of the cartel. Guzmán was captured in Guatemala on 9 June 1993, and extradited to Mexico, where he was jailed in a maximum security prison, but on 19 January 2001, Guzmán escaped and resumed his command of the Sinaloa Cartel. Guzmán has two close associates, Ismael Zambada García and Ignacio Coronel Villareal.[20][21] Guzman and Zambada became Mexico’s top drug kingpins in 2003, after the arrest of their rival Osiel Cardenas of the Gulf Cartel. Another close associate, Javier Torres Felix, was arrested and extradited to the U.S. in December 2006;[22] so far, Guzmán and Zambada have evaded operations to capture them.

On 29 July 2010 Ignacio Coronel was killed in a shootout with the Mexican military in Zapopan, Jalisco.

OperationsThe Sinaloa Cartel has a presence in 17 Mexican states, with important centers in Mexico City, Tepic, Toluca, Zacatecas, Guadalajara, and most of the state of Sinaloa. The cartel is primarily involved in the smuggling and distribution of Colombian cocaine, Mexican marijuana, methamphetamine and Mexican and Southeast Asian heroin into the United States. It is believed that a group known as the Herrera Organization would transport multi-ton quantities of cocaine from South America to Guatemala on behalf of the Sinaloa Cartel. From there it is smuggled north to Mexico and later into the U.S. Other shipments of cocaine are believed to originate in Colombia from Cali and Medellín drug-trafficking groups from which the Sinaloa Cartel handle transportation across the U.S.border to distribution cells in Arizona, California, Texas, Chicago and New York.

Prior to his arrest, Vicente Zambada Niebla (“El Vicentillo”), son of Ismael Zambada García (“El Mayo”), played a key role in the Sinaloa Cartel. Vicente Zambada was responsible for coordinating multi-ton cocaine shipments from Central and South American countries, through Mexico, and into the United States for the Sinaloa Cartel. To accomplish this task he used every means available: Boeing 747 cargo aircraft, narco submarines, container ships, go-fast boats, fishing vessels, buses, rail cars, tractor trailers and automobiles. He was arrested by the Mexican Army on 18 March 2009 and extradited on 18 February 2010 to Chicago to face federal charges.

In the late 1980s, the United States Drug Enforcement Administration believed the Sinaloa Cartel was the largest drug trafficking organization operating in Mexico. By the mid-1990s, according to one court opinion, it was believed to be the size of the Medellín Cartel during its prime. The Sinaloa Cartel was believed to be linked to the Juárez Cartel in a strategic alliance following the partnership of their rivals, the Gulf Cartel and TijuanaCartel. Following the discovery of a tunnel system used to smuggle drugs across the Mexican/US border, the group has been associated with such means of trafficking.

By 2005, the Beltrán-Leyva brothers, who were formerly aligned with the Sinaloa Cartel, had come to dominate drug trafficking across the border with Arizona. By 2006, the Sinaloa Cartel had eliminated all competition across the 528 km of Arizona border. The Milenio (Michoacan), Jalisco (Guadalajara), Sonora (Sonora), and Colima (Colima) cartels are now branches of the Sinaloa Cartel.

In January 2008 the cartel allegedly split into a number of warring factions, which is a major cause of the epidemic of drug violence Mexico has seen in the last year.[33] Murders by the cartel often involve beheadings or bodies dissolved in vats of acid and are sometimes filmed and posted on the Internet as a warning to rival gangs.
Atlanta has been used as a major U.S. distribution center and accounting hub, and the presence of the Sinaloa Cartel there has brought ruthless violence to that area.

Arrest and seizuresOn 11 May 2008, Alfonso Gutiérrez Loera, cousin of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera and 5 other drug traffickers were arrested after a shootout with Federal Police officers in Culiacan, Sinaloa. Along with the captured suspects, 16 assault rifles, 3 grenades, 102 magazines and 3,543 ammunition rounds were seized.
On 25 February 2009, the U.S. government announced the arrest of 750 members of the Sinaloa Cartel across the U.S. in Operation Xcellerator. They also announced the seizure of more than $59 million in cash and numerous vehicles, planes, and boats.

In March 2009, the Mexican Government announced the deployment of 1,000 Federal Police officers and 5,000 Mexican Army soldiers to restore order in Ciudad Juárez, which has suffered the highest number of casualties in the country.
On 20 August 2009, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) dismembered a large Mexican drug operation in Chicago, and uncovered a major distribution network operated by the Flores crew led by twin brothers Margarito and Pedro Flores that operated out of that city. The drug operation allegedly brought 1.5 to 2 tons of cocaine every month to Chicago from Mexico and shipped millions of dollars south of the border. The shipments were mostly bought from the Sinaloa Cartel and at times from the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel, and it is assumed that both cartels threatened the Flores crew with violence if they bought from other rival drug organizations.

The Sinaloa cartel’s loss of partners in Mexico does not appear to have affected its ability to smuggle drugs from South America to the USA. On the contrary, based on seizure reports, the Sinaloa cartel appears to be the most active smuggler of cocaine. The reports also demonstrated the cartels possess the ability to establish operations in previously unknown areas, such as Central America and South America, even as far south as Perú, Paraguay and Argentina. It also appears to be most active in diversifying its export markets; rather than relying solely on U.S. drug consumption, it has made an effort to supply distributors of drugs in Latin Americanand European countries.
Current alliancesSince February 2010, the major cartels have aligned in two factions: one integrated by the Juárez Cartel, Tijuana Cartel and Los Zetas; the other faction integrated by the Gulf Cartel and Sinaloa Cartel.In addition to maintaining its anti-Zetas alliance with the Gulf cartel, Sinaloa in 2011 affiliated itself with the Knights Templar in Michoacan, and to counter Los Zetas in Jalisco state, Sinaloa affiliated itself with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

Tijuana Drug Cartel is now in the Philippines (Filipinas)

Tijuana Drug Cartel is now in the Philippines (Filipinas)

Founding location Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico
Years active 1989–present
Territory Mexico:
Baja California, Baja California Sur, Sinaloa, Jalisco.
United States:
California, Nevada, Arizona, Washington
Ethnicity Mexican
Criminal activities Drug trafficking, money laundering, People smuggling, murder, arms trafficking, bribery
Allies Los Zetas, Juárez Cartel,Oaxaca Cartel
Rivals Sinaloa Cartel, Gulf Cartel

The Tijuana Cartel (Spanish: Cártel de Tijuana or Arellano-Félix Organization or Cártel Arellano Félix – CAF) is a Mexican drug cartel based in Tijuana. The cartel was described as “one of the biggest and most violent criminal groups in Mexico”.The Tijuana Cartel was featured battling the rival Juárez Cartel in the 2000 motion picture Traffic.
History
Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, the founder of the Guadalajara Cartel was arrested in 1989. While incarcerated, he remained one of Mexico’s major traffickers, maintaining his organization via mobile phone until he was transferred to a new maximum security prison in the 1990s. At that point, his old organization broke up into two factions: the Tijuana Cartel led by his nephews, the Arellano Félix brothers, and the Sinaloa Cartel, run by former lieutenants Héctor Luis Palma Salazar and Joaquín Guzmán Loera, a.k.a. El Chapo.

Currently, the majority of Mexico’s smuggling routes are controlled by three key cartels: Gulf, Sinaloa and Tijuana —though Tijuana is the least powerful. The Tijuana cartel was further weakened in August 2006 when its chief, Javier Arellano Félix, was arrested by the U.S. Coast Guard on a boat off the coast of Baja California. Mexican army troops also were sent to Tijuana in January 2007 in an operation to restore order to the border city and root out corrupt police officers, who mostly were cooperating with the Tijuana cartel. As a result of these efforts, the Tijuana cartel is unable to project much power outside of its base in Tijuana.Much of the violence that emerged in 2008 in Tijuana was a result of conflicts within the Tijuana cartel; on one side, the faction led by Teodoro García Simental (a.k.a. El Teo) favored kidnappings. The other faction, led by Luis Fernando Sánchez Arellano (a.k.a. El Ingeniero), focused primarily on drug trafficking. The faction led by Sánchez Arellano demanded the reduction of the kidnappings in Tijuana, but his demands were rejected by García Simental, resulting in high levels of violence. Nonetheless, most of the victims in Tijuana were white-collar entrepreneurs, and the kidnappings were bringing “too much heat on organized crime” and disrupting the criminal enterprises and interests of the cartel. The Mexican federal government responded by implementing “Operation Tijuana,” a coordination carried out between the Mexican military and the municipal police forces in the area. To put down the violence, InSight Crime states that a pact was probably created between military officials and members of the Sánchez Arellano faction to eliminate Simental’s group.The U.S. authorities speculated through WikiLeaks in 2009 that Tijuana’s former police boss, Julián Leyzaola, had made agreements with Sánchez Arellano to bring relative peace in Tijuana.With the arrest of El Teo in January 2010, much of his faction was eliminated from the city of Tijuana; some of its remains went off and joined with the Sinaloa Cartel. But much of the efforts done between 2008 and 2010 in Tijuana would not have been possible without the coordination of local police forces and the Mexican military – and possibly with a cartel truce – to put down the violence.

The relative peace in the city of Tijuana in 2010–2012 has raised speculations of a possible agreement between the Tijuana Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel to maintain peace in the area. According to Mexican and U.S. authorities, most of Tijuana is under the dominance of the Sinaloa cartel, while Luis Fernando Sánchez Arellano of the Tijuana cartel remains the “head of that puppet empire.” To be exact, experts told InSight Crime that the peace exists because Joaquín Guzmán Loera wants it that way, and argued that his organization—the Sinaloa Cartel—has spread too thin with its wars with Los Zetas and the Juárez Cartel that opening a third war would be inconvenient. The Tijuana cartel, however, has something their rivals do not have: a long-time family with business and political connections throughout the city. InSight Crime believes that this could explain why the Sinaloa cartel has left Sánchez Arellano as the figurehead, since it might be too costly for El Chapo financially and politically to make a final push. Moreover, the Tijuana cartel charges a toll (“piso”) on the Sinaloa cartel for trafficking drugs in their territory, which serves as an illustration of the Tijuana cartel’s continued hegemony as a local group. Despite the series of high-ranking arrests the cartel suffered throughout 2011–2012, its ability to maintain a highly centralized criminal infrastructure shows how difficult it is to uproot mafias who have long-established their presence in a community.