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.
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