Alleged Pioneer of Mexico-U.S. Cocaine Trade Found Slain

An alleged godfather of the Mexican drug trade was executed and his body abandoned near the Texas border, prompting fears of a blood bath between rival Mexican drug groups, officials said Friday.

U.S. officials called Rafael Munoz Talavera a pioneer of the Mexico-to-U.S. cocaine trade. They had earlier predicted that he would replace the country’s No. 1 trafficker, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who died in July 1997 after plastic surgery to hide his identity. Authorities discovered Munoz Talavera’s body at dawn Thursday, slumped in the back seat of a 1985 Jeep Cherokee that was parked in a middle-class neighborhood of Ciudad Juarez, which borders Texas. He had been shot four times in the head and heart, and his hands were bound, said a spokesman for the state prosecutor’s office in Chihuahua. The body was identified by family members Thursday night, said the spokesman, who declined to be identified.

“I don’t think there’s been a larger drug trafficker documented--at least in terms of the actual seizure of cocaine, or the actual documented deliveries that he accomplished,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. Glenn MacTaggart in San Antonio. MacTaggart unsuccessfully sought Munoz Talavera’s extradition to the United States to stand trial on drug charges. He said the Mexican had imported 200 tons of cocaine in 1988-89, including a 21-ton shipment, the biggest U.S. drug seizure ever, discovered in a warehouse in Sylmar.

Munoz Talavera, 45, was convicted of drug charges and served about 2 1/2 years but was released on appeal in 1996. Since Carrillo Fuentes’ death, U.S. and Mexican officials say, Munoz Talavera had been trying to take over the Ciudad Juarez-based drug organization, one of Mexico’s most important.

More than 65 people have been killed in Ciudad Juarez in infighting among drug gangs since Carrillo Fuentes’ death.

However, Munoz Talavera was the first major figure among them. Phil Jordan, former head of the El Paso Intelligence Center, a U.S. government anti-narcotics facility, predicted that the slaying would prompt more violence in drug centers like Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana.

“Any time you eliminate a top-echelon drug trafficker [like] Munoz Talavera, who was a major-league player in the takeover of Amado Carrillo Fuentes’ empire, you’re going to have more bloodshed,” he said.

Officials in Chihuahua, where the killing occurred, had made no arrests as of Friday. Both the Mexican attorney general’s office and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration declined comment.

Munoz Talavera was based in Ciudad Juarez but apparently knew his life was in danger there. Last December, he sent a letter to Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo complaining of “a group of criminals in the city that wants to kidnap members of my family.” The criminals want “to pressure me because they think I’m competing in their dirty business,” he said in the letter, which he also ran as an advertisement in local newspapers.

U.S. officials say Munoz Talavera pioneered the use of Mexico as a transshipment point for Colombian cocaine bound for the United States. Currently, more than half the drug reaching U.S. users is believed to cross Mexico.

In his letter, however, Munoz Talavera described himself as a “simple, hard-working man” with no connection to drugs.