3 Killings May Signal Battle for Tijuana Drug Corridor

The bodies of three men who were executed gangland-style were found Tuesday morning in Tijuana, raising fears that a bloody war for control over the drug-smuggling corridor on the U.S.-Mexico border may be underway.

Although the three victims, whose ages were believed to be between 30 and 35, had not been identified as of late Tuesday, the slayings bore similarities with past drug killings.

The victims had apparently been tortured. At least one was found with a plastic bag over his head, and the men’s arms and legs were bound with gray duct tape. One of the dead had two bullet wounds, and the other two had apparently been beaten to death, Tijuana law enforcement sources said.

A nervous Tijuana was rattled by gunfire Tuesday afternoon in the middle-class Los Olivos neighborhood, scene of past violent exchanges and killings. The gunfire was near the exclusive Hipodromo and Chapultepec areas, where the Arellano Felix cartel recruited many of its young assassins--called “narco juniors”--from the Tijuana elite.

Police released few details, saying only that two people were injured by gunfire, one critically.

The bodies of the executed men were found in different parts of Tijuana between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. Tuesday.

Coincidentally, city officials from Medellin, Colombia, arrived in Tijuana on Tuesday to propose that the two cities racked by drug violence become sister cities. Tijuana Mayor Jesus Gonzalez Reyes said he was receptive to the idea, saying Medellin had overcome the stigma of being a “cartel” town and that its experience “will help us because Tijuana and its people do not deserve to be thought of as such.”

Authorities have been anticipating a battle for control of the border drug corridor since the family-dominated Arellano Felix cartel of Tijuana was hit with a one-two punch: the arrest of Benjamin Arellano Felix on March 9 and the death of his brother Ramon on Feb. 10.

The battle could pit the remaining members of the clan against the forces of Ismael Zambada, a violent Sinaloa state smuggler long aligned with the Juarez cartel who has been trying to make inroads in Baja California state in recent years.

Baja California authorities suspect Zambada of ordering the slaying of Tijuana Police Chief Alfredo de la Torre in 2000 and of Tijuana attorney Joaquin Baez Lugo, who reportedly had represented Arellano Felix interests, in November 1999.

Baez’s law associate Rodolfo Carrillo Barragan was gunned down in his condominium parking garage March 11, two days after Benjamin Arellano Felix’s arrest in Puebla in central Mexico.

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