- Montezuma's Revenge - Page 136

upheaval exposed an ominous spectre of moral and political decomposition. The Catholic hierarchy was convinced that the Archbishop had been targeted by narco-traffickers because of his outspoken condemnation of the drug trade, but there was another explanation that was almost as revolting. Cardinal Ocampo may have simply had the bad luck to reach the airport at the same instant as Joaquin Guzman, head of the Sinaloa cartel.  The rival Tijuana gang happened to be lying in wait.^[9]

These antagonists were all former proteges of Angel Felix Gallardo, the imprisoned Godfather of Sinaloa, and when Angel went down he passed control to his blood relatives, the Arrellano Felix brothers of Tijuana. But a splinter group under Guzman and “Guero” Palma set up shop on their own, and according to one Mexican official, the Godfather flipped out. “Felix, like the twisted old man that he is, sends a group of Venezuelan narcos, to infiltrate Guero’s family.” The leader of this squad then ran off with Guero Palma’s wife and two small children, and after persuading the woman to withdraw $7 million of Guero’s money from a bank in San Francisco, he cut off her head and mailed it back to Guero in a hatbox.  Then he took the two children to Venezuela and threw them off a bridge. “After that... the Arellanos know it is kill or be killed.”^[10] The ambush at the airport was apparently just the latest tit-for-tat, and the ill-starred Cardinal happened to pull up in a Mercury Grand Marquis, a favored ride of the drug lords.

No matter which version the public went for, the Mexican government looked ridiculous. The mortification reverberated from Rome to Washington and back again—NAFTA was being debated at the time—and President Salinas dispatched truckloads of police to Tijuana to track down the killers. Warrants were issued for Benjamin and Javier Arrellano Felix who were said to have personally led the hit squad. Police locked up dozens of suspects—including Guzman—and 70 police commanders and prosecutors were arrested or fired. But the Arellano Felix brothers refused to play the part of the most