MEXICAN DRUG LORD'S CAPTURE FOLLOWS ARREST OF EX-GOVERNOR

MEXICO CITY -- One of the biggest drug suspects in Mexico, who
officials say smuggled billions of dollars of cocaine to the United
States under the protection of a Mexican governor, has been arrested,
the attorney general's office said Wednesday.

Alcides Ramon Magana, a former federal police officer in Mexico, was
one of 12 people listed as ``drug kingpins'' by the U.S. government.
He was captured Tuesday night at a telephone booth in the southern
city of Villahermosa, drawing a pistol, then dropping it when he
realized he was surrounded and outgunned, officials said.

Under Protection

Investigators in Mexico and the United States said Magana helped to
move tons of cocaine from Colombia through Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula
to the United States. His base, they said, was in and around the
resort town of Cancun, in the state of Quintana Roo, on Mexico's
Caribbean coast.

They say he operated under the protection of Mario Villanueva, the
governor of Quintana Roo from 1993 to 1999. Villanueva was arrested
20 days ago after two years as a fugitive, and faces
cocaine-conspiracy charges in Mexico and the United States.

An indictment unsealed Wednesday in New York jointly charged Maga=F1a
and Villanueva with conspiring to import 200 tons of cocaine to the
United States between 1994 and 1996 alone. That quantity is worth
roughly $2 billion wholesale. The indictment said Magana arranged to
pay Villanueva half a million dollars for every shipment of cocaine
transported through Quintana Roo.

The indictment said Villanueva met with Magana's associates about six
years ago to discuss the delivery of about 1,100 pounds of cocaine to
an airstrip in Belize, just south of Quintana Roo. The cocaine was
loaded by unnamed co-conspirators -- now, it would seem, government
informants -- ``onto an airplane owned by the office of the governor
of the state of Quintana Roo,'' the indictment said.

Their arrests and indictments in the United States, coming in close
conjunction, suggest that the authorities in Mexico and the United
States have obtained high-level informants to pierce the drug
syndicate once known as the Juarez cartel, one of the biggest in the
world, and that Mexico's law enforcement institutions are becoming
less corruptible.

$500,000 Bribes

The chief of the New York field division of the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration, Felix Jimenez, said in an interview that as governor,
Villanueva was paid a $500,000 bribe for every 500 kilograms of
cocaine, or 1,100 pounds, shipped through his state. If so, he would
have been paid tens of millions of dollars over the years.

``I don't think people know the magnitude of this case,'' Jimenez said.

For at least four years, officials said, Magana had managed to escape
capture despite moving openly and freely in and out of Canc=FAn. All
the while, they said, he ran import and export operations for the
biggest branch of the international cocaine cartel built by Amado
Carrillo Fuentes, known in Mexico as ``Lord of the Skies'' for his
use of aircraft to smuggle cocaine. Carrillo Fuentes is believed to
have died after a botched plastic surgery and liposuction operation
in 1997.