HE'S CALLED 'LA BARBIE' BUT RUTHLESS CARTEL ENFORCER NOT TO BE TOYED WITH

Officials Say Suave Texan A Key Player In Mexican Drug
War

MEXICO CITY - The Texan called "La Barbie" is a shadowy legend,
described as a smart, bilingual, 32-year-old ladies' man with a
fondness for Versace clothes, luxury automobiles and hobnobbing at
top-drawer nightclubs.

Edgar Valdez Villareal His name is Edgar Valdez Villareal, and he's a
lieutenant in the Sinaloa drug cartel, Mexican and U.S. authorities
say, a ruthless point man in the group's battle with the Gulf cartel
for supremacy in Mexico's illicit-drug trade.

They say he has been a key player in the bloody turf war being waged
in Nuevo Laredo for control of the Interstate 35 smuggling route into
the U.S., and the person most responsible for pushing the battle into
central and southern Mexico, including Guerrero state and its tourist
mecca, Acapulco. He was indicted in 2003 by the U.S. attorney's office
for the Eastern District of Louisiana on two charges of conspiracy
with intent to distribute marijuana. The indictment was sought by the
Drug Enforcement Administration, according to DEA Special Agent Steve
Robertson in Washington. "La Barbie, Edgar Valdez Villarreal, is a
fugitive. ... He is a significant trafficker. And due to the fact he's
a lieutenant in one of the major kingpin organizations in Mexico, he's
a big guy," Mr. Robertson said. "We definitely want to get our hands
on him."

Mexican Attorney General Daniel Cabeza de Vaca also stressed Mr.
Valdez's importance in the narco hierarchy.

"In Guerrero there are two groups confronting each other: the Beltran group,
whose main operator is Edgar Valdez Villareal - La Barbie - and the other
group is the Zetas, which is of the Gulf cartel," he said at a news
conference in January. "These are the two groups that are fighting for
turf."

Mr. Cabeza de Vaca said that Mr. Valdez was involved in the recent
surge of drug violence in Acapulco.

"Certainly the problem began when he was found in Acapulco effectively
working with the Beltran Leyvas," Mr. Cabeza de Vaca said in an
interview with The Dallas Morning News.

Born in Texas Edgar Valdez Villareal was born Aug. 11, 1973, in
Laredo. Because of his sandy hair, fair skin and blue eyes, many call
him La Barbie, a reference to the iconic American doll. He's also
known as El Guero, "the white guy," and "El Comandante," "the commander."

By any name, he is seen as one of the key people behind a culture of
wanton violence and rising body counts.

He is the leader of the Sinaloa hit squad responsible for wiping out
cartel enemies, orchestrating kidnappings and recruiting operatives,
including police officers, military personnel and federal agents,
according to the attorney general's office.

That office has linked Mr. Valdez to the making of a narco-video made
public by The News in December. It shows the interrogation of four
bruised and bloodied men who identify themselves as Zetas, enforcers
for the Gulf cartel. Toward the end of the video, date-stamped May 16,
2005, one of the men is shot in the head.

The video - and its release - may be part of Mr. Valdez's strategy
against the Gulf cartel, said Deputy Attorney General Jose Luis
Santiago Vasconcelos, head of the organized-crime office.

Authorities said Mr. Valdez also may have been motivated to torture
the men by the slaying in Nuevo Laredo of his brother and Sinaloa
colleague, Armando Valdez Villareal, apparently by Zetas. The video
probably was made in Acapulco, authorities said.

Mr. Valdez has not surfaced recently to address the accusations
against him. In September 2004, he bought a full-page ad in the
Monterrey newspaper El Norte and in an open letter declared that he
was merely a businessman. He asked President Vicente Fox for justice
and said he had left Nuevo Laredo because police there kept pressing
him for bribes.

"I ask you to intervene to resolve the insecurity, extortion and
terror that exists in the state of Tamaulipas, and especially in the
city of Nuevo Laredo," the letter said.

But authorities describe a career path that took Mr. Valdez from
Laredo, where he grew up, to becoming a cartel hit man south of the
border and, in five years, field commander of what appears to be Mr.
Guzman's campaign for nationwide supremacy.

Such a path is not all that surprising, Mr. Cabeza de Vaca said. "Some
are born on one side of the border, and some are born on the other,"
he told The News. "The man was born there [in Texas], but it is
evident that he started working here, and maybe, probably, the
relationships he had here were what carried him to those levels of
operation." Suave, shrewd Laredo acquaintances, who spoke on condition
of anonymity for fear of reprisal, remember Mr. Valdez as quiet and
intense, a thinker. "He's serious, has a commanding presence that
demands respect," said a businessman who has known him for more than
15 years. The businessman, a Laredo bar owner, recalled the time Mr.
Valdez once came in to stop a brawl started by a sibling. "When La
Barbie walked in, everyone was quiet," said the owner. "Order was restored."

"This guy is tall, guero, with blue eyes," said another businessman.
"He's a stud with a gun. He's one of those brooding guys who's like a
magnet for all these women who think they can change him."

Mr. Valdez married the 18-year-old daughter of a friend, according to
a Texas law enforcement official who also spoke on condition of
anonymity. While living in Laredo, Mr. Valdez made frequent forays
across the Rio Grande, the acquaintances said.

In Mexican federal court files obtained by The News, a woman testified
about meeting a "group of boys" in a bar called La Habana in
Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, in 2000. Her testimony formed part of a case
authorities were building against 10 people, including eight members
of the Federal Investigation Agency, or AFI by its Spanish initials,
suspected of helping Mr. Valdez in his efforts to traffic drugs and
eliminate cartel rivals in Acapulco. "After we met them I realized
they were 'pochos,' meaning that [I] believe they are American
citizens because they live in the border cities near Mexico, and speak
a faltering English and Spanish, they dress well, with clothes of the
brand versache [sic], fine, casual and have good cars, so they could
enter the better establishments in Monterrey, and also they used
armor-plated cars equipped with gases or rockets," she testified. "...
I realized that they always were accompanied by an individual they
called 'El Negro' [the black guy] who was ex-military. This person
didn't go with them into the joints they went to, the function of this
person was to be attentive to have the car running, open the door for
Edgar Valdez." The protege Mr. Valdez became known to authorities on
both sides of the border when he joined the Sinaloa cartel in Nuevo
Laredo as a protege of Arturo Beltran Leyva, known as "El Barbas" -
"the bearded one," according to court files. Under the tutelage of Mr.
Beltran, he became a bill collector for Mr. Guzman, the man known as
"El Chapo," to whom he was presented in 2001 by his patron,
authorities alleged.

Mr. Valdez soon organized a security detail for El Chapo, a group
known as "Los Negros" (the Blacks) that was the Sinaloa cartel's
answer to the Zetas - enforcers who serve Osiel Cardenas, kingpin of
the Gulf cartel, court documents say.

In the time he has been working with the Sinaloa cartel, Mr. Valdez,
along with Los Negros, has operated in the Mexican states of Sinaloa,
Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Veracruz, Jalisco and Guerrero, according to
court documents. Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon border Texas.

In August 2003, a Sinaloa operative testified that he knew "a person
of name Edgar Valdez alias el Barbie or El Tigrillo [the little
tiger], who lives in Nuevo Laredo and this person is entrusted with
the buying of drugs in Colombia and of distributing them inside the
United States of North America [sic]," according to court documents.

In 2003, U.S. and Mexican authorities issued a warrant for Mr.
Valdez's arrest on cocaine smuggling charges. Al Ortiz, acting section
chief of the FBI's Americas criminal enterprise section, described Mr.
Valdez as a ruthless trafficker of the Sinaloa cartel whose main rival
from the Gulf cartel is the equally tough Humberto Lazcano Lazcano. He
is "considered the lead operative and chief of hitmen for Arturo
Beltran Leyva in Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas [and] was recruited in
2001," according to a document prepared by the National Center for
Planning, Analysis and Information to Combat Crime. The center is an
intelligence-gathering unit of the Mexico attorney general's office.
The document is dated Feb. 3, 2005. The same document alleges that in
2003, Mr. Valdez helped bribe a top AFI official, Domingo Gonzalez
Diaz, to provide protection for the Sinaloa cartel and an affiliated
group, the Juarez cartel and its reputed leader, Vicente Carrillo Fuentes.

"Two witnesses stated that in March 2003 they traveled to the Federal
District [Mexico City] with the hit man Edgar Valdes [sic] Villareal
'La Barbie' to deliver to Gonzalez the amount of 1.5 million dollars,
money that would serve to make Gonzalez act as an intermediary to
dismiss AFI's commander in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, and put in his
place someone who would protect the criminal organization of the
Carrillo Fuentes as well as expel the gang of hit men known as Zetas,"
the document alleges. Domingo Gonzalez Diaz abandoned his AFI job and
disappeared in 2004. He still is being sought by the attorney
general's office. Trouble in paradise Mexican law enforcement
officials recently have zeroed in on Mr. Valdez's alleged activities
in Acapulco, the normally carefree beach resort that has been the
scene of recent lethal confrontations between the cartels. A shootout
last month in the city's downtown left four suspected narcos dead and
four police officers injured.

Mr. Cabeza de Vaca, the attorney general, said that in Nuevo Laredo
the dominant organized-crime group had long been the Gulf cartel and
that the Sinaloa cartel was trying to displace it.

"In Acapulco it is exactly the opposite," he said. "It was a place in
which the Beltrans of the Sinaloa cartel had a strong presence, and
there's an attempt by the Gulf cartel's armed group, which is the
Zetas, to control the territory."

Authorities do not know where Mr. Valdez currently lives or where he
is. He still has relatives in the Laredo area, where the fighting
continues for control of the Interstate 35 corridor, officials say.
"This fight is as much for Interstate 35 as it is for his own back
yard," a senior U.S. law enforcement official said. "This is his home
and here are his investments, his friends, his family."

Mexican and U.S. authorities say Interstate 35 is one of the main
arteries traffickers use to move drugs into the U.S. from Latin
America. The artery, which extends 1,500 miles from the Rio Grande
through Dallas and up to Minnesota, has become traffickers' preferred
route in a drug business valued at $40 billion, experts say.

"I think in a perfect world he'd like to come back here and retire
someday. But that's not going to happen any day soon, if it at all,"
the U.S. official said.

Indeed, Mexican authorities have other plans for Mr. Valdez and other
Sinaloa cartel figures, including the reputed kingpin, Mr. Guzman.
"They're a distinct type of criminal whom we have been trying to
find," said Mr. Cabeza de Vaca. "We have important operations to
pursue and arrest them all. "We are making investigations, sharing
information with the United States and trying to find him."

Staff writer Michelle Mittelstadt in Washington contributed to this
report.