HEAD TRIP

A gruesome discovery yields the inside dope on mexican drug feud

An Upstart Brother Rubbed Many the Wrong Way: He Paid With His Life

Security Duty at the Morgue

GUADALAJARA, Mexico -- On Jan. 31, a garbage picker came upon an
unusual find as he poked through a Dumpster outside a chocolate
factory here: a human head, wrapped in black plastic.

The head, that of a man in his 40s, lay unclaimed in a box in a
freezer. Two weeks later, the police found the rest of the body in the
trunk of a wine-colored Chevrolet Malibu parked by a high school, and
started to put the pieces together.

Relatives soon confirmed that the head and the body both belonged to
Rene Gonzalez Quirarte, whose younger brother Eduardo, police
officials say, was the right-hand man of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the
late overlord of the Juarez cocaine cartel. The tale of how Rene lost
his head, in its own surreal way, shows how the violence of Mexico's
drug underworld continues to bubble up to threaten Mexico's unsteady
march toward democracy and modernization.

A Grisly Inventory

Indeed, the first months of the millennium have been especially
gruesome in Mexico, and the mayhem seems to be picking up as July's
watershed presidential election approaches. In February, Tijuana's
police chief was gunned down as he drove down a highway. Last month,
three federal drug investigators were found dead in a car at the
bottom of a Tijuana ravine. One of the victims, police say, had been
run over repeatedly by a heavy truck. In the past two weeks alone, at
least eight people, including a top law-enforcement official, have
been mowed down in suspected drug-related killings in the state of
Sinaloa.

U.S. officials say that Mexican drug gangs, stronger than ever, are
just flexing their muscles. But Mexican officials say the escalating
violence is a direct consequence of their aggressive campaign against
the country's powerful drug gangs. Indeed, just last week, after a
shootout, police and soldiers captured a leading lieutenant of
Tijuana's violent Arellano Felix gang. "We are not containing drug
traffickers -- we are fighting them," says Attorney General Jorge Madrazo.

Between Mexican seizures of drugs and U.S. seizures of cash, some drug
bosses are having temporary difficulty meeting their payrolls, Mexican
officials say. Some have even had to put some hard assets on the block
at fire-sale prices. "This is the time to buy a mansion in
Guadalajara," jokes Juan Miguel Ponce Edmondson, Mexico's director of
Interpol, the international police agency.

Brother to Brother

Which brings us back to the macabre downfall of Rene Gonzalez Quirarte
at age 46. The following account was pieced together from information
from Mexican and U.S. law-enforcement officials, from police
surveillance and other intelligence, and from interviews with lawyers
for and family of the beheaded.

The story begins, most agree, with Rene's younger brother Eduardo.
Police say Eduardo, 38, has a keener nose for the drug business than
did Rene. U.S. and Mexican law-enforcement officials allege that
Eduardo became a top operator in Mr. Carrillo's gang. Eduardo has been
indicted on drug charges in both Mexico and the U.S., but never tried;
he is a fugitive.

Last summer, police say, Eduardo was partying late into the night in a
Mexico City club when he ran out of cash. According to police
officials, Eduardo went off to an ATM. Two hold-up men, who, as it
turned out, were off-duty cops, mugged him. In the ensuing gunfight,
Eduardo killed one cop-turned-bandit, but was wounded in the head.
People familiar with the events say Eduardo wound up in a local
hospital in a coma, where he lay forgotten for three days as a John
Doe until his Juarez cartel buddies tracked him down and spirited him
out. Since then, law-enforcement authorities have had no idea where
Eduardo is, though police intelligence reports suggest he has been
slowly recuperating.

Addressing the President

Until his brother's setback, Rene, a civil engineer by profession, had
been kept at the margin of the drug business, police officials say.
One exception was in 1997, after Eduardo was identified in court and
in the press as Mr. Carrillo's top lieutenant. Rene took out a
full-page ad in a local newspaper addressed to President Ernesto
Zedillo, in which Rene proclaimed his brother's innocence, defended
the honor of his family and gave the president a cell-phone number if
he wanted to discuss the matter further. (The president never called.)

Last year, with his brother sidelined, Rene saw his chance to make it
big, according to police intelligence and other sources. But Rene, it
seems, demonstrated a poor grasp of drug-business fundamentals.
Although he quickly amassed a fortune, he did so by big-footing it
over other family members also alleged to be involved in the drug
business and over gang members, commandeering dozens of cars,
properties and cash from them, police and others say. It was partly an
effort to show he was every inch the drug capo his brother Eduardo
was.

It didn't go over well. "The business was too much for him," says
Interpol's Mr. Ponce Edmondson.

Police say Rene also had an unfortunate habit of losing large
shipments; several were seized by police, or lost en route under
mysterious circumstances. Soon, he was up to his neck in debt, both to
his own cartel colleagues and to Colombian suppliers, police say. The
general, if temporary, lack of liquidity afflicting the drug business
didn't sweeten the disposition of Rene's creditors. According to
police intelligence, both his Colombian suppliers and his colleagues
in the Juarez cartel separately decided to kill him.

Sensing trouble, police officials say, Rene prepared to flee to
Argentina, where his brother and the late Mr. Carrillo had bought up
thousands of acres and a score of hotels and houses to weather just
such a turn of events. (Mr. Carrillo died after undergoing plastic
surgery in 1997.) Interpol put out an alert for Rene in Argentina.

Rene's wife, Maria Araceli, told police investigators that she saw her
husband for the last time on Nov. 10, when he left for work. According
to transcripts of her statement, Rene called her later that day to say
he wouldn't return home that night because he was too busy at work. A
few days later, Rene called her again and told her not to worry, that
he was traveling on business. He called again on Christmas Eve.

"I asked him if he wouldn't be with us even on such a day, and he said
to please understand that if it was up to him, he would be home, but
that he was very busy," Mrs. Gonzalez Quirarte told police.

Desperate Fund-Raising

Police say they believe that during this time, Mr. Gonzalez Quirarte
had in fact been kidnapped, most probably by angry Colombian
suppliers. Police intelligence shows that he was desperately calling
family and Juarez cartel confederates, trying to raise the $12 million
demanded in exchange for his life. Many he reached out to didn't
believe that he had been kidnapped, but thought that he was merely
trying to hit them up for more money for himself. Others were so mad
at him that they didn't care what happened to him, police intelligence
shows. Still, police say he did manage to raise about $4 million.

By January, he was calling home more frequently. "He said he would
soon be home," Mrs. Gonzalez Quirarte told investigators. On Jan. 29,
two days before the garbage picker made his gruesome discovery, the
telephone calls stopped.

Police say they've concluded that the kidnappers, having gotten all
the money they were going to get, turned Mr. Gonzalez Quirarte over to
his worst enemies -- the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix gang, longtime
rival of the Amado Carrillo cartel. The Arellano Felix gang also has
carried on a bloody personal feud with the Gonzalez Quirartes for
years. In 1995, police say, Arellano Felix gunmen shot up Eduardo's
car, wounding him, as well as his two children. "The kidnappers sold
Rene's head to the Arellanos," says Interpol's Mr. Ponce Edmondson.

A Sense of Things Awry

Stick-thin and haggard, Sylvia Gonzalez Quirarte, Rene's older sister,
says in an interview that she knows nothing about Rene or Eduardo's
alleged drug dealing. She says Rene, who also called her after his
disappearance, never mentioned a word about ransom demands, or even
that he was in any danger, although she sensed that things weren't
right. Sylvia says she has no idea who killed her brother.

Death has not brought closure to Rene Gonzalez Quirarte's story. More
than three months after his murder, authorities haven't yet released
his body to his relatives. The Jalisco state medical examiner has now
twice conducted DNA tests that he says prove the remains are Rene's.
But Mexican crime annals are replete with bizarre stories of body
doubles and supposedly dead criminals who manage to be born again. So
neither the Jalisco state prosecutor's office nor federal authorities
have seen fit to release the body.

Meanwhile, rumors swirl in Guadalajara. One is that police may be
trying to use Rene's remains to lure his brother, Eduardo, from
hiding. Another is that narco-commandos will mount a raid on the
morgue to spring the body. Indeed, Jalisco state police officers have
been posted day and night at the morgue, while the army has sent
military intelligence officers to reconnoiter the scene.

"It's a delicate situation," says Sylvia Gonzalez Quirarte, wiping
away a tear.