O.C. GANGS: NEW RECRUITS FOR MEXICAN DRUGLORDS?

Authorities are worried about that prospect since last week's indictments
of 10 San Diego men in an ambush that killed 7.

It was a crime that shocked Mexico and reverberated into Southern
California: A brutal, gangland-style ambush that targeted a drug dealer but
instead took the lives of the highest-ranking Roman Catholic prelate in
Mexico and six others.

U.S. authorities last week said they believe that the contract assassins
were members of a San Diego gang. They fear that gangs in Orange County and
Los Angeles also might be recruited by the drug cartel that controls the
border.

Almost five years after the May 1993 slaying of Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas
Ocampo at the Guadalajara, Mexico, airport, U.S. officials unsealed an
indictment Tuesday charging 10 gang members, all with prior convictions, as
the hit men.

Border law-enforcement officials said it was the first time they could
recall that the Tijuana cartel headed by the notorious Arellano brothers
had hired U.S. street thugs. The American gang members allegedly acted as
bodyguards, as security on drug shipments, as collectors of overdue debts -
and as killers of Mexican lawmen and drug rivals.

Officials on both sides of the border say the powerful Tijuana cartel that
recruited the San Diego gang members now might try to entice Orange County
and Los Angeles gangs to do their contract work.

U.S. officials say the cardinal died in a fusillade of AK-47 rifle fire
intended for Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman, a rival drug dealer who was fighting
the Arellano Felix drug cartel for control of the lucrative Pacific Coast
drug smuggling corridors.

The indicted gang members, facing 10 years to life if convicted, are
charged with drug smuggling and dealing, attempted murder of several U.S.
citizens - and of being the hit men who apparently mistook the elderly
cardinal dressed in clerical garb for Guzman. They can't be charged in the
United States with the cardinal's death.

"Since the U.S. authorities have hit the (San Diego) gang with such a heavy
blow, I believe it is logical and a very real possibility that the cartel
will approach other gangs, and Orange County could be strategic for them,"
said Victor Clark Alfaro, head of the Tijuana-based Binationall Center
for Human Rights and an unofficial historian of Tijuana's illicit drug
industry.

For at least the past decade, the Arellano Felix brothers have ruthlessly
controlled the flow of illegal drugs over the Mexican border into
California, officials say. Since 1996, the cartel has been accused of or
linked to the deaths of eight high-ranking police commanders and
prosecutors assigned to Tijuana anti-drug operations.

U.S. law-enforcement officials say that 70 percent of the multi-billion
dollar drug traffic enters the United States from Mexico. Tijuana is the
leading port of entry to the so-called "O.C. corridor," linking the border
to distribution points in Southern California and the rest of the country.

The Mexican government has raised a $5 million bounty for the abrothers'
arrest, and the U.S. State Department is offering $2 million for their
capture. The FBI lists Ramon Arellano Felix, 33, the brother who allegedly
led the San Diego hit team to Guadalajara, on its list of 10 most wanted
fugitives.

"Orange County is ideal because it is linked by proximity to the border, it
has had an established and organized gang population for years, and lies at
the heart of the corridor used to distribute the drugs that are smuggled
into your country" by the Arellanos, said Clark Alfaro.

Orange County law-enforcement officials say they have no concrete evidence
that a connection has been established.

"We don't know that that is a fact, because we have not been contacted by
any law-enforcemnet agency about possible connections' between Orange
County gangs and the cartel, said Orange County sheriff's Lt. Hector
Rivera. "Are Orange County gangs sophisticated enough to establish
connections like that with Mexican gangs? We are just not now in a position
to say."

Federal agents who specialize in violent border gangs are reluctant to
comment because of ongoing operations, but they acknowledge Clark Alfaro's
scenario is credible.

"It is hard to say where the cartle will turn for replacements, but (hiring
U.S. gang members) worked for them for years," says San Diego FBI
supervisor Ed Walker, who coordinates the Bureau's violent-crime task force
gang group.

Contracting the San Diego members of the "30th St." Logan Heights gang for
bodyguard and enforcement was a smart move by the cartel, says Clark
Alfaro.

"When you look at it, (the Arellano organization) is a transnational
corporation working in a very competitive market and an unforgiving
business," he said. "I believe (the Arellanos) assumed that by using U.S.
gang members for their nefarious activities on this side of the border,
they could evade authorities.

"To apprehend groups operating on both sides of the border would require
that authorities on both sides work together in a co-operative venture.
That would have been unheard of" because of U.S. authorities' distrust of
their Mexican counterparts, he said. "The cartel was counting on that to
allow them to transact their business."

Beginning in the early 90s, the cartel increasingly turned to the Logan
gang after on of the gang's senior members abegan associating with the
Arellanos.

Federal prosecutors say the powerful drug barons became indebted to David
Barron-Corona, a mostly small-time marijuana, PCP and cocaine dealer in
Logan Heights, a hardscrabble neighborhood framed by florid freeway murals,
warehouses and docks south of downtown.

The FBI's Walker said Barron got into the cartel's good graces in October
1992, when he saved them from an ambush in a Puerto Vallarta discoteque set
up by Joaquin Guzman.

Guzman first became a problem for the Arellanos because of his refusal to
pay the brothers a "tax" on the drugs he moved through their territory.

Mexocan police say that a sophisticated, nearly mile-long, air-conditioned
and lighted tunnel from Tijuana to a warehouse in Otay Mesa was constructed
by Guzman in the early 1990s to sneak his drug loads under the noses of the
Arellanos and police. The tunnel was uncovered by U.S. anti-drug
authorities with help from informants that Mexican police say were provided
by the Arellanos.

Within days of the disco shoot out, the Arellanos began planning their revenge.

Seven months later, they got their chance.

Guzman was to fly out of Guadalajara on the afternoon of May 24, 1993.
Ramon Arellano-Felix, Barron and seven other Logan gang members, armed with
AK-47s, were to ambush Guzman's entourage as it pulled into the airport's
VIP parking lot.

"The kill zone was set up. Unfortunately, the cardinal's white Ford Grand
Marquis pulled up just as the assassins were about to open fire," Walker
said, citing accounts of witnesses and gunmen interviewed by the FBI.

At the scene, authorities described a well-planned attack in which at least
five carloads of weapons, including machine guns, were placed in strategic
areas of the parking lot.

Shortly after the airport shoot out, the brothers went to Mexico City and
in a secret meeting with the Vatican's ambassador to Mexico declared their
innocence.

In the aftermath, Mexican military and elite law enforcement teams raided
Arellano facilities, mostly in Tijuana. Official reports say they
confiscated a chain of drugstores, 118 houses, five real estate firms, a
half dozen other businesses, heavy weapons, cell telephones and other
electronic devices, about a dozen vehicles and nearly $4 million in cash.

"The lure of illicit enrichment, drugs, discos and fast women is very
difficult to combat," Clark Alfaro said.