BLOODLINES LONG FOR MEXICAN DRUG RING

When police killed one brother and captured another, it looked like the end
of the line for the Arellano Felix drug gang.

But the Arellano Felixes are a big family.

Mexican and U.S. authorities expect Francisco Javier Arellano Felix - one
of six siblings still at large - to take control of Mexico's largest
drug-smuggling syndicate.

"It's like pruning a tree," said Jesus Blancornelas, a Tijuana magazine
editor who has survived Arellano Felix-engineered assassination attempts.
"You cut off a branch if one Arellano dies or another is captured, but the
family will always grow new branches."

The gang uses hundreds of couriers to carry cocaine and marijuana across
Tijuana's crowded border to distributors in California and as far east as
the Midwestern United States.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration estimates the group supplies a
third of all the cocaine on America's streets, either by smuggling it
across the border directly or by charging other traffickers fees to use
Tijuana's drug routes.

The group also is believed to have carried out more than 300 murders on
both sides of the border.

In February, police officers in the resort city of Mazatlan gunned down the
man behind many of those murders, feared enforcer Ramon Arellano Felix. A
month later federal authorities captured his brother Benjamin, the gang's
operations chief.

Despite those blows, authorities say the family's control of Tijuana and
its lucrative drug corridors hasn't wavered.

"It's constant," said Mexico's top anti-drug prosecutor, Mario Estuardo
Bermudez. "Control of Tijuana means they are a very dangerous group."

A college graduate known as "El Tigrillo," or "Little Tiger," Francisco
Javier is believed to have played a role in Ramon's ruthless enforcement
wing of the gang. Authorities say that he is more even- tempered than Ramon
and less of a risk-taker than Benjamin, and that he should run a less
ruthless drug-smuggling ship with the help of his brother Eduardo, a
physician, and his sister Enedina, an accountant.

"There is a new level of tolerance now that Ramon Arellano is gone,"
Bermudez said. "Ramon was a man who was characterized by his violent
actions and who often personally led attacks on other organizations. El
Tigrillo is different."

Blancornelas said the gang is now "less violent and more intelligent."

"They aren't out to settle personal scores first and make money later like
they were under Ramon," he said.