MEXICAN DRUG LORD'S ARREST HELPS FOX AS HE AWAITS BUSH

MEXICO CITY -- The legend of the Arellano Felix drug gang is written in
blood all over Mexico.

They killed for business and pleasure, often taking lives at random. Their
bullets killed the Roman Catholic cardinal in 1993. They killed eight
infants and children to settle a score in 1998.

But one death among many -- the killing of Pepe Patino -- may have been the
beginning of the end for the gang, Mexico's most violent and powerful drug
cartel.

Twenty-three months ago today, Mr. Patino, the Mexican drug prosecutor most
trusted by his American counterparts, left a San Diego safe house with two
colleagues and crossed the border for a morning meeting in Tijuana.
Thirty-six hours later, their bodies were found in a desert ravine.

"We loved Pepe," said an American drug-enforcement official. "That was the
last straw." American and Mexican officials, vowing revenge, redoubled
their efforts to break the Arellano Felix cartel.

On Saturday morning, in a law-enforcement coup with great potential rewards
for the government of President Vicente Fox, their efforts finally paid
off. Mr. Fox will play host to President Bush next week, and his stature
will be bolstered by the arrest of Benjamin Arellano Felix, 49, the chief
of the gang and the "top priority" of the United States Drug Enforcement
Administration, said its chief, Asa Hutchinson.

Mexican commandos, armed with intelligence from the United States and
bolstered by a new and growing trust between Mexican and American
counternarcotics forces, burst into a house in Puebla, on a street called
Cerrada Escondida, or Hidden Dead-End.

There they found Benjamin Arellano Felix, a sheaf of $100 bills and an
altar with flickering candles in memory of his brother, Ramon. The Mexican
authorities now say they are sure that Ramon died in a shootout on Feb. 10,
though his body has disappeared.

From humble beginnings as two-bit liquor and cigarette smugglers, the
Arellano Felix brothers -- Benjamin was the brain, Ramon the brawn --
shipped tons of Colombian cocaine and Mexican-made methamphetamine every
month, feeding a seemingly insatiable demand in the United States.

They pierced the border with ships, airplanes, trucks and tunnels,
including a 1,200-foot underground railroad. They laundered their cash into
networks of legitimate-looking business and real-estate ventures, American
officials said, while paying millions of dollars in bribes a month to
police officers, prosecutors, judges and politicians.

Mr. Hutchinson called the arrest of Benjamin Arellano Felix "extraordinary
work." He lavished praise on Mr. Fox, whose popularity has been ebbing in
Mexico for want of concrete political and economic accomplishments, but who
now may be able to win political concessions he has been seeking from the
United States.

The arrest may end the annual ritual of "certification," in which the
United States judges Mexican drug-enforcement cooperation. Mr. Bush is
pressing the Republican-controlled House to approve a limited amnesty for
Mexican migrants, and promises of economic development assistance for
Mexico may flow from the White House as well.

For years, American officials publicly despaired about the Arellano Felix
gang's grip on Mexico. A typical assessment came from a former D.E.A.
administrator, Thomas Constantine: "They have become more powerful than the
instruments of government in Mexico."

The gang's power extended far beyond their Tijuana headquarters. In Peru,
the now-deposed security chief Vladimir Montesinos brokered the sale of 18
tons of cocaine to the gang. In Colombia, they bartered guns and money for
drugs from the rebels fighting the government. Gangs loyal to the cartel
moved their drugs on the streets of scores of American cities and towns.

Their influence was reflected in the first official reports of the death of
Pepe Patino: "A tragic traffic accident," said a state police commander.

In fact Mr. Patino was kidnapped, tortured and killed, his skull crushed by
a pneumatic press. He was betrayed by a fellow law-enforcement officer, one
among hundreds in Tijuana taking payoffs from the gang, a senior D.E.A.
official said.

The battle to arrest Benjamin Arellano Felix is over. But in Tijuana today,
officials are bracing for a war among the remnants of the gang and their
rivals in the one of the world's most lucrative businesses.

"This is a terrific political coup for President Fox, but people here
remain fearful of what will come next," said Raul Ramirez Baena, the human
rights prosecutor in the attorney general's office for Baja California. "We
have seen what happens when one kingpin falls. There are bloody battles,
and another one rises in his place.

"The fundamental forces of the drug trade remain intact, particularly the
demand for drugs in the United States, and increasingly in Mexico," he
said. "As long as there is that demand, there will be drug cartels to feed it."

The arrest may give Mexicans "new confidence" in the police and
politicians, Mr. Baena added. "But we should not lose sight of the fact
that Mexican law enforcement agencies are infiltrated with corruption."
That will not change overnight, he said, not even after a night that
brought what Mr. Fox called "a grand triumph" for the forces of law in a
long-lawless land.