OFFICIALS: MEXICO'S POWERFUL DRUG GANG ON ITS KNEES

TIJUANA, Mexico -- Benjamin Arellano Felix was allegedly the CEO who
oversaw the sticky logistics of sending tons of drugs into the United
States by truck, boat, plane -- even through a tunnel under the border. His
brother, Ramon, police say, was the cold-blooded killer whose ruthlessness
ensured the scores of people who handled their billions of dollars of
cocaine and marijuana never dared to cross them. Together they built one of
Latin America's most powerful smuggling businesses, according to
drug-fighting officials.

But with Benjamin now jailed and Ramon apparently dead, U.S. and Mexican
authorities believe that a drug gang once compared to a Fortune 500
corporation is falling apart.

"Basically this is it for them," said Donald Thornhill Jr. of the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration in San Diego. Benjamin and Ramon Arellano Felix
"were really the glue that kept the organization together."

The brothers have eight other siblings, some allegedly involved in the
ring. One is in jail. But Thornhill, who has been tracking them since the
1980s, said he doesn't see anyone who can succeed the duo.

"Benjamin was the business side of the organization while Ramon was a
stone-cold killer who surrounded himself with like-minded people.

That was what made them very much successful at what they did," Thornhill
said. "I don't see people among their ranks that could possibly keep up
with them. I think the remaining brothers don't have the juice to keep the
organization running."

Nobody expects the gang's fall to halt trafficking: Several drug kingpins
at least as powerful as the Arellano Felixes have fallen since 1985 and
drugs keep flowing across the border. Many fear the brothers' absence could
set off a bloody battle for control over operations in Tijuana, considered
the most lucrative drug corridor in the country because of its proximity to
California.

"I'm afraid there is going to be a war," said Tijuana journalist Jesus
Blancornelas, who survived an assassination attempt by the gang.

After eluding authorities for nearly a decade, Benjamin was captured by
soldiers Saturday at a house in the central Mexican city of Puebla. U.S.
officials said they will push for his extradition, though Mexican law
virtually ensures that he would go through years of trials here first.

Benjamin also told Mexican officials that a man killed Feb. 10 in a
shootout with police in Mazatlan was Ramon. U.S. and Mexican officials have
been awaiting DNA tests results to confirm the death because the body was
taken from a funeral home before officials could examine it.

Originally from Sinaloa state, the brothers moved to Tijuana in the 1980s
and turned their family's small smuggling operation into a fearsome empire
that spread to at least 15 Mexican states and across the border.

Officials say Ramon enlisted the sons of some of Tijuana's wealthiest
families as killers while Benjamin worked on buying off officials. Their
methods were so effective that neither felt the need to change his
appearance through plastic surgery despite being among the most-wanted men
on both sides of the border. The gang raised the savagery of Mexico's
drug-related violence to a new level, even slaughtering children, whom
other drug lords had tended to spare when they made a hit.

Thornhill said the ferocity of the killings shocked even veteran law
enforcement officers.

In 1996, Ramon's gunmen shot a state prosecutor more than 100 times and
then drove their van over his body dozens of times. "All drug organizations
tend to be violent but not like these people, who are absolutely every bit
cold-blooded," Thornhill said. "The fact that they are out of circulation
is to everybody's benefit." Blancornelas said anyone who moves drugs
through the Baja California peninsula has had to negotiate with the
brothers. Two weeks ago, Mexican police arrested a couple who were sending
drugs to the United States for the gang through a tunnel built 20-feet
under the U.S. border.

Equipped with lights, steel rails and an electric cart, the tunnel started
behind a fireplace in the couple's bedroom and ended inside a California
home. A U.S. Customs official said he expects minor smugglers to flood the
border with drugs while control over the territory is in flux. Walking by
one of the wanted posters for the brothers which still dot the world's
busiest border crossing, Rigoberto Puentes, 52, said although the drug
trade will continue, he's happy the brothers are gone. "There were so many
killings, so much corruption, so many drugs," the Tijuana mechanic said.
"It affected us all. My kids have drug problems.

I used drugs for 12 years.

So I think it's great they finally took them down. At least we can get a
break from all this if only for a little while."