Тихуанский картель: история и современное состояние

Criminal organization based in Tijuana, Mexico

The Tijuana Cartel (Spanish: Cártel de Tijuana) or Arellano Félix Cartel (Spanish: Cártel Arellano Félix, CAF) is a Mexican drug cartel based in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico. Founded by the Arellano Félix family, the cartel once was described as "one of the biggest and most violent criminal groups in Mexico". However, since the 2006 Sinaloa Cartel incursion in Baja California and the fall of the Arellano Félix brothers, the Tijuana Cartel has been reduced to a few cells. In 2016, the organization became known as Cartel Tijuana Nueva Generación (New Generation Tijuana Cartel) and began to align itself under the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, along with Beltrán Leyva Organization (BLO) to create an anti Sinaloa alliance, in which the Jalisco New Generation Cartel heads. This alliance has since dwindled as the Tijuana, Jalisco New Generation, and Sinaloa cartels all now battle each other for trafficking influence in the city of Tijuana and the region of Baja California.

Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, the founder of the Guadalajara Cartel, was arrested in 1989. While incarcerated, he remained one of Mexico's major traffickers, maintaining his organization via mobile phone until he was transferred to a new maximum security prison in the 1990s. At that point, his old organization broke up into three factions: the Tijuana Cartel led by his nephews, the Arellano Félix brothers, the Juarez Cartel, led by Amado Carrillo Fuentes, and the Sinaloa Cartel, run by former lieutenants Héctor Luis Palma Salazar and Joaquín Guzmán Loera, a. k. a. El Chapo. Currently, the majority of Mexico's smuggling routes are controlled by three key cartels: Gulf, Sinaloa and Tijuana—though Tijuana is the least powerful. The Tijuana cartel was further weakened in August 2006 when its chief, Javier Arellano Félix, was arrested by the U. S. Coast Guard on a boat off the coast of Baja California. Mexican army troops were sent to Tijuana in January 2007 in an operation to restore order to the border city and root out corrupt police officers, who mostly were cooperating with the Tijuana cartel. As a result of these efforts, the Tijuana cartel is unable to project much power outside of its base in Tijuana. Much of the violence that emerged in 2008 in Tijuana was a result of conflicts within the Tijuana cartel: on one side, the faction led by Teodoro García Simental (a. k. a. El Teo) favored kidnappings. The other faction, led by Luis Fernando Sánchez Arellano (a. k. a. El Ingeniero), focused primarily on drug trafficking. The faction led by Sánchez Arellano demanded the reduction of the kidnappings in Tijuana, but his demands were rejected by García Simental, resulting in high levels of violence. The Mexican federal government responded by implementing "Operation Tijuana", a coordination carried out between the Mexican military and the municipal police forces in the area. To put down the violence, InSight Crime states that a pact was probably created between military officials and members of the Sánchez Arellano faction to eliminate Simental's group. With the arrest of El Teo in January 2010, much of his faction was eliminated from the city of Tijuana; some of its remains went off and joined with the Sinaloa Cartel. But much of the efforts done between 2008 and 2010 in Tijuana would not have been possible without the coordination of local police forces and the Mexican military – and possibly with a cartel truce – to put down the violence. According to Mexican and U. S. authorities, most of Tijuana is under the dominance of the Sinaloa cartel, while Luis Fernando Sánchez Arellano of the Tijuana cartel remains the "head of that puppet empire". Despite the series of high ranking arrests the cartel suffered throughout 2011–2012, its ability to maintain a highly centralized criminal infrastructure shows how difficult it is to uproot cartels who have long established their presence in a community. In June 2020, it was reported that the Sinaloa Cartel controlled much of the Tijuana Cartel's former territory and that an alliance with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which also resulted in the cartel being rebranded as Tijuana Cartel New Generation (Cartel de Tijuana Nueva Generación), but this alliance disintegrated very quickly when the Jalisco Cartel showed it intended to take the place of the Sinaloa cartel rather than aid in helping the Tijuana Cartel reestablish dominance and independence. As a result, the Tijuana Cartel reversed their branding back to Cartel Arellano Félix and arranged the assassination of Cabo 33 the Jalisco Cartel's head of operations in Baja California, after effectively removing the Jalisco Cartel's influence in Baja California the Tijuana Cartel has further engaged the Sinaloa Cartel for control of Tijuana plaza and its surrounding areas. With the imminent release of El Ingeniero and the current consolidations with in Baja California as well as an alliance with Rafa Caro Quintero and the Sonora plaza its speculated the Tijuana Cartel may again rise and surpass both the Gulf and Juarez Cartel's who along with the Sinaloa Cartel are suffering greatly from internal strife. In November 2020 it was reported emissaries from the Los Chapitos faction of the Sinaloa Cartel had been seen in Tijuana attempting to form an alliance with the now resurgent Tijuana Cartel. Following the defection of El Mayo's head of operations in Tijuana and the reintegration of its Cabo San Lucas branch it is evident that the Arellano Félix Organization has retaken control of its Tijuana hotbed from outside influences as well as other important hubs in Baja California leaving Mexicali and Rosarito as the last known Sinaloa Cartel outposts in Baja California though how long they will remain under Sinaloan control is debatable with the rapid defection of Sinaloa Cartel operators in traditionally Arellano Félix territories.

The Tijuana cartel is present in at least 15 Mexican states, with important areas of operation in Tijuana, Mexicali, Tecate, and Ensenada in Baja California, in parts of Sinaloa, and in Zacatecas. After the death in 1997 of the Juárez Cartel's Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the Tijuana Cartel attempted to gain a foothold in Sonora. On December 12, 2011, Tijuana Police Chief Alberto Capella Ibarra announced that captured cartel lieutenant Francisco Sillas Rocha had confessed that the Tijuana Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel had formed a truce and that the Tijuana Cartel was seeking to merge with the Sinaloa Cartel. After Benjamin Arellano Felix pleaded guilty to racketeering and conspiracy to launder money on January 4, 2012, it was accepted that the Tijuana Cartel had greatly lost influence. It was later reduced to 23 1/2 years in 2015 and he will be released soon. Benjamin Arellano Felix, who was arrested on March 9, 2002, by the Mexican Army in the state of Puebla, was extradited to the United States on April 29, 2011, to face charges of trafficking cocaine into California. He later pleaded guilty to racketeering and conspiracy to launder money, and was sentenced to 25 years in jail on April 2, 2012. Once that is served, he will be sent back to Mexico to finish another 22 years for a conviction there. On August 31, 2012, Eduardo Arellano Felix was extradited to the United States to face trial for racketeering, money laundering and narcotics trafficking charges in the Southern District of California. He pleaded guilty to money laundering and is serving 15 years. On July 13, 2023, a nearly 20 year investigation against dozens of Tijuana Cartel defendants concluded when former cartel hitman Juan Francisco Sillas Rocha pled guilty to three charges, including conspiracy to commit murder, in a U. S. federal court in Fargo, North Dakota.

Los Palillos ("The Toothpicks") was a group operating within Tijuana Cartel, who worked as the armed wing of the Tijuana Cartel in the United States, for the control of the criminal activities in California and Nevada. They were a criminal organization that operated from San Diego to Los Angeles and other California and Nevada cities. To avoid constant confrontations with the police and police interest reducing his wealth, Ramon Arellano Felix began bribing almost any official possible. Felix received money from members of the criminal group and local criminals to "kick up" money from their illegal activities such as kidnapping and contract killing take half of the money and give it to the Tijuana Cartel to launder it. That was way the Arellano Felix brothers operation included other clans in Tijuana, San Diego and Los Angeles.

The Tijuana Cartel is believed to have ties with FARC, a Colombia guerrilla group that also has ties with other Mexican drug cartels. In the 1990s, the Tijuana Cartel decided to expand their market opportunities in Colombia, exchanging drugs for weapons. In the 1990s they formed an alliance with the Cali Cartel and Norte del Valle Cartel for the cocaine business.

The Arellano Felix Organization, also known as "The Tijuana Cartel," located in Tijuana, Mexico attested great influence and impact on the United States in its prime era of operation. So strongly, that Mexican authority proves not enough to control the infiltration of the American people. Its decentralized location in Mexico and proximity to the United States border allowed the Arellano Felix brothers easy routes to control the illicit drug markets in Tijuana and southern California. The infamous drug cartel led by the Arellano Felix family spent years transporting, importing, and distributing cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine, and heroin into the United States. In its most successful era of drug distribution, the Arellano Felix Organization was solely responsible for a significant portion of the cocaine distribution to the United States. The impacts on the United States population were deemed so significant that Members of Congress proposed further changes to migrant policies in border cities like Tijuana. The Congressional Research Service identified the Tijuana Cartel as one of the four dominant drug trafficking organizations in 2020.

There are several Mexican folk (norteño) ballads (narco corridos) that narrate the Tijuana cartel exploits. A fictional "Tijuana cartel" headed by a character named Obregon was featured battling a fictional "Juarez cartel" in the 2000 motion picture Traffic. The cartel was portrayed as the Avendanos brothers in Univision's Netflix series El Chapo. The cartel and its origins have also been portrayed in the Netflix series Narcos: Mexico.