The Tijuana Cartel's Bloody Rise and Fall

When the godfather Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo got busted in '89, he divvied up his empire from a prison cell and handed the coveted Tijuana plaza to the Arellano Felix Brothers, who transformed it into one of the most violent drug organizations in Mexico. At their peak, the brothers, led by Benjamin, were pumping an estimated 40 percent of America's cocaine through their border kingdom recruiting both rich kids from elite Tijuana families and gangbangers from the states as sicarios. But when psychotic enforcer Ramón tried to take out El Chapo at the Guadalajara airport in '93, his gunmen accidentally murdered a Catholic cardinal instead, bringing the full heat of Mexican and U.S. law enforcement down on the family and signaling the beginning of the end for the infamous Tijuana cartel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices