It’s the second time in a very short period time we hear and see a black AH 60 helicopter fly low circles here at the Fidepaz neighborhood in La Paz, BCS. The next day we get the following out of the news sources. We’ll keep the camera handy for the next time we hear the chopper fly near by. Mexican federal police arrested two suspected gang leaders Monday, delivering another big blow to a brutal drug cartel that terrorized the border city of Tijuana for several years. The capture of Raydel Lopez Uriarte and Manuel Garcia Simental apparently wipes out the existing leadership of the cartel headed by Teodoro Garcia Simental, who was captured last month. Teodoro and Manuel Garcia are brothers. Lopez, known as “El Muletas,” and Garcia, known as “El Chiquilin,” were arrested Monday in La Paz.
Mexico’s Public Security Department confirmed the arrests in a brief statement, describing Manual Garcia as the gang’s leader after his brother’s arrest and Lopez as the current second-in-command. It said the arrests were the result of leads starting with the capture of Teodoro Garcia in La Paz on Jan. 12, but offered no further details on the operations. The gang was known for its brutality, having executed, beheaded and mutilated hundreds of rivals in Tijuana, which is across the U.S. border from San Diego. Gang members pinned notes to corpses and dissolved bodies in caustic soda. Tedoro Garcia’s arrest netted 19 mobile phones and two laptop computers. Twelve more cartel suspects were arrested in two raids in late January, including two men and a women who were allegedly about to dissolve a body in a bathtub with chemicals.

Manuel Garcia is the youngest of three brothers. The oldest brother, Marco Antonio, was arrested in a shootout with Mexican authorities in Tijuana in 2004. Teodoro Garcia was once considered a top hit man for Tijuana’s dominant drug gang, the family-run Arellano-Felix cartel. He launched a new group affiliated with the Sinaloa cartel after law enforcement arrested or killed most of the Tijuana cartel leaders in 2008. The splintered organizations have been involved in a violent turf battle in Tijuana, a valuable trafficking corridor to the U.S.

The military announced Monday, independent of above report, that soldiers had seized more than 12 tons of marijuana found beneath a false floor of a tractor trailer. The drugs were found during a routine search at a checkpoint near San Felipe. The drugs headed to the United States to satisfy the demand of the users across the border.

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Fall 2010 coming to La Paz: 43rd SCORE Tecate Baja 1000.