TIJUANA To Mexico's organized crime unit, Armando Villarreal Heredia led the killers of a criminal cell of the Arellano Félix cartel.
That's what the Attorney General's Office will try to prove after a federal judge granted Thursday a request to hold Villareal for 40 days in Mexico City, where he was taken after his arrest.
Villareal, nicknamed "El Gordo" (Fat one), who also uses the name Jesús Heredia González, was arrested on July 10 in Hermosillo, Sonora.
Three days before, Baja California authorities announced the arrest in Tijuana of José Manuel Alarcón, allegedly one of the enforcers of the cell led by Teodoro "El Teo" García Simental, believed to lead the local efforts of the Sinaloa cartel.
The state Attorney General's Office has accused Alarcón of killing 22 people, among them two officers of its own agency and three Tijuana police officers.
Authorities believe that Villareal and Alarcón were enemies and each commanded groups of gunmen for the Arellano Félix cartel and a cell for García Simental, respectively, who fought a turf war in 2008 to 2010 for control of the transportation and sale of drugs in Tijuana.
Officially, that three-year war left a tally in Tijuana of 2,327 violent deaths.
For its part, the state Attorney General's Office is investigating Villareal in nine homicides, including the killings of two federal investigators, and three kidnappings.
The Mexican and U.S. governments consider Villareal a key leader among the new generation of the Arellano Félix cartel, currently headed by Fernando Sánchez Arellano, known as "El Ingeniero," still at large.
Authorities believe that drug trafficking in the city is no longer controlled by a single cartel, rather by smaller cells or groups who are trying to operate independently under the threat of old members of the Arellano Félix or Simental García organizations who are still trying to exert power.
This year, the state Attorney General's office has reported more than 250 homicides in Tijuana where the motive is believed to be street-level drug dealing.
Omar.millan@sandiegored.com
