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Years earlier Amado Carrillo Fuentes had transformed the Juárez cartel from a group of bandits into a clan of well-groomed businessmen who favored Brioni and Versace suits. Appearance above all, even when you’re wearing handcuffs: Let the media crowding outside your villa immortalize you in a white Abercrombie tracksuit with “NY” on your chest, as Amado’s son Vicente Carrillo Leyva did in 2009. Amado had grown up in close contact with the cartels. His uncle was Ernesto “Don Neto” Fonseca Carrillo, boss of the Guadalajara organization and El Padrino’s partner. Violence was Amado’s daily bread, but money can sometimes prove more effective than violence, and the respect that Amado had managed to earn for himself over time was in part the fruit of the big tips he lavished on his men, the sports cars he gave to powerful people, his generous donations to build churches, like the one it is said he had built in his native village of Guamuchilito.

Amado had inherited the cartel that Rafael Aguilar Guajardo had founded in the 1970s. A rival of the Tijuana and Gulf cartels from the outset, this cartel had taken advantage of its strategic position across the U.S. border from El Paso, Texas, to build a powerful base, which needed to be defended. Amado was just the man. Prudent, patient, clever, he moved his pawns without getting his own hands dirty. He made shrewd investments, including an entire fleet of Boeing 727s, which he used to transport cocaine from Colombia to Mexico. But Boeings weren’t suitable to cover the last leg—from Mexico to the United States. He needed smaller, more agile means, such as Cessnas; the air taxi company Taxceno (Taxi Aéreo del Centro Norte) used them and Amado became a major shareholder of it. People started calling him El Señor de los Cielos, the Lord of the Skies.

The coke war was fought with money. The most sizable
expenditure—$5 million a month—was for kickbacks to officials, police, and the military all over Mexico, for stipends and gifts. Another sizable budget item was for entertainment, such as the so-called Palace of the Thousand and One Nights, which Amado bought in Hermosillo, in the state of Sonora. Situated provocatively a few hundred yards from the governor’s residence, the Palace of the Thousand and One Nights is a garish place whose onion domes recall Russian Orthodox churches and the Kremlin, and whose white walls, now hidden under thick graffiti, recall the palaces of the maharaja.

No one knew Amado’s whereabouts. He moved around constantly among the many residences he had scattered throughout the country. Eccentricity and ostentation, compensated for with shrewd financial decisions and an obsession with security, made him the iconic drug lord. Handsome and fierce, intelligent and cocky, courageous and tenderhearted. A hero for his time. He established ties with some Guadalajara bosses, got control of airports and clandestine runways, and bribed José de Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo, head of the National Institute to Combat Drugs, who with his men became Amado’s armed wing, using the institute’s rich network of information to wipe out Amado’s enemies and competitors, in exchange for enormous kickbacks. He even planned on striking an agreement with the federal government: Mexico would get 50 percent of his property; his collaboration in reducing violence among cartels; and his guarantee that drugs would not infest Mexico but only the United States and Europe. In exchange Amado would get peace and tranquillity to do his business.

But it wasn’t to be. On November 2, 1997, along the Autopista del Sol—the Sun Highway—that runs from Mexico City to Acapulco, the police made a gruesome discovery: three cadavers in barrels filled with cement, bodies of three renowned plastic surgeons who had disappeared a few weeks earlier. Freed from the cement, their bodies bore witness to the tortures they endured before being killed: gouged-out eyes and broken bones. They’d been beaten so badly that one of the bodies had to be tied together to keep it from falling to pieces. Two of them had died
of asphyxia, strangled with cables, the third of a bullet to the back of his neck. Their crime? Having the courage to operate on Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who, like many drug lords, wanted a total makeover. Four months earlier, on July 4, 1997, the Lord of the Skies had died in room 407 of the Santa Monica Hospital in Mexico City, after undergoing plastic surgery and liposuction under a false name. An overdose of Dormicum, a powerful sedative used during postop, had proved fatal. His heart, already weakened by cocaine, had given out. It’s still unclear whether anyone was at fault, whether his death was accidental or intentional. Such a bizarre end for a sovereign generates legends of immortality as well as endless, malicious gossip. Some say his own vanity killed him, but it’s more likely that he wanted to alter his appearance in order to escape the police and his enemies.

Amado’s death created a huge power vacuum. His brother Vicente took over the cartel, but relations between Carrillo Fuentes and rival groups became increasingly precarious. In 2001, after El Chapo Guzmán escaped from prison, many Juárez cartel members decided to follow him and to join the Sinaloa cartel. On April 9, 2010, the Associated Press announced that the Sinaloa cartel had finally won the battle against the Juárez men. But the media epitaph did not prevent the Juárez cartel from continuing to wage war. A war that made Ciudad Juárez the most dangerous and violent city in the world, with nearly two thousand homicides a year.

In July 2010, on a street in the center of the city, a car bomb set off by a cell phone killed a federal police agent, a doctor, and a musician who lived in the area. These last two had heard gunshots and gone out into the street in order to help a man in a police uniform lying wounded on the ground. But as the narcos revealed after their arrest, he was merely the bait to attract the attention of the feds. A message spray-painted in black was found on a wall near the attack: “What happened on Calle 16 septiembre will happen to all the authorities who continue to back El Chapo. Cordially, the Juárez cartel. And anyway, we have other car bombs.”

“
Carne asada!
Grilled meat!” It’s a cry you hear every day as you wander the crowded streets of Ciudad Juárez. If it weren’t for the agitated tone and the adrenaline in their voices it would sound like two Mexicans organizing a Sunday cookout. Instead, it’s the code narcos use to say that someone’s been killed. The killings continue undisturbed. Mutilated, decapitated bodies. Bodies exposed in public for the sole purpose of guaranteeing the status quo of fear. Bodies like that of the lawyer Fernando Reyes, suffocated with a plastic bag, wacked several times in the head with a shovel, thrown in a ditch, and covered first with quicklime and then with dirt.

In order to try to stop the Juárez cartel, the Mexican authorities offered a reward of 30 million pesos, and the U.S. government up to $5 million, for information leading to the arrest of Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, known as the Viceroy but actually the real king of the organization since his brother Amado’s death. On October 9, 2014, Vicente was captured in Torreón, Coahuila, during a federal police operation that concluded without any shots fired. When stopped at a checkpoint he showed a fake driver’s license registered to a Jorge Sánchez Mejía, but the federal forces, who had been after him for several months, were not fooled: He was the chief of one of the most violent drug cartels Mexico had ever known. Along with the Viceroy, they arrested his ever-present bodyguard, a figure without whom the narcos never leave their hideouts.

Vicente’s arrest could lead to a loss of power of the Juárez cartel, as the Mexican authorities hope, but just as happened in the past, it could also create a power vacuum to be filled with violence and terror.

“Carne asada! Carne asada!”

 • • • 

El Chapo didn’t believe in showing his rage. He saw no point. He punished those who deserved it with death, but even when applying this definitive sentence, he didn’t allow any emotion to shine through. El Chapo was rational in his bloodthirstiness. Alfredo Beltrán Leyva, the
Beltrán Leyva brother known as El Mochomo—as the red desert ants that eat anything and survive everything are called in Sinaloa—was the complete opposite: instinctive, hot-tempered, aggressive. He loved the good life and wanted a steady stream of people coming to see him, especially women. El Mochomo was the Beltrán Leyva brother entrusted with the most public role. But El Chapo realized that Alfredo was dangerous. Being showy doesn’t fit well with being a fugitive; you’re too easy a target. The state of alert increased significantly when El Chapo found out that the Beltrán Leyvas were negotiating with Los Zetas. A scission was inevitable. Which meant blood.

Alfredo Beltrán Leyva was arrested in Culiacán in January 2008, together with three members of his security corps. He was found in possession of almost a million dollars, luxury watches, and a small arsenal, including frag grenades. A tough blow for Sinaloa, because Alfredo supervised drug trafficking on a large scale, handled the organization’s money laundering, and bribed the police. He was the cartel’s foreign minister. But as the Beltrán Leyva brothers saw it, El Chapo was behind Alfredo’s arrest. They had to respond in kind, and it was easy to decide where to strike.

Édgar Guzmán López was only twenty-two , but he had a brilliant career ahead of him because he was El Chapo’s son. In May 2008, he went for a stroll with some friends in a shopping center in Culiacán. To check out the shop windows and the
chicas
. A peaceful day. On their way back to their car, which they left in the parking lot, they saw fifteen men approaching, in uniforms and blue bulletproof vests. The men moved in unison, like soldiers, and the boys were petrified, immobile. Before the men opened fire, the boys managed to read what was on their bulletproof vests: FEDA, which stood for Fuerzas Especiales de Arturo, or Arturo’s Special Forces. These were the men of Arturo Beltrán Leyva, the brother known as El Barbas. To prepare for the break with the Sinaloa cartel he’d created a unit with the same structure and discipline as the army and special police corps. They used heavy
weapons, including the lethal P90 personal defense weapon, and were charged with protecting the bosses and eliminating hit men of rival cartels. Now, in 2008, baptized in the blood of El Chapo’s son, the Beltrán Leyva cartel was born. The brothers handled cocaine, marijuana, and heroin, thanks in part to their complete control of the principal airports in the states of México, Guerrero, Quintana Roo, and Nuevo León. Other activities included human trafficking; prostitution; money laundering, through hotels, restaurants, and resorts; extortion; abduction; and arms trafficking. From South to North America, they managed corridors that moved tons of drugs. It was a new, small cartel, but one determined to carve out a sizable slice of power. But the Mexican authorities were eager to put the family out of business right away, so when Arturo threw a party in the winter of 2009, they didn’t let the opportunity pass.

For El Barbas, a Christmas party is not a Christmas party if there’s no entertainment. Money was no object, so he invited artists such as Los Cadetes de Linares and Ramón Ayala, winner of two Grammy Awards and two Latin Grammys with over a hundred albums, to play at his house in one of the most exclusive neighborhoods of Cuernavaca. Plus twenty or so call girls. The Mexican navy’s special forces surrounded the building. The shoot-out left several bodies on the ground, but not Arturo’s; he managed to escape. The Mexican navy was on his trail, though, and they found him less than a week later, in another residential neighborhood. Determined not to let Arturo escape again, the navy decided to do things big: two hundred marines, two helicopters, and two small army tanks. The battle lasted nearly two hours, and when it was finished, Arturo and four of his men were dead. The photo of his corpse made the rounds on the Internet: His pants lowered to show his underwear and his T-shirt rolled up to show his naked chest covered in lucky charms and bills, dollars as well as pesos. One last humiliation for the enemy. The army denied it had touched his body, but there was a strong suspicion that the humiliation techniques so dear
to new cartels such as Los Zetas and Beltrán Leyvas themselves were contaminating the very men paid to eliminate them. The army and the narcos were becoming more and more alike.

Vengeance came immediately after Arturo Beltrán Leyva’s death: Four relatives of one of the soldiers who lost his life in the operation were killed. Meanwhile, a decapitated head was left in front of Arturo’s tomb, in the Jardines del Humaya cemetery in Culiacán. Arturo’s brother Carlos Beltrán Leyva was arrested about ten days later by the Mexican federal police in Culiacán: He had shown a fake driver’s license when the police stopped him. Some people held that it was El Chapo again who provided the police with information that led to Carlos’s arrest.

After Arturo’s death, a civil war over leadership broke out within the cartel: On one side were lieutenants Edgar “La Barbie” Valdez Villarreal and Gerardo “El Indio” Álvarez Vázquez; on the other, Héctor Beltrán Leyva, El H, and his right-hand man, Sergio Villarreal Barragán, a former Mexican federal police agent, known as El Grande or King Kong, because he was over six feet five. All but Héctor were arrested in 2010; El H took the reins of what remained of the cartel. The United States had put a price on his head of $5 million, and the Mexican government was offering 30 million pesos. Héctor was a sort of financial genius; after years of anonymity he succeeded in controlling the group, thanks to his business talent and his ability to maintain good relations with his new allies, Los Zetas.

But the race was soon over for him too. On October 1, 2014, Héctor was arrested in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato. He was enjoying dinner at a seafood restaurant together with the financial operator of his cartel when the special forces of the Mexican army swooped in. Though he initially passed himself off as a refined businessman and artwork trader, he and his tablemate were carrying pistols exclusively issued to the military. But confirming his proverbial elegance, he let them handcuff him without resisting.

Héctor was the last of the Beltrán Leyva brothers still at large. After
his arrest the Mexican authorities believe the cartel will lose most of its influence on the country. But thrones do not remain empty for long in the narco-trafficking world. The real question is: Who will be the new leader?