The Tijuana Cartel's Bloody Rise and Fall

The Underworld Podcast

True Crime, Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.6 • 871 Ratings

🗓️ 11 November 2025

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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

Transcript

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0:56.1	dot co.com.U.k. slash glassbox. Shopify.com.com.com. November 1992 92 in the resort town of Porto
1:08.8	Vayarta, Mexico. And two of the Ariano Felix brothers are in the club
1:13.4	partying it up. They're part of an extremely powerful narco family, seven brothers, four sisters,
1:20.7	who sit at the top of the recently formed Tijuana cartel. After the fall of the first national
1:26.7	Mexican cartel a few years earlier, the Guadalajara
1:29.4	cartel, Mexico is divided into separate narco kingdoms, and the Ariano Felix brothers have claimed
1:35.9	the city of Tijuana as their own. And they're doing quite well, because an estimated 40% of the
1:42.4	powder coming into the states is going through their network.
1:46.0	You see, they're the ones who got the prime border territory after the Guadalajara system they once worked under fell apart.
1:53.0	Tijuana is right over the border from San Diego, and it's a massive transit hub, the busiest border crossing into the U.S.,
	...

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