Payback came for Mexico's "boss of bosses"

By Tu Thanh Ha
The Globe and Mail

The $500,000 monthly bribes, the AK-47s smuggled from Arizona, the hit men with monogrammed flak jackets - none of it turned out to be enough to protect Arturo Beltran Leyva.

One of Mexico's most feared drug lords, Beltran Leyva died in a gun battle after hundreds of elite Mexican troops surrounded him and his entourage in Cuernavaca, a resort town south of Mexico City.

Footage from Mexican TV showed masked navy commandos storming a condo complex on Wednesday night amid shouts and bursts of automatic-rifle fire.

Beltran Leyva, 48, was one of five brothers from the Pacific coast state of Sinaloa. At least three rose to run their own cocaine cartel, surviving turf wars that killed hundreds of victims.

The Mexican gang violence disrupted the flow of drugs along the entire West Coast, its impact felt all the way into the United States and to British Columbia's Lower Mainland.

Beltran Leyva was known by many nicknames, including El Muerte (Death), El Barbas (the Beard) and El Botas Blancas, for the white cowboy boots he was said to prefer. He liked to be called Jefe de Jefes, or Boss of Bosses. The mutilated, beheaded bodies of his victims were frequently found in public places with pieces of paper pinned to them carrying that grim signature.

Using private planes, container ships, even submarines, his cartel smuggled tons of cocaine from Colombia and Panama to the Mexican interior and on to the United States, netting hundreds of millions of dollars in profit.

www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/payback-comes-knocking-for-mexicos-boss-of-bosses/article1404858/