by Terrence Poppa

About the author: Terrence Poppa, a former reporter, is the author of Drug Lord: The Life and Death of a Mexican Kingpin, an exposé of how drug trafficking is organized in Mexico.

To read the newspapers, it would seem that Mexico finally is getting its act together in the drug war. On May 4, 2000, dozens of Mexican federal police and soldiers arrested the second in command of the Arellano Felix [drug cartel] after a shootout in Baja California. Mexico’s top prosecutor trumpeted the importance of the arrest in a news conference: “This criminal organization has been put on the run. We are dismantling them,” he said.

The Arellano Felix brothers, the notoriously violent crime lords of Tijuana, indeed may be on the run and ultimately may be arrested...