Most Powerful

• #1 Benjamin Arellano Félix
  MexicoTijuana CriminalCriminal Enterprise Cold War and Globalization Illicit Networks Power: 67
  Benjamin Arellano Félix (born 1952) is a Mexican cartel leader associated with the Arellano Félix Organization, also known as the Tijuana Cartel. He emerged as a central figure in the cartel’s effort to control the principal smuggling corridor between Tijuana and Southern California, a corridor whose value comes from proximity to major U.S. consumer markets and from the infrastructure that allows large volumes of drugs to move with speed and concealment. His career is closely tied to the late twentieth‑century expansion of cocaine and multi‑drug trafficking, and to the way cartel power is built from route control, bribery systems, selective violence, and strategic relationships with corruptible officials.Arellano Félix’s influence is often described in operational terms rather than in public leadership rituals. The organization depended on a layered structure of transport coordinators, stash‑house management, gunmen, accountants, and intermediaries who could pay protection, recruit couriers, and punish betrayal. When state pressure intensified, the same structure that generated profit also generated vulnerability: a dependence on secrecy, on money movement that leaves traces, and on internal loyalty under stress. Arellano Félix was arrested in Mexico in 2002 and later extradited to the United States, where he pleaded guilty to racketeering and money‑laundering conspiracy and received a lengthy federal sentence. citeturn0search0turn0search4