Juarez Cartel

The Juárez Cartel is a powerful Mexican drug trafficking cartel based in Juárez, Mexico. The cartel has most recently transformed itself into the Golden Triangle Alliance, or La Alianza Triángulo de Oro, because of its leaders in three Mexican border states: Sinaloa, Chihuahua and Durango. Until 2004 the organization was headed by Juan José Esparragoza Moreno, also known as El Azul. In late 2004 control of the cartel was assumed by Ricardo Garcia Urquiza until his arrest in Mexico City during November 2005.[1]

At its height, the Juárez cartel was assumed to be responsible for some 50 percent of illegal drugs that pass through Mexico to the United States. It rose in the past decade to become one of the hemisphere's - if not the world's - most powerful crime organizations. Some US sources estimate the cartel's income reached as high as $200 million a week under former boss Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who mysteriously died in July 1997.[2]

The Juárez Cartel was featured battling the rival Tijuana Cartel in the 2001 motion picture Traffic.