The Tolteca I, a shark-fishing boat, cast off on March 16, 2001. It was early when the vessel departed from Puerto San Carlos, Baja California. Before heading out to sea, the crew needed to pick up a replacement speed governor in Los Cabos, as the original unit had begun to malfunction a few days earlier. Carrying a crew of twelve under the command of Captain José Carlos Gutiérrez, the boat—traveling at 9.8 knots—set out for the Pacific the following day. The fishermen recall making their first cast at nine o’clock that night, catching only six sharks. They spent eight days at sea, and the fishing trip had been a failure up to that point.
But on March 24, the catch became the least of their worries: the port side—the left side of the vessel—began to overheat, and the boat was left adrift. Chief engineers Amador Hernández and Santiago Vázquez attempted repairs but realized the problem was more serious than they had thought: a piston, a component inside the engine, was broken. Consequently, within six days, the vessel lost all electrical power. All internal systems—such as refrigeration, cooking ranges, the fresh water system, and so on—ceased to function. “We were in a dire situation,” the captain would say months later.
That was the situation on March 31, 2001, when, at 8:11 a.m., they received a radio call from another vessel. It was a U.S. ship, the Rodney M. Davis—a vessel that had seen action in the Pacific War and was then being used by the Navy for open-ocean missions. “They asked questions regarding the boat’s documentation […] and the number of crew members,” the captain would recount. Without further explanation, the Americans stated that they were going to board the vessel.
The crew of the Tolteca I didn’t know what to do. Seven U.S. Navy personnel boarded, carrying both handguns and long guns. They gathered everyone at the bow; three stood guard while the other four inspected the vessel. The Mexican sailors had never seen the devices the Americans were using—they were sticking small strips of paper onto their bodies, their clothing, and the boat itself. Seeing the sailors’ anxious expressions, some of the Americans grudgingly explained that the strips were designed to detect traces of narcotics. At nine o’clock that night, having found nothing, Captain José Carlos Gutiérrez grew exasperated; exercising the little authority he had left, he ordered them to leave his ship. Their vessel was on the verge of sinking—at any moment, they could become the next Titanic.
A U.S. officer told him that wasn’t possible; they had already contacted Mexican authorities and voiced their suspicions that the shark-fishing boat was transporting drugs. The authorities had asked them not to release the sailors until a Mexican Coast Guard vessel arrived. “Let my crew rest in their cabins—they aren’t animals!” the captain shouted back.
The Americans escorted them to their cabin and allowed the Tolteca to proceed toward Mexican waters. Off the Mexican coast, they were intercepted by the Mexican Navy frigate *Hermenegildo Galeana*.
Finally, on April 2, they arrived at the Navy docks in Manzanillo, where the crew underwent another inspection. Unlike the Americans, the Mexicans discovered traces of drugs in the cook’s cabin, in the galley, and on the ship’s handrail. To this day, it remains unknown why—despite positive test results—the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) decided not to press criminal charges against the suspects, arguing that the deadline for formally charging them had already expired. At the time, even the Secretariat of the Navy stated that “the attitude of the public prosecutors appears highly suspicious.”
Twelve days later, Mexican authorities discovered the largest seizure of cocaine at sea in Mexico’s history—four tons of pure cocaine—hidden in a false bottom within the ship’s refrigeration units. Years later, two protected witnesses revealed that the drugs had been loaded in international waters from Colombia and that the operation had been orchestrated by the Tijuana Cartel—led by the Arellano Félix brothers—which was the most powerful cartel at the time.
This piece is a collaboration between ARCHIVERO and DOMINGA, reconstructing the story through long-forgotten case files. Cases like this reveal that, in Mexico, the truth is always a work in progress—an unfinished structure.
The Tolteca I’s False Bottom
Captains Rufo García and Héctor Guerrero Yáñez, from the command group of the 14th Pacific Naval Flotilla based in Manzanillo, formed a team to inspect the ship. They began their inspection on Friday, April 5, 2001, starting at the bow and the forward section of the vessel. They moved on to the galleys, the mess hall, and a small storeroom. Finally, they reached the refrigeration section—an area containing ice-filled cold rooms, dry storage, and, in this instance, the freezers used to store sharks caught on the high seas.
They searched every nook and cranny for twelve days until, at 3:00 p.m. on April 11, they began moving the ice piled up in that area. That was when a member of the operation team noticed the screws: the ones in that section of the ship were new and still gleaming. Upon removing them, they discovered a bulkhead—a vertical wall that had been superimposed and secured with steel-reinforced epoxy putty—which shouldn’t have been there.
“Given the conditions under which any vessel operates and the environment in which it functions, it wasn’t normal,” he later recalled. When they removed it, the entire shipment was revealed: 170 huge bundles wrapped in gray plastic. Captain Rufo García took a knife and cut open the plastic on one of the packages. Inside were smaller packages. He held the white powder close to his nose and knew it was cocaine. The Mexican Navy would later admit to a judge that, at the time, they lacked vessels dedicated to interdicting maritime drug trafficking.
When they finally unloaded it, they counted just over four tons of cocaine of impressive purity, according to the case files for criminal proceeding 156/2001. However, by that time, the sailors had already been released by two public prosecutors. They weren’t detained because the deadline for formally charging them had expired. Yet, the Navy General Staff—represented by Captain José María Pellit—stated that the agents’ conduct was highly suspicious. During an April 18, 2001, press conference, he even remarked that the fact that the twelve crew members were released due to insufficient evidence—and were subsequently at large—should serve as a lesson for federal authorities.
On April 25, amidst the scandal surrounding the sailors’ escape, Juan José Retes Razo—a high-ranking official at the Drug Control Planning Center (Cendro)—presented the seizure of the Tolteca I as a triumph of cooperation with the United States: the embassy had provided “notification of the suspicious target,” and the Mexican Navy had done the rest. He also noted that, during those years, Cendro generated only 40% of the reports that resulted in arrests; the other 60% came from the Americans.
Raúl and Juan López: Two protected witnesses from the Tijuana Cartel
Raúl and Juan López were actually named Óscar Eduardo Gómez Angarita and Sergio Rodríguez Tapia. They had been members of the Arellano Félix cartel—the Tijuana Cartel—and had become protected witnesses. From the safety of anonymity, and through successive statements, they brought down the organization’s entire maritime infrastructure.
Their accounts, as read in the case files today, map out the business. They stated that the cocaine originated in Colombia and was handed over on the high seas—in international waters—”off the coast of Oaxaca.” Mexican vessels would meet Colombian ships and transfer the cargo from deck to deck. From there, speedboats headed to the coast of Michoacán; the drugs moved overland to the Tepalcatepec highlands; and planes—taking off from airstrips secured through arrangements with military personnel—flew the shipments to Ensenada. On average, they moved five tons per trip. Operations were always conducted using vessels with fishing permits that served as a cover. Furthermore, it was revealed that the vessels would “break down” on the high seas and require rescue—cargo and all—without any Navy vessel having taken action against them.
Juan López had a specific role within the organization: keeping tabs on the Navy. His job was to use his contacts within the service to obtain the locations of frigates and corvettes and relay that information to the ship captains so they could avoid interception. He charged up to four thousand dollars per voyage. Raúl, meanwhile, handled the money and logistics; he coordinated shipments of 1,800 and 2,200 kilograms, communicated via radio with the captains from an office in Ensenada, and moved nearly a million dollars to Panama and the United States through a currency exchange house.
It was Raúl who completed the picture. In one of his statements—which resurfaced in the sentencing of Manuel Aguirre Galindo (“El Caballo”), another of the cartel’s financial operators—he recounted how the organization led by Ismael Higuera Guerrero (“El Mayel”) planned to set up a fish import business as a front. To that end, they purchased two vessels: one named *Paloma* (based in Mazatlán) and the other, *Tolteca* (based in Ensenada).
A sailor caught eight and a half years later
The sailors from the *Tolteca* were arrested a few weeks after the discovery. Captain José Carlos Gutiérrez fought his conviction to the very end. In December 2009, a collegiate court in Toluca, State of Mexico, denied his petition for constitutional relief (amparo) and upheld his sentence for cocaine trafficking—though not for cartel membership, as that charge was never proven against them. The others faced virtually the exact same outcome. The judges, in part, believed them. Or rather, they couldn’t refute the essential facts. Since the ship had departed from the north and was intercepted in the south—heading in the opposite direction to the typical drug-trafficking route—and since no one could prove where or when the drugs were loaded, the court concluded that the transport of cocaine “took place at least” from the point of interception, “and not from the port of departure, as that detail was less certain.” In other words: we know the ship was carrying four tons, but we don’t know where they came from or where they were going. The fact of transport was proven. Nothing more. Neither who owned the drugs nor for whom they were intended. On paper, the *Tolteca* was a floating mystery: a ship belonging to a phantom fishing company, laden with cocaine, sailing in a direction that defied common sense.
Another crew member of the Tolteca wasn’t part of that legal proceeding. He was arrested on November 17, 2009—eight and a half years after that April in Manzanillo. He was sentenced to eleven years, eleven months, and seven days in prison for transportation [of illicit cargo]. In 2017, a court in Toluca denied his petition for constitutional relief (*amparo*). The sea moves at its own pace, and bureaucracy at its own: the law caught up with this man nearly a decade later for having boarded a broken-down ship back in 2001.
The witnesses who brought down the Arellano Félix cartel met different fates. Juan López—and Sergio Rodríguez Tapia, the man who knew the location of the frigates—are currently imprisoned at the Altiplano penitentiary. In a 2019 case file, he no longer appears as the operative who outmaneuvered the Navy, but rather as an inmate fighting for his correspondence: he challenges a directive restricting his outside mail, complains about the prison food, and requests medical attention for persistent stomach pain.
The Sea Exacts Its Price
The Tolteca was seized in April 2001. A few months earlier, in March 2000, its owner had been captured: Ismael Higuera Guerrero—”El Mayel,” the right-hand man of Benjamín Arellano Félix—was arrested by the Army at his mansion on the Tijuana-Ensenada highway. El Mayel tried to reach for his pistol, but his drunkenness prevented him from doing so. He was locked up in Altiplano, sentenced in Mexico to eighteen and a half years, and extradited to the United States in January 2007. In December of that year, appearing before a San Diego court, the only thing he said before hearing his sentence was: “In the name of Christ, I ask forgiveness for my sins.” He was given forty years.
Higuera and his brother Gilberto—known as “El Gilillo”—cut a deal: they cooperated against their former bosses, the Arellano Félix brothers, and in September 2021, a California judge approved their supervised release. Today, according to a review of their records, they live in the United States. The owner of the boat that exposed the network struck a deal and avoided punishment.
And then there was the clan leader. Five years after the Tolteca incident—in August 2006—Francisco Javier Arellano Félix (“El Tigrillo”), the last of the brothers remaining, was captured by the U.S. Coast Guard aboard his sport-fishing yacht, the *Dock Holiday*. He was seized about fifteen nautical miles off the coast of La Paz, in international waters, while out for a pleasure cruise. He was sentenced to life in prison. Later, like “El Mayel”—and like almost all the others—he cooperated, and his life sentence was reduced to twenty-three years. The bosses negotiated their freedom in foreign courts, while the sailors back in Mexico faced their sentences.
The frigate that set that record, the *Rodney M. Davis*, was decommissioned in 2015; on July 12, 2022, it was sunk by gunfire, serving as a target during a naval exercise off the coast of Hawaii. Today, it rests at the bottom of the Pacific, in the very waters where it once chased down drug-smuggling vessels.
This account is reconstructed based on court records from criminal case 156/2001, heard before the Sixth District Court for Federal Criminal Proceedings in the State of Mexico.
Source: Milenio
Discover more from Cartel Insider
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.