Enedina "La Madrina" Arellano Felix de Toledo (born 12 April 1961) was the boss of the Tijuana Cartel from 2008 (with her son Luis Fernando Sanchez Arellano), succeeding Eduardo Arellano Felix.
Biography[]
Enedina Arellano Felix was born in Mazatlan, Sinaloa, Mexico in 1961 to a family of drug traffickers. She was the sister of Benjamin, Carlos, Eduardo, Francisco Javier, Francisco Rafael, and Ramon, and she later became the mother of Tijuana Cartel boss Luis Fernando Sanchez Arellano. She went to private school in Guadalajara, Jalisco and became an accountant, and she worked with her brothers as their financial mastermind during the 1980s. During that time, she became business partners with Sandra Avila Beltran, whom she had previously rejected twice out of concern that dealing with her - an enemy of her brothers' boss Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo - would have negative consequences.
Rise to power[]
Enedina with Sandra Avila Beltran in Colombia, 1987
Instead, the two became very rich, as Arellano Felix bought a company which provided work visas to maids and domestic workers who crossed from Tijuana to California for work; she improved their pay in exchange for their service as drug mules. They moved 200 kilograms of Norte del Valle Cartel cocaine into California within a month, and Avila decided to take Enedina to meet her supplier, Orlando Henao Montoya, in Colombia to request 700 kilograms of cocaine, as business was going well. Henao Montoya informed them that the Cali Cartel was now moving cocaine into Mexico through Juan Nepomuceno Guerra's Gulf Cartel, and he then proposed that he make his dealings with Tijuana exclusive; Avila demanded that he knock 10% off of every supply above 400 kilos in exchange for him becoming their exclusive supplier. He agreed, and Enedina decided that it was time to expand.
Boss of Tijuana[]
Enedina in 1989
However, Enedina had Avila Beltran arrested in 1989 when Avila Beltran rejected Enedina's attempt to bribe her into leaving Tijuana forever, as Enedina had chosen to buy out Avila and do business with her now-independent brothers (the bosses of the new Tijuana Cartel) instead. Following the downfall of Ramon and Benjamin in 2002-2003, Enedina became a leader of the cartel, and, on her brother Eduardo's arrest in 2008, she and her son Luis Fernando became the bosses of the Tijuana organization. She ran her cartel like a business, unlike her violent brothers Benjamin and Ramon, and she forged alliances with other organizations such as the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.