| | |  Americas & Beyond 
Rumors Fly Over Question of 'La Barbie' Extradition to US
 George W. Grayson - Houston Chronicle
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September 10, 2010
| | In this Aug. 31, 2010 file photo, U.S.-born Edgar Valdez Villarreal, alias "the Barbie," center, is presented to the press by federal police in Mexico City. (Associated Press) | |
U.S. officials were hoping that Edgar "La Barbie" Valdéz Villarreal, who was captured on Aug. 30, would be extradited to the United States. After all, he was born in Texas; he is wanted for cocaine smuggling and other crimes in Atlanta, Ga.; and, since taking office, the administration of Mexican President Felipe Calderón has dispatched 291 suspects to El Norte, including Gulf Cartel honcho Osiel Cárdenas Guillén and former Quintana Roo Gov. Mario Villanueva Madrid.
Moreover, the chubby hit man with the cornflower blue eyes has numerous enemies who would not hesitate to kill him in Mexico if they got half a chance.
Yet rumors are rife that the Mexican Public Safety Ministry has guaranteed the 37-year-old drug trafficker and killer immunity from extradition if he collaborates with the authorities in Mexico City.
During two decades of criminality, La Barbie managed to run afoul of powerful members of the underworld. He crossed swords with Los Zetas, then the bodyguards of the Matamoros-based Gulf Cartel. This clash occurred after Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán escaped from the Puente Grande high-security prison on Jan. 19, 2001. At the time, La Barbie was working with El Chapo's Sinaloa Cartel to take control of the Gulf-Zeta-dominated northern portals to the U.S.
He then alienated the legendary El Chapo when he cast his lot with the Beltrán Leyva Organization (BLO), another Sinaloan narcotics clan, which broke with the Sinaloa Cartel.
Within the BLO he cultivated a hatred for Sergio "El Grande" Villarreal Barragán, who was another top executioner for this bloodthirsty cartel. La Barbie and El Grande not only had a mutual animus but they also vied for status in the BLO's hierarchy.
Although functioning as the personal bodyguard of Arturo Beltrán Leyva, La Barbie was nowhere to be seen on Dec. 16, 2009, when Navy Marines killed Arturo, the so-called jefe de los jefes.
His absence demonstrated to Héctor, Arturo's brother and the new lord of the BLO, that La Barbie was a turncoat.
Then La Barbie formed his own gang, "La Compañía," which shipped approximately one ton of cocaine a month northward.
But La Barbie's fledging criminal organization suffered repeated blows. Among the most important setbacks involved the Navy's capture of Gamaliel "El Güero Huetamo" Aguirre Tavira and three accomplices in Acapulco; and the arrest of José Gerardo "El Indio" Álvarez Vázquez, who is believed to transport drugs in Mexico state and Guerrero.
Why the hesitancy in promising to extradite La Barbie? Safely ensconced in a private cell in an American prison, he might sing like a canary, especially about the two men he hates the most: Zeta chief Heriberto "La Lazca" Lazcano and BLO jefe Héctor "El H" Beltrán Leyva.
"They never stop trying to screw me," he told authorities after his incarceration.
The problem for Mexico's law enforcement agencies is that La Barbie may also know a great deal about the Attorney General's Office (PGR), the federal police and the state police. Operación Limpieza in 2008 revealed that the Beltrán Leyvas had penetrated their nation's crime-fighting agencies. They had even recruited Noe Ramírez Mandujano, the head of the PGR's unit for the specialized investigation of crimes.
In light of his closeness to Arturo Beltrán Leyva, La Barbie is likely to know the names of officials who may be on the payroll of one or more cartels.
In addition, La Barbie committed many of his most vicious crimes in the Federal District, whose mayor is Marcelo Ebrard, and in adjoining Mexico state, whose governor is Enrique Peña Nieto.
Both Ebrard and Peña Nieto are likely to run against a Calderón-backed standard-bearer in the 2012 presidential contest. If La Barbie spilled the beans in Mexico, he might embarrass the hugely corrupt Federal District and Mexico state law-enforcement agencies and, in the process, sully the images of the politically ambitious heads of these jurisdictions.
Politics may be a key reason that Mexico is hesitating to dispatch La Barbie to the United States.
Grayson, a professor of government at the College of William & Mary, has written Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State. His e-mail address is gwgray(at)wm.edu.
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