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Guadalajara airport that day, summoned by the head of the Federal Judicial Police, Rodolfo León, none of them took part in the shoot-out. According to this account, the cardinal’s death happened just as Carrillo Fuentes told his people it did.
    Eighteen years later, Benjamín Arellano Félix would provide a different account of the cardinal’s death. In testimony given on April 15, 2011, to the PGR at the Altiplano prison in Almoloya de Juárez, the former leader of the Tijuana Cartel made the following declaration: “Rodolfo León Aragón told me he and a federal police commando unit killed Cardinal Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo because he was supplying weapons to the guerrillas.”
    On May 25, 1993, Benjamín Arellano Félix received a disturbing phone call in Tijuana. The previous day, an old family friend had died: Cardinal Posadas. The Salinas government was blaming him and his brothers for the crime, along with their former partner, Guzmán. Their mother was furious and refusing to speak to them, a very serious matter for any self-respecting drug baron, who regards his mother as sacred.
    The phone call was from the federal police chief, León Aragón, El Chino. He told Benjamín they needed to meet urgently at Tijuana airport, and the drug trafficker promptly agreed.
    The Arellano Félix family had a long-standing relationship with León. Carrillo Fuentes introduced him to Ramón Arellano Félix at one of his houses in Mexico City in 1991, just a few months after Carrillo Olea had appointed León head of the Federal Judicial Police. By 1993, the police chief and Ramón were close friends. Amado had recommended León highly. He told the Arellano Félixes they could rely on him whenever they wanted to travel somewhere in the country unmolested. So Benjamín trusted his brother’s friend, enough to decide to attend the meeting at the border airport. It was 4 p.m. when he met León, who told him flatly:
    “You’re in big trouble: they’re blaming you for the cardinal’s murder.”
    “It wasn’t us. I was here in Tijuana, and my brother Ramón had already boarded his plane when it happened,” answered Benjamín.
    “I know it wasn’t you,” replied the police chief. “The perpetrators were members of a federal police commando under my command at Guadalajara airport. If I’m to help you, you have to give me ten million dollars and six addresses we can raid, because I have apprehended two of your men who traveled with Ramón to Guadalajara.”
    “All right, let me see what I can do. I’ll look for the addresses, just give me time for the money.”
    “Ok,” said León, and immediately made a call. “Done. All well,” he said into the phone.
    León told him he’d been calling the attorney general, Jorge Carpizo, who instructed him to “go ahead with the plan.”
    That night Benjamín met his brother Ramón, who told him he’d already given the money to León. The following day the police chief called Benjamín just to tell him that he was searching some addresses and that he’d received the money from Ramón. Ramón had told Benjamín that while he was in Guadalajara, before the cardinal’s murder, León had called to tell him that he could travel without a care on the 24 th . So, at the police chief’s suggestion, Ramón arrived at Guadalajara airport at almost the same time as the archbishop.
    The Arellano Félix brothers and El Chapo Guzmán had fallen into a trap carefully set by the PGR.
    After making his statement in April 2011, Benjamín Arellano Félix asked the witnesses from the Guadalajara archdioceses to pray for him, because he would soon be killed. 5 On April 29, however, Benjamín was suddenly extradited to the United States without his lawyers apparently knowing that this was about to happen.
    In Mexico, the murder of Cardinal Posadas remains one of the most controversial episodes of recent decades, and one that has marked the country’s history.
    Days before El Chapo Guzmán was