Mexico's federal police said on Wednesday that gang leader and drug trafficker Carlos Montemayor Gonzalez had been arrested on Tuesday alongside with two collaborators. Montemayor, nicknamed 'El Charro', took over the daily running of drug smuggling into the United States from Edgar Valdez Villarreal, a Mexican American gangster nicknamed 'La Barbie' who was arrested in August, said Ramon Pequeno Garcia, head of the Federal Police's anti-drugs division. 'Montemayor said that for the moment he was receiving instructions from La Barbie to take charge of pending problems and taking control of the cells that La Barbie had in Guerrero,' Pequeno told a broadcast press conference. Guerrero is a state of Mexico's Pacific coast. Criminals have begun using Mexico's Pacific coast, including Guerrero's main port Acapulco, to import cocaine for Colombia, most of which is then smuggled on into the United States. Montemayor had begun communicating with a cell in Acapulco, 'telling them that they should calm down, and business continues as usual,' Pequeno said. Pequeno said Montemayor joined the Beltran Leyva cartel in 2003, at the invitation of Sergio Enrique Villarreal Barragan, who was arrested in September. Most of the Beltran Leyva brothers, who ran the drug smuggling cells, have been arrested or killed by the Mexican authorities. 'The arrest reveals that authorities are clearly continuing their strategy of not only capturing kingpins, but going after the hierarchy and seeking to damage the cartel structures,' said Malcolm Beith, writer of The Last Narco, an authoritative study on Mexico's drug smuggling gangs. Some 28,000 people have died since Mexican President Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006 with pledges to fight drug trafficking in the nation, according to official data. 