MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AFP) — Mexican authorities yesterday paraded a top drug lord in public, presenting his capture as a much-needed victory in the growing battle against the country’s vicious traffickers.

As police in Mexico City presented US-born Edgar Valdez Villarreal, known as “the Barbie” for his fair complexion, eight people were reported killed in a suspected drug gang attack on a bar in the beach resort of Cancun.

Valdez, 37, was a key lieutenant of Arturo Beltran Leyva, who headed the cartel that bears his name and was Mexico’s third most-wanted man until his December 2009 death in a military operation.

“The Barbie,” whose jokey name belies a gruesome reputation as the head of an assassination squad, appeared smiling in a police line-up, wearing a green polo shirt and standing with several other suspects detained with him.

Valdez was captured in central Mexico, following intelligence work which began in June 2009 and involved some 1,200 police, officials said.

Federal police chief Facundo Rosas did not rule out that Valdez could be sent to the United States, where he faces several indictments for drug trafficking.

Valdez was thought to have been involved in a power struggle to replace Arturo Beltran Leyva, in competition with the deceased drug trafficker’s brother Hector Beltran Leyva.

The US State Department offered up to two million dollars for information leading to his capture, while Mexican authorities offered US$2.2 million.

The arrest offers some relief to President Felipe Calderon’s government after an escalation of drug violence in the northeast of the country, including the massacre of 72 migrants last week, blamed on the Zetas gang.

The bar targeted in the attack in a residential area of Cancun had reported two earlier attempts at extortion, apparently by the Zetas.