MEXICO CITY - Mexican authorities announced Monday they have captured kingpin of a drug trafficking gang believed to be behind most of the violence in its Pacific coastal state of Guerrero.

Antonio Reina Castillo was the leader of crime ring Los Rojos (The Reds) and was arrested Friday in the southwestern town of Apango, according to the head of the National Security Commission (CNS), Monte Alejandro Rubido.

Officials arrested Reina as he was traveling in a pick-up truck accompanied by the gang's second-in-command, Ismael Castillo Marino, and two of his bodyguards.

Reina, whose criminal career is linked to former drug kingpin Arturo Beltran Leyva, who was killed in 2009, is wanted on charges of kidnapping, extortion, and drug production and trafficking to the United States, Rubido said.

Guerrero is home to Mexico's once-famous resort of Acapulco, but has become one of the country's most crime-ridden states, registering 2,310 homicides in 2012, and 1,916 cases from January to November of 2013, according to official figures.