Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and Their Godfathers (7 page)

After hours of testimony, Guzmán carefully signed the twelve double-sided pages of the confession he’d dictated at the Almoloya de Juárez penitentiary. He had kept his side of the bargain. And with this he had not only saved his own life; he had also shown that he was a criminal you could do business with.

El Chapo’s first confession disappears

“That document exists,” stated Jorge Carrillo Olea in our interview at the end of 2009, referring to General Álvarez Nahara’s record of his airborne interrogation of El Chapo Guzmán. At first he said he hadn’t been present at the interrogation, and didn’t know what Guzmán had said. But in the end he admitted he had held the vital document in his hands. He had given, he recalled, a copy to Jorge Carpizo.

One day, when he was no longer attorney general, Carpizo went to see Carrillo at home. The latter could guess why.

“Now, Jorge, I’ve heard tell of a document …” Carpizo began.

“Here it is,” Carrillo said, and handed it over.

“But why didn’t he get a copy at the time? That’s the strange thing,” commented Carrillo, as if hinting at some murky motive.

The former attorney general referred publicly to the document drawn up by the head of the military judicial police, nine years after El Chapo’s interrogation. In 2002, Carpizo, along with journalist Julián Andrade, wrote a book called
Murder of a Cardinal
.

“The military tried to contact El Chapo in prison to confirm what he’d said on the plane, which could have caused a catastrophe. The cold at Almoloya and its high concrete walls made him change his mind: in the end he said a former official had read him the riot act and it was better to leave it at that,” wrote Carpizo.

That document became not just a question of national security but of the very survival of the state, riddled as it was with drug trafficking. Maybe that’s why Sedena and the PGR wiped it off the map.

Today, the drug dealer’s first confession simply doesn’t exist, in the records of either institution. Who did the document’s disappearance suit most? On August 28, 2009, using the Freedom of Information law, a request was made to the Secretariat of Defense for a copy of the document. On October 21, the answer came back that the document did not exist. The PGR likewise replied that the document was not to be found in its archives, neither as part of the initial investigation into Joaquín Guzmán, nor anywhere else.
⁵

Impunity

“What happened to that information [in Guzmán’s first statement]? Was it investigated? Was it true?” I put these questions to Carrillo Olea.

“I don’t know. The stuff about Federico Ponce … Well. Those are very big, very direct accusations. Were they true or not? Why weren’t they investigated? Who knows.”

“Wasn’t it your job to investigate them?”

Carrillo had been in charge of the fight against drug trafficking, after all, and he was the boss of the head of the Federal Judicial Police, which was the investigative police force serving the PGR.

“No. That was the job of the deputy attorney for Initial Investigations. There was clearly a loophole there, because El Chapo was arrested and charged. I try not to get involved in these things. I am not given to morbid curiosity.”

“Surely, rather than morbid curiosity, it’s a question of national
security to know if there are any policemen or government officials, or former officials, involved in drug trafficking.”

“But it wasn’t up to me to do anything. It would have to be a judge or an independent public prosecutor who opened an investigation that could take in El Chino [Rodolfo León Aragón, head of the PFJ], and Lord knows who else, to look into their actions. I didn’t have the scope to do that. Not unless there were an accusation based on real evidence.”

“In any case, the public prosecution office ought to have instructed the Judicial Police to investigate the matter. Didn’t the Judicial Police ever receive an order to investigate Rodolfo León, Federico Ponce, or Claudio Ruffo Appel?”
⁶

“No, they didn’t,” answered Carrillo Olea emphatically.

“So even though they had the statement, they issued no instruction?”

“No.”

Ponce remains to this day as a senior executive in Banamex, a bank under majority control of Citigroup.

“What role did Joaquín Guzmán play in the structure of the drugs trade at that time? How important was he? Very? Middling?”

“There weren’t any outstanding leaders. There were names. Like García Ábrego [of the Gulf Cartel]. But more because of their age, because they were well known, like Don Corleone, rather than for their real strength,” answered Carrillo Olea, with the clarity and perspective that comes with time.

“But I was asking how important El Chapo was …”

“I think this has been lost in the mists of time. What you are asking me is El Chapo’s story, going right back, how he emerged … I don’t think anyone really knows,” he said evasively.

El Chapo’s testimony on board the Boeing 727 was ultimately borne out by the facts. Maybe that is why the file was removed by the Secretariat of Defense and the PGR.

The scapegoat

A police officer who held a senior position in the PJF told this investigation that it was the federal government that had Cardinal Posadas killed, and that the person who coordinated the operation was thought to be the then head of the PJF, Rodolfo León Aragón.

This allegation is not new. It is the same as that made by Cardinal Juan Sandoval Íñiguez, the current archbishop of Guadalajara, who has often declared that the murder of Cardinal Posadas was a state crime, that is, one organized from within the federal administration.

“The Arellano Félix brothers would never have killed the cardinal, even by mistake. They knew him well from his time in Tijuana, he even baptized one of Ramón Arellano Félix’s daughters,” comments the source, who prefers to remain anonymous. “Their mother was a fervent devotee of the cardinal.”

“Why would the government want to kill the cardinal? There are so many theories …”

“He had a lot of information about drug trafficking from the Arellanos. He knew too much,” answered the former PJF officer.

Several years after the event, a one-time defense secretary told some trusted associates about the meeting where the operation to kill Posadas was planned. It seems that present at the meeting were Salinas’s chief of staff, José María Córdoba; the governor of Sonora, Manlio Fabio Beltrones, social security director Emilio Gamboa, and Jorge Carrillo Olea.

On June 10, 1993, the Salinas government pulled out all the stops to present to the public a relatively minor drug trafficker converted overnight into the cream of crime bosses: Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán. The scapegoat for the cardinal’s murder.

Dozens of photographers turned up at the maximum security prison in the State of Mexico for the show. El Chapo, head shaved, posed for them in khaki regulation pants and a thick nylon bomber jacket. There was a grin on his face. What did the rookie drug baron have to laugh about, with so many years in jail ahead of him?

Years before, some much more senior drug traffickers had been accused of another shocking murder, though they weren’t in fact to blame.

CHAPTER THREE
A Perverse Pact

A
s agreed, on the morning of February 8, 1985, Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, known as Don Neto, came to the home of his friend Rafael Caro Quintero. The house was on Mariano Otero Avenue in Guadalajara, where his criminal gang had an operations center known as the “Camp.”

“Right, my friend, let’s have a little chat with Mr. Camarena,” said Don Neto to Caro Quintero.

The two leaders of the organization known as the Guadalajara Cartel were meeting to interrogate Special Agent Enrique Camarena, the DEA man they had kidnapped the day before as he left the US consulate in Guadalajara.

“There’s no point anymore, he can’t answer,” Caro Quintero drawled.

At twenty-nine years old, he looked around fifteen. Apart from being ambitious, full of big dreams and big boasts, Rafael Caro Quintero was audacious to the point of brilliance, at least on other occasions. In 1982, at the age of twenty-four and with only one year of elementary behind him, he was a nobody in the drug world; but in just three years he acquired both power and fame, after managing to buy and sell drug shipments of twenty tons, which was a very large quantity at the time. In 1984, Caro Quintero devised a way of industrializing marijuana cultivation: he was supposed to be the brains behind the massive growing operation at El Búfalo ranch, outside Ciudad Juárez, in Chihuahua state. But it was surely too big an operation for a man with his limitations. El Búfalo in fact functioned with the support of the Federal Security Directorate (DFS), headed by
José Antonio Zorrilla, who reported to the secretary of the interior, Manuel Bartlett Díaz. It was a real marijuana factory farm, employing 10,000 campesinos from the area and even some from other states.

With his wavy hair, Colgate smile and goatee beard, he fancied himself a lady-killer; perhaps that’s why he became known as El Príncipe, the prince. Expensive gifts and mariachi music had won him the favours of the eligible Sara Cosío, as we’ve seen. But this would not shield him from the approaching storm.

“What do you mean, he can’t answer? Did you let him go?” demanded Don Neto irritably. He was very fond of this youngster, whom he’d first met in Badiraguato, Sinaloa, when he was just fifteen—so much so that when he had to choose between him and his nephew, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, he chose the former, and sent Amado up to Chihuahua to work with Pablo Acosta.

“No, it’s just they beat him up and he’s dying,” answered El Príncipe.

“Fuck you! You animal! You killed him tied up!” roared Don Neto, whose anger quickly turned into sobs.

They were narco tears. Don Neto never cried, but that day he couldn’t contain his fury and despair. He knew that if Camarena was doomed, so was he. He swore like a trooper. In those days everyone knew that you frightened policemen or you bribed them, but you didn’t kill them. Especially not if they were gringos. Today the rules have changed in Mexico. Everyone’s fair game, even US Government employees.

“It wasn’t me! Miguel Ángel’s people got there first,” was Caro Quintero’s excuse, referring to Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, the most powerful of the three of them.

Félix Gallardo, the Boss of Bosses, hadn’t been part of the plan to kidnap Camarena, but he’d learned about it because he managed the house in Mariano Otero Avenue. They also used this building, located opposite a children’s playground, as a brothel; the woman in charge was known as Paty, and she worked for Félix Gallardo. The place was usually busy, but it had been evacuated for Caro Quintero to bring Camarena.

“Can’t you see the problems you’ve caused? With the government and internationally?” Fonseca was so angry that he was on the point
of raining blows on his junior; he took a quick turn in the patio of the Camp to calm down. He couldn’t believe this was happening—all the more because he had given Caro express instructions not to hurt Camarena.

“It’s your shit, you clean it up!” snapped Fonseca, into Caro’s face. “This is not my responsibility!”

“Don’t you believe it, we’re in this together,” retorted Caro.

The argument got more and more heated, until both Don Neto and the Prince drew their guns. Caro Quintero was at home, surrounded by twenty bodyguards, while Don Neto had only his second-in-command, Samuel Ramírez, and one other person with him. It didn’t take much to see who would come off worse, so Don Neto left the house and sped off in his blue Mustang, wishing the earth would swallow him up.
¹

The kidnapping of Camarena

A few days before, on February 5, after a heavy binge to celebrate the birthday of Gabriel González—head of the murder squad for Jalisco federal police—Don Neto had met with the unpredictable Caro Quintero to discuss Enrique Camarena, who was giving both of them sleepless nights. They resolved to give the DEA agent a fright, a tactic that had worked with other officers who had then fled Jalisco state. Félix Gallardo wasn’t present at that meeting, and it seems they never informed him of the operation.

Guadalajara was a narco paradise. There was room and protection for everyone: Fonseca, Caro Quintero, Félix Gallardo, Salcido, the Arellano Félix brothers, Palma, Carrillo Fuentes, Guzmán, and all the members of the Guadalajara organization that dominated the trafficking along Mexico’s Pacific coast. Don Neto had pockets deep enough to accommodate the head of the murder squad, Gabriel González, the commander of checkpoints, Benjamín Locheo, and the dozen or so state judicial police officers who had been assigned to him as personal bodyguards. Jalisco governor Álvarez del Castillo himself was an ally of the criminal organization, while the central government under President Miguel de la Madrid displayed an easy-going tolerance of the drug trade. Everything was going smoothly
until El Kiki Camarena began busting their plantations and homesteads.

For Don Neto, it wasn’t just that one of his Jalisco plantations had recently been destroyed; he objected even more to finding himself identified as the “brain behind the organized drug trafficking groups.” For his part, Caro Quintero was spitting mad. In November 1984, his El Búfalo ranch and two other operations nearby in Chihuahua had been trashed. The raids, organized by the PJF in coordination with the DEA, had cost the traffickers an estimated $8 billion.

Fonseca and Caro Quintero needed to find out who was the source of the information used by Camarena to target them. As they planned the kidnapping of the US agent, El Príncipe summoned José Luis Gallardo, one of his right-hand men. Gallardo was a tall youth with fair, straight hair, who they called El Güero, or Blondie. He was said to be a nephew of Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo.

“I have a friend at the consulate who helps us with visas, and he can tell me which one is Camarena,” El Güero suggested when Caro Quintero asked him to take part in the operation. El Güero always went around with a guy known as El Chelín. Although the latter had curly hair, they looked alike and people said they were brothers.