The business of Caro since prison, are the best known secrets

Translated by Otis B Fly-Wheel for Borderland Beat from a Sinembargo article

Subject Matter: Caro Quintero
Recommendation: No prior subject matter knowledge required

Reporter: Linaloe R. Flores

The " narco of narco's", he was the originator of modern narco trafficking, imprisoned for only 28 of the 128 year sentence he received, directs again, as always, an organization that trafficks drugs on the routes to the United States, according to reports of the DEA. In Badiraguato, Sinaloa, his turf, the paused war has returned to the start. In Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, where he always held his power base with the ranches "El Bufalo, El Vaquero, and Pocitos, one can see his shadow.His psychological profile was made in the six years of Felipe Calderon Hinojosa, however there are some that have seen him, conversed with him and they accepted to profile him.

Forever, there was and is a well spoken secret. But between February and April 1985, the narco trafficker left for the first time the pages of Mexican newspapers with the name of the principal star: Rafael Caro Quintero. The 32 year old from the mountains, long hair and very black moustache, employer of thousand of farmers who grew marijuana, born in La Noria, a lost hamlet in the misery of the mountains of Badiraguato, Sinaloa, had put the USA and Mexican governments backs against the wall.



Rafael Caro Quintero was detained in a house in Costa Rica in April of 1985 for a weighty charge of which he was guilty. Identified as the "Director" of the criminal organization denominated the "Guadalajara Cartel", he trafficked drugs to the United States and also had assassinated the DEA agent Enrique Camarena and his pilot Alfredo Zavala.

With time, it became known that this group was formed of other Sinaloan's that protagonized the zenith of Mexican narco trafficking; for example, Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, Miguel Salcido Beltran, "El Cochiloco" and Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman Loera "El Chapo". But Caro was Caro.and he initiated a form of narcoism that followed codes of honor and pride.

When they detained him, he said to the authorities the same thing, that his father was a farm worker in Tierra Ajena, and that Caro and the Quintero's were poor, from his oldest recollection, but he never knew hunger because of his sense of self and pride, and he was always searching for work.

He married, that is certain. Of his education, the journalist Jesus Lemus Barajas, who was imprisoned in 2008 in Puente Grande, in the cell next to Caro Quintero, and he was exonerated of all crimes in 2011, he relates: " I read much in that time in prison. I was studying the primary works of INEA.I confess that he was in second grade until the age of 14. But I knew I could finish it in Puente Grande.

As for his search for land, it could also be true. Caro Quintero made in Chihuahua, the ranches "El Bufalo, El Vaquero and Pocitos", where thousands of workers grew marijuana over the years, meanwhile the lack of work gave birth to the principal problems of most Mexicans. The disgrace of the economic crisis of 1982 and the impulse change of path by the then President Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado made the market opening purchasing power, the unemployment levels went down, while the external debt went up to 80 billion dollars.

One particular legend of the "narco of narco's" was justly founded in that economic epoch of Mexico. , Caro borrowed workers, (the other version is that he kidnapped farm workers), and that he was a generous patron, intelligent, loved and respected. The other lead to a change in his liberty, he offered the President to pay the countries external debt if they would leave him to grow in tranquility in the fields for some years.

But the Government didn't want this. Whether they wanted it or not, in "El Bufalo", municipality of Allende, Chihuahua, they describe the days in which they started the end play. 450 elite soldiers came in and discovered 10,000 farm workers that, according to the official version, had been "lifted" with promises of earning good money for cutting of apples. The soldiers confiscated 80,000 tons of the herb at the same time and detained the farm workers.

Rafael Caro Quintero spent 28 years in prison, between the prisons at Almoloya de Juarez, today called Altiplano, and Puente Grande in Jalisco. In August of 2013, he was set free, under the protection of an Amparo. History has returned to the start like it was only in a state of suspense. In November of 2015, a Supreme Court of Justice reversed this judicial determination and ordered his detention; but as luck occurs, nobody has seen him or knows where he is.

Caro Quinero commenced his criminal career at the end of the 70's decade

Official reports and informants of the DEA spread this past 4th of June that Rafael Caro Quintero was disputing plazas with the Sinaloa Cartel, who have suffered hard blows to their structure since their bank roller and leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman was re-apprehended.

The Attorney General of Chihuahua, Enrique Gonzalez Nicolas, advertised that Caro has his sights set on Ciudad Juarez and zona del Valle. The functionary, before reporters, expressed with a tone of alert " the possibility has been established of an invasion of Chihuahua from one of the most known narco traffickers in the country, Rafael Caro Quintero. We have information that he intends to come here to dispute plazas with the Sinaloa Cartel, for the criminal actions they carry out".

Like yesterday, the versions spread about him are various. Some indicated that, he supports the hosts of Isidro Meza Flores, "Chapito Isidro", who commands fragments of the Beltran Leyva Cartel, according to sources of the PJE in Sinaloa, or to Alfredo Beltran Guzman "Mochomito", nephew of "El Chapo" Guzman and son of Alfredo Beltran Leyva, also identified among the remnants of the Beltran Leyva, according to the PGE of Sinaloa.

Others that defend his old friend, Joaquin Guzman Loera with the same code of respect, unwaveringly established among the gentlemen of narco trafficking in the 80's. Some and other versions postulate that Caro Quintero has been reborn as a narco trafficker.

Who is this old timer?
Born in the mountains of Badiraguato. His father died when he was 13 years old and then, it changed his family of 12 siblings who went to different towns of Sinaloa and Jalisco. "He was always the star among them", said a friend of the family.

At aged 18, he became a chauffeur in charge of Culiacan. In this job, he met Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo and Juan Jose Esparragoza. Soon they would be a triangle, and expanded the marijuana plantations of La Cienega, Sonora, one of the biggest in the history of Mexican narco trafficking. In 1983, and to defend the plantations, he got to know and bribed the commanders of the Federal Judicial Police.

If Caro Quintero was one of the forgers of the misfortune of narco trafficking, according to an official, "What's he like"?.
If the citizens of a country can know the idea of how dangerous a man or woman is by the psychological profile, why isn't one known for Rafael Caro Quintero?"

After 31 years of his detention, in Costa Rica, and two of his liberation, the Mexicans cannot know what the government found in the mind of this narco trafficker. Psychological evaluations that were practiced were classified as "confidential information", until the year 2022, by the Secretary of Public Security when Genaro Garcia Luna was in charge.

Today, this dependency was key in the political combat of organized crime during the Governorship of Felipe Calderon (2006 - 20012), is part of the Secretary of Government, currently in the charge of Miguel Angel Osorio Chong.

It weighed on the padlocks of Government, who could profile Caro because they knew him? Oscar Loza Ochoa, President of the Commission for defence of Human Rights in Sinaloa, one of the foremost organizations that was not governmental, believable in the country, whose founder, Norma Corona, whose execution by drug traffickers sicarios in 1990 provoked a memory.

"I'm only going to ask for one thing,  you take me to Culiacan", he suggested to her in a polite voice when she visited him at Altiplano. I was 1994 and the "narco of narco's" had spent the last nine years in a cell. Midday in the valle de Mexico it was very cold. Caro had his cell disordered, very different of his neighbour, Felix Gallardo where order governed. She could see a horse head made with a pyrotechnical quality", said Loza Ochoa.

 "Why?", asked the converted professor, very committed  at this time to defend the human rights of families of Sinaloan drug traffickers.

"Its very easy",  there are none to be lost. My sons are at the age where they can decide what is right and what is wrong. I  need to be closer to them to ensure they don't follow my path."

Rafael Caro Quintero said this, he who originated modern narco trafficking. Today the friendliness was transformed. Caro Quintero has gastro-intestinal problems and he commented that on normal days in the prison, he did not receive adequate food for his problem, but on this day his plate looked succulent and dietary.

" Those here knew I was coming?"

"Yes, Loza and his accomplices have responded."

Then he stood up and threw the food into a trashcan, and courage filled his face.

"Not even dogs are treated this way," he remarked.

Caro Quintero was moved to Culiacan, the Sinaloa capital city. There had been no prisoner there of maximum security where they could guard such a dangerous prisoner. This change, six years after, he was transferred to Puente Grande, Jalisco. At the end of 2008, the journalist Lemus Barajas, old cell neighbour, could hear all of his conversations, likes and hobbies.

"He is a skilled man", who accepted  the reconstruction of Caro in his last years in prison. "He has no resentment. He pardons but doesn't forget. Caro Quintero pardons. He is magnanimous. His frame of mind was moving between listening and understanding why and then acting. Rafael had little academic knowledge, but he is intelligent with amazing powers of reasoning."

He knew what was going through the head of another prisoner simply by watching him, he was a born psychologist and showed a great ability to understand body language.

For Caro Quintero, one of his better known corridos, was produced by Los Invasores de Nuevo Leon, it describes him this way: "The wild animal is already caged, but you hear the roaring here in the morning, your wishes will be fulfilled". " Go flee the herd if you want to stay alive".

Three decades after Rafael Caro Quintero converted the epicentre of cultivation and transit of drugs in Mexico; Badiraguato, his turf, is cursed by a binomial: poverty and war. Badiraguato is one of 200 municipalities with the most dramatic misery in Mexico. In other words, in the cradle of the most famous narco's, in the genesis of violence in the country, half of the 30,000 inhabitants live in food crisis, in tin shacks, without shoes and with few possibilities to study. As when Rafael Caro Quintero was born and grew up there.

He is not absent. Although the scholar of the phenomenon of violence in Sinaloa, Jorge Luis Montiel, argues he never was. "He was the originator of the drug trafficking movement. He is the father, and even while in prison was still operating. Caro Quintero kept on operating, peacefully. Now already free, he has chosen a good way of hiding.

In August of 2013, shortly after being freed, the then Municipal President of Badiraguato, Sinaloa, Angel Robles, said in his digital diary: "They asked me if he had been here. Well I don't know, I told them.... and more we don't know if he is here of where he is".

But since Caro Quintero was freed this land is already not the same. Some 350 villagers left their homes for fear of gun battles. What is happening and has happened can be pieced together with testimony of refugees in Huixiopa, Badiraguato. " They are arming and regrouping in the area just above in the mountains. There are two existing groups, the Beltranes and the group of Guzman Loera", said a man from there.

Just go into the biography of any big Mexican narco and you will find Badiraguato. In its rugged terrain there are three branches of generations of names of men with enigmatic and intricate legends. In the 40's, born there was Pedro Aviles, Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada and Juan Jose Esparragoza Moreno; ten years later the same terrain gave birth to and raised Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, Rafael Caro Quintero and Ignacio Coronel Villareal. Later Joaquin Guzman Loera, saw his first light in the mountains, almost at the same time as his cousins, the five Beltran Leyva's.

Seen this way, it can be treated like a saga of a family in which the prodigious father has returned. The news outlet Rio Doce located the origin of this breakdown on the assassination of Ernesto Guzman Hidalgo during April of 2015, he was a half brother of Joaquin Guzman Loera and in the mountains they ran with the version that he had been ordered to kill Aurelio Guzman Loera, "El Guano", brother of the father of El Chapo.

This adjustment of accounts had occurred because Don Ernesto did not trust the structure of the Guzman Loera's. He was the father of Patricia Guzman Nunez, wife of Alfredo Beltran Leyva, "El Mochomo".

After the capture of Alfredo, detained on 21st of January of 2008 and the death of Arturo, who fell in the following year following an operation of the Marines in Cuernavaca, Morelos, the group of the Beltran Leyva stayed diminished.

Fausto Isidro Meza Flores, "Chapito Isidro" took control of the remnants. According to information from the DEA, this man could be the face to the troops of Joaquin Guzman Loera. DEA documents have indicated that he could be the historical successor to Guzman Loera in the transit of heroin and meth to the United States.

The morning of Saturday the 18th of June made things worse. A contingent of 150 armed men bust into La Tuna, Badiraguato, this remote point on earth, where Consuelo Loera, mother of El Chapo, has spent her life. They stormed her house. Someone took her to a helicopter and managed to get her out of there. Eight people died in the onslaught.

Who did it? In Huixiopa some say that I was "El Mochomito", others that it was "El Chapito", in both Rafael Caro Quintero is the shadow.

Love is an error

"Who gave me up?", asked Rafael when agents of the DEA and elements of the Costa Rica police stormed the finca where he was hiding. With him was Sara Cristina Cosio Vidaurri Martinez, one of the most popular women in the clubs and restaurants in Guadalajara, Jalisco in 1985.

Daughter of the Secretary for Public Education in Jalisco, Cesar Octavio Viadurri and niece of Guillermo Cosio Viadurri, ex governor of the State and ex president of the PRI in the capital, Sara declared " I have not been kidnapped.. I am in love with Caro Quintero".

In the chronicles " San narcos tiene la fama ", " narco saints have the fame", of Carlos Monsivais in the outlet Nexos, in 1992, one sees another scene. Sara says to an official: "I have been kidnapped", the agent asks: " who kidnapped you dear?", she in a low voice responds "Rafael Caro Quintero", the officials reaction is "Puta", or bitch/whore/prostitute in English.

The love part, in all cases, was an error in this history. Because Caro, at this time was being pursued. On the 7th of February 1985, armed men had kidnapped Enrique "Kiki" Camarena, who left the USA consulate in Guadalajara. Hours before he had seen Alfredo Zavala Avelar, a DEA pilot. He relates that an official indicated that Caro Quintero let vent to his fury on Camarena and killed him. His mutilated body appeared next to that of Zavala in a ranch in Michoacán.

These events stirred up a diplomatic crisis with the United States. Ronald Reagan urged the then President Miguel de la Madrid to detain the guilty parties, and that was Caro Quintero.

In the prisons of Altiplano and Puente Grande, Rafael Caro Quintero served only 28 of his 128 year sentence. At 64 years of age he is directing and organization trafficking narcotics to the United States. He wants to own the golden triangle, where the imaginary borders of Chihuahua, Durango and Sinaloa meet in the mountains, and Ciudad Juarez, the strategic border crossing, according to DEA reports.

Original article in Spanish at Sinembargo.mx