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Authors: Roberto Saviano
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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
“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
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