01x02 - The First Cartel

[bunniefuu]

♪

Reporter (over tv):

Shake this square world

and blast off for kicksville.

Nixon: Public enemy

number one is drug abuse.

Nancy: Just say no.

Reagan: Halting the drug

problem in america is like

Carrying water in a sieve.

Bush: Take my word for it,

this scourge will stop.

Reporter 2 (over tv): There's

now an understanding that the

w*r on drugs was

an abject failure.

Man: You have to

stop and ask yourself;

How did we get here?

Trump: We will build a wall.

Man: We buy grass in mexico,

The most important

thing is your contact.

Reporter (over tv): This is

the real action, the pot party.

The trippers, the grasshoppers,

The hip ones

flying high as a kite.

Turner: You had

a society that,

Since the 60s, had sort of

been gradually moving toward

More of a drug subculture.

Reporter (over tv): In time,

the continued use of marijuana

Causes psychic and

physiological changes.

Shame, arrest, prison.

Turner: So you had an increase

in marijuana use that reached

An apex in 1979 when you had

one in nine high school seniors

Using marijuana

on a daily basis.

you just gonna

break my heart ♪

my fallen angel ♪

Turner: It made the

government realize that

the efforts in mexico

Need to be reinvigorated.

Brown: I initially went

to mexico to work on the

Marijuana cultivation

and trafficking.

The state of

sinaloa was the heart of

Marijuana

cultivation for decades,

If not centuries.

Higher up in the sierra madres

was a climate temperature,

Water and sunlight, made it

ideal for growing marijuana.

♪

Our assignment was to work

with the mexican federal police.

But it was a very frustrating

time for what we were doing.

We saw the continued growth of

organized criminal groups that

Now are called cartels.

It was becoming hotter.

It was a hot environment.

Grillo: Sinaloa to the

mexican drug cartels is like

Sicily is to the italian mafia.

But around that time, you

saw sinaloans relocating their

Operations to mexico's second

biggest city, guadalajara.

A really strategic city, much

closer to the center of power.

This is really

when the guadalajara

cartel came together.

It was a group of mexican

drug traffickers saying,

Okay, let's share our resources.

Esquivel: One of the pioneers

was rafael caro quintero.

He made what now is

called the guadalajara cartel.

Using the roads of

guadalajara to send drugs

To the united states,

especially marijuana.

Brown: He came from a

small village in sinaloa.

A street thug, moved

up pretty quickly.

Smart though, for somebody

with a very limited education.

He saw an opportunity.

Brown: They pretended

to be sophisticated,

And they were

really just th*gs.

They ruled by brutality, by

k*lling people who disagreed.

Standing in the middle of a

200 acre field of marijuana,

Seven-foot st*lks,

mature marijuana.

I'm jaime kuykendall.

I was the dea agent from

the time that it was created,

July the 1st, 1973.

The job that I was

given in guadalajara, mexico

Was to gather as much

Intelligence as possible and

Then give that information to

the united states government.

There were three agents

there when I got there.

One of them was

enrique camarena.

Everyone called him kiki.

Kiki was born in mexico,

became a naturalized

united states citizen.

For a dea agent,

he was a family man,

And this is a picture

of kiki and his wife.

Her nickname is mika.

Camarena: Kiki

was very excited.

He couldn't wait to

get a case out there.

Camarena:

Guadalajara was beautiful.

The weather was perfect.

The people were very friendly.

Kiki was very good

at befriending people.

They knew he was mexican.

He would speak their language.

(crowd cheering)

Brown: He was an old-time cop.

He believes in justice on the

street and going out and, and

Working the case.

Kuykendall: He enjoyed

matching wits with the bad guys.

Camarena: Kiki's job was

to locate these traffickers,

Know exactly who they

were and where they hung out.

And so the way he

could get a case is by

finding his informants.

♪

Kuykendall: Well they

stopped at a beer truck

'cause they were

getting kind of thirsty.

And uh, asked him if he'd

noticed anything unusual

In the area, any extra activity.

He said, "well, over in the

distance there, there's a farm."

And he said, "I don't know

what's going on over there,

But they've got a lot of workers

'cause they buy a lot of beer

For me and I can't get in,

every time I get there,

They send somebody out

to pick up some beer."

After he left, they drove

as close as they could.

And it looked like there

was a lot of security.

Still we're not sure, right?

So we need an airplane.

They came down and

flew over the area.

What did he see out

there in the desert?

Big green field.

Nobody expected that.

This time they

fly a little lower.

We were not 100% certain until

we actually arrived and saw it;

Six to eight foot tall marijuana

plants out in the desert.

Literally in the desert.

We successfully helped

the mexicans to seize that,

The field of marijuana.

It was about 200 acres.

Kiki smoked a cigar.

Sort of celebratory gesture

on his part to smoke the cigar.

♪

Man: Caro quintero had

this idea to innovate the way

Marijuana was growing using

an irrigation system that was

Kind of sophisticated.

Kuykendall:

Rafael caro quintero was,

For a while, a

mysterious person.

We learn of this

30 year old multi-millionaire,

Maybe billionaire, who knows?

The guy behind all of

these major marijuana

plantations at the time.

Grillo: With the búfalo ranch,

you see the ambitions of

The guadalajara cartel.

Big ideas, big thinking.

This was this huge,

huge marijuana plantation.

The biggest that the

world had ever seen.

They would go for days

to see the scale of it.

It dwarfed any other

marijuana plantation massively.

More than 5,000 workers.

♪

♪

♪

Reporter (over tv):

Cinco, cuatro, tres, dos, uno.

Brown: That was one of

the very largest seizures of

Cultivated marijuana on record.

That really hurt their

profit factor big time.

(overlapping chatter)

There was no way possible

for that to be forgotten about.

Reporter (over tv):

Detective sergeant dale lint,

Who was on a

vacation hunting trip,

Checking animal trap

lines near this remote

world w*r ii air strip,

60 miles south-west

of kingman, arizona,

When he spotted two

suspicious trucks heading away

From the area and

radioed for help.

Esquivel: 1984 confiscation

of that shipment of drugs took

The dea by surprise.

Reporter (over tv): When

he first spotted the trucks,

Lint thought they

might carry marijuana.

Hobby county sheriff's deputies

Worked through

the night, weighing,

Marking and cataloguing what

they now say is the largest

Cocaine seizure ever made

west of the mississippi.

Brown: We had done a

lot of work on uh, marijuana.

Aircraft smuggling operations.

That information was

crucial in identifying who the

Aircraft belonged to and

who the cocaine belonged to.

Esquivel: It was the

first evidence for the

U. S. Government that the

guadalajara cartel started

Doing business

with the colombians.

Grillo: Colombians

were looking for, you know,

How can we take our

drugs to the united states?

And the guadalajara cartel had

all of the trafficking routes

Carved out already.

Man: Mexico was

a bouncing point.

It was smart on the part

of the mexican traffickers.

They had to go away

from something as bulky

As marijuana was,

and go to something

that's more packageable,

More concealable,

much more profit factor.

Grillo: This would

change everything.

The amount of profits

they would get from cocaine

Would be astronomical.

Brown: We had developed quite

a bit of information about

Miguel ángel félix gallardo.

He was a sinaloan.

They developed street

sense beyond any street sense.

They learned that

ruthlessness with no care about

Any consequence can

give you great riches.

Grillo: The guadalajara cartel

were getting very angry and

They were particularly

angry with kiki camarena,

This very young, aggressive

agent that was out there

Gathering information.

Man: Rafael caro quintero

wanted revenge.

Grillo: In the 1980s, as the

guadalajara cartel was growing

Caro quintero was getting

very annoyed by various busts.

He thought that the

dea were cleverer than

they were and thought,

Wow, they're

following us around here,

And then they're busting

our drugs up in arizona.

They must be connected.

So he was getting

very frustrated with the

Dea and their business,

and particularly with

Enrique "kiki" camarena.

Heath: I advised our

people that you've got to be

Very careful, be very safe.

Don't take any chances

'cause we're dealing here

With a very strong group.

Camarena: Kiki

had been very busy.

Their work is many

times during the night.

I did not wake up

until 6:00 in the morning.

There was no sign of him.

I was very scared.

Very, very frightened but

I had to hide that because

I needed to get the

boys off to school.

Heath: She calls

the office, you know,

"are y'all working

on an investigation or

whatever that took all night?"

And all that, and

sometimes there is.

And they said, "no."

Kuykendall: As soon as I

learned that kiki was missing,

I feared the worst.

♪

Brown: We knew we

had an agent missing.

We knew we had to do

everything we possibly could

Now because time was so

critical to find him and bring

Him back safely.

Man: There was no other suspects

except the drug traffickers.

Brown: We go ba*ls to the wall.

With no quarter, we don't stop.

Reporter (over tv): Camarena

was last seen leaving the

Us consulate at around 2:30,

Thursday afternoon.

Witnesses say suddenly

four armed men grabbed him,

Pushed him into the back

of a car and sped away.

Reporter 2 (over tv): The same

day a mexican pilot disappeared,

Known to have aided the

drug enforcement administration.

(radio chatter)

(wailing sirens)

Brown: They had their ak47s.

The mex feds had

their automatic r*fles.

And the dea agents, we had

little 38 caliber revolvers.

Brown: Watching

what was going on,

Rafael caro quintero stood,

hands on his hips.

I will never forget him.

Black mustache,

black curly hair,

Dressed impeccably.

Dress shirt,

starched beautifully,

Unbuttoned almost all

the way down to his belly.

Necklaces, gold medallions.

Sleeves rolled up a slight

bit because he had a very

Wide gold diamond

encrusted bracelet on it.

Just a sneer on his face.

Commandante pavon of the

federal police went up and

Spoke with this man.

Quintero seemed to

hand him something.

Pavon told us relax,

he's on a special mission.

Very high-level security

mission and we are not to

Impede his travel.

What the hell are

you talking about?

This guy is not a

federal comandante.

Brown: And as the plane slowly

began moving away from us,

I see rafael caro quintero

hold up a bottle of champagne

And yell to us in

spanish, "boys, next

time bring bigger toys."

Reporter (over tv): In mexico,

the suspect in the kidnapping

Of a us drug agent

has disappeared,

And american officials are

charging that mexican police

Helped in the getaway.

Reporter 2 (over tv): These

are some of the men assigned to

The kidnapping case

here in guadalajara.

Elite mexican federal police.

American authorities

say the mexican police,

Apparently on

orders from mexico city,

Have taken what amounts

to a three-week siesta.

Brown: We couldn't go forward.

We had no

law enforcement authority.

We couldn't go searching places.

We couldn't ask for

assistance of citizens,

We couldn't do anything without

the mexican federal police

Because we were

guests in their country.

Reporter (over tv): Tonight,

american authorities say they

Will work on the

marijuana fields here,

The drug traffickers,

the corrupt police later.

All they want now

is their agent back.

♪

(speaking in native language).

Reporter (over tv): They were

found with their arms bound

Behind their backs, blindfolded.

They had been dead at least

15 days and had been buried

For part of that time.

Reporter 2 (over tv):

The commander of the

Mexican police task force

investigating the

Disappearance of

camarena arrived.

The us drug enforcement

administration's top man in

Mexico was also there.

He looked shaken as he left.

Heath: I was the only one that

was approved to sit in from

The dea at the autopsy.

Well he was tortured,

And obviously hurt very badly,

And on and on and

on until he died, so.

Camarena: It was like, it was

like a, I was feeling his pain.

It's like I wanted to feel that

pain to, to be able to forgive.

Esquivel: The guy in charge

of that interrogation was

Rafael caro quintero,

and he was a natural k*ller.

He was so upset with the

dea and kiki camarena because

Months before that they

discover a big plantation in

The rancho el búfalo.

(g*nshots)

Brown: Kiki was a tough guy.

He was a marine.

He put up with

all kinds of stuff,

Fighting for the

united states.

And to have him suffer that

t*rture at the hands of these

Traffickers was outrageous.

Kuykendall: Kiki's body

was flown to san diego in a

Air force cargo plane.

That was kiki's

last flight home,

That was going back to

his adopted country,

The united states of america.

I was in the aircraft,

And it was a somber time,

Somber flight.

Brown: From that moment, we had

a great resolve in this country

To find those who

were responsible and

bring them to justice.

♪

Reporter (over tv):

Rafael caro quintero is being

Held in a prison

on the outskirts of

mexico city tonight.

He was captured in costa rica

earlier this week and returned

To mexico amid heavy

security last night.

Reporter 2 (over tv): American

officials say he is living in

A country club atmosphere

with his own servants,

Liquor and private phone lines.

Reporter 3 (over tv):

A police comandante,

Armando pavón reyes, was

sentenced to prison this week

For taking a huge bribe

to help caro quintero

flee after the k*lling.

Reporter 4 (over tv):

Félix gallardo, reputedly

Mexico's biggest

cocaine trafficker,

Is also wanted for

the camarena k*lling

But is still at large.

(crowd cheering)

Grillo: As a teenager, he went

to college and was studying

Business and he joined the

police where he was assigned

To be a bodyguard for public

officials and started making

Strong connections in

mexican political circles.

Esquivel: Miguel

angel felix gallardo,

A figure that had charisma.

He was like a

businessman in a suit.

A narco trafficker in a suit.

He knows how to

talk to politicians

and corrupt officials.

♪

Grillo: When the mexicans

got into cocaine in a big way,

This would turn the mexican drug

traffickers from what had been,

You know, at one point

marijuana smugglers into these

People running multi-billion

dollar businesses and who

Would use that money to

build armies that would

Drown mexico in blood.

Reporter (over tv): At least

40% of the cocaine smuggled

Into the states is

from the tijuana cartel.

Man: To control that city, you

have to k*ll a lot of people.