Mexico's Cartel Wars: The Torture and Murder of Agent Kiki Camarena | #438

Summary

RedHanded Episode #438:
Mexico's Cartel Wars — The Torture and Murder of Agent Kiki Camarena
Release Date: February 26, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this gripping episode, Hannah and Sruti of RedHanded tackle the dark, twisting history and present chaos of Mexico’s cartel wars, focusing on the torture and murder of DEA Agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena in 1985. The episode blends history, investigation, personal narrative, and conspiracy to show how one man’s death ignited decades of violence, transformed the drug trade, and may have exposed dark secrets at the highest levels of US intelligence. Timely and chilling, the episode connects the dots from 1980s Guadalajara to the ongoing violence triggered by the 2026 killing of cartel boss El Mencho.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Present-Day Cartel War Context ([03:03]–[05:27])

• The episode kicks off in the shadow of current events: On Feb 22, 2026, Mexican military killed Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes (El Mencho), leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
• Immediate fallout: Violent retaliation, prison breaks, lockdowns in cities like Puerto Vallarta & Guadalajara, heavy tourist impacts, and threats to the upcoming World Cup.
• “It’s really, really, really scary out there right now in Mexico. The country is very much on its knees and the death toll is escalating.” – Sruti [05:27]

2. A Historical Rewind — Birth of the Cartels ([05:58]–[16:52])

The 1960s–70s: Rudimentary Drug Trade

• Mexico’s drug trade was once a “rustic affair”—largely marijuana, small regional groups, less violence.
• Enter Pedro Avilés Pérez, “El León de la Sierra,” the cowboy kingpin.

The 'War on Drugs' Begins

• 1971: Nixon officially declared drugs “public enemy number one.”
• Operation Condor (late 1970s): US-funded Mexican troops burn poppy and weed fields—didn’t end the trade, just forced its evolution.

The Rise of Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo

• After Avilés is killed, Félix Gallardo (El Padrino—the Godfather) unifies regional gangs into the Guadalajara Cartel, using systemic state corruption as glue.
• “In a move so genius that it is frankly amazing no one thought of it sooner, Felix unified Mexico’s traffickers by turning state corruption into the glue that held the business together.” – Sruti [13:52]

The Cartel's Structure & Senior Figures

• Félix is joined by “Don Neto” Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo (the suit-wearing statesman) and young Rafael Caro Quintero (wealthy, wild, violent).
• Early lieutenants included future infamous kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán.

Expansion to Cocaine

• Early 1980s: Guadalajara cartel collaborates with Colombian supplies, especially Escobar’s Medellín cartel. Half of US-bound cocaine now moves through Mexico. Profits soar, corruption deepens.

3. Kiki Camarena: The Man and His Mission ([21:38]–[30:01])

Personal Story

• Mexican-born, US-raised “Kiki” Camarena’s childhood ambition was always law enforcement. He married his sweetheart and joined law enforcement, eventually becoming a DEA agent.
• “I know I’m just one person, but I can make a difference.” – Kiki Camarena (as quoted by his biographer) [23:48]

Assignment in Guadalajara

• By 1980, Kiki relocates his family south, entering a narco-state “owned by the cartel.”
• Despite the DEA’s tiny size and impotence in the face of corruption, Kiki is effective—working informants, following leads, and organizing major busts.

Major Raids & the Cartel’s Backlash

• Leads a 1982 raid in Zacatecas (200+ acres, multi-ton weed bust).
• DEA tips off Mexican military in 1984 for the historic Rancho Búfalo raid (3,000 acres, $8B/year operation wiped out, run by Rafael Caro Quintero).

4. Abduction, Torture, and Murder of Kiki Camarena ([30:59]–[37:11])

The Kidnapping

• February 7, 1985: Kiki is abducted in broad daylight. Witnesses assume it’s another state-sanctioned act.
• His wife, Mika, reports him missing the next day.
• When his pilot also vanishes, the worst is assumed.

Investigation & Discovery

• US–Mexico relations in crisis: Border crossings shut; media frenzy ensues.
• Mexican authorities stall or direct investigators in circles.
• The DFS (Dirección Federal de Seguridad)—allegedly the cartel’s own “private army”—is heavily implicated.

The Shocking Tapes

• Audio evidence reveals the cartel (esp. Caro Quintero) torturing Kiki for over 30 hours: waterboarding, beatings, sexual assault, being set on fire.
• “DEA agents were forced to listen to the sounds of their colleague’s bones snapping and skin sizzling as he was put through this unimaginable torture for over 30 hours.” – Sruti [36:26]

Bodies Found

• March 5, 1985: Kiki’s mutilated corpse, and that of his pilot, is found buried in Michoacán.
• Funeral attended by hundreds; US pledge for justice.

5. Operation Leyenda & the Aftermath ([40:03]–[49:15])

• Largest DEA homicide investigation ever.
• Wall of silence; corruption links all the way to police, Interpol, and the brother-in-law of Mexico’s former president.

Bringing Killers to Justice

• Massive US pressure forces Mexican military action.
• “Don Neto” surrenders after shootout; Caro Quintero caught in Costa Rica after a 16-year-old girl contacts family; Félix Gallardo eventually arrested in 1989.
• All sentenced to 40 years, but still influence operations from prison.

The Splintering of The Cartels

• US policies and pressure break up the Guadalajara Cartel. Result: the spread and explosion of new, even more violent regional cartels (Tijuana, Juarez, Gulf, Sinaloa/El Chapo, and later Jalisco New Generation).

The Continuing War

• With less unity, carnage only increases; turf wars; mass graves; ongoing casualty lists.

6. U.S. Policy & Drug War Evolution ([47:57]–[53:34])

• After Kiki’s killing, US law and DEA powers explode: more resources, the forceful Anti-Drug Abuse Act (1986), and the militarization of drug enforcement.
• New enforcement programs, like Operation Snowcap, intensify focus on Latin America.

7. The CIA, The Contras, and Conspiracy ([53:34]–[70:49])

A “Third Rail” Theory

• Hector Berrellez, Operation Leyenda head, begins to suspect Kiki’s death wasn’t just cartel revenge.
• Oddities: cartel doesn’t usually make torture tapes—or cross cartel/DEA boundaries directly.
• Eyewitnesses point to a Cuban, “Max Gomez” (aka Felix Rodriguez, CIA operator) and a “Gringo Larry” (Lawrence Harrison, American/CIA presence in Mexican intel service).

The Contra Pipeline

• 1980s: US Congress bans direct Contra funding. CIA allegedly uses cartel drug profits to fund Nicaragua’s anti-communist rebels, prioritizing Cold War over drug control.
• Kiki’s financial investigations may have exposed this arrangement.

Evidence & Fallout

• Senate “Kerry Committee” confirms US-contra funds ended up with traffickers, but stops short of proving direct CIA involvement.
• Journalist Gary Webb’s (1996) “Dark Alliance” series links CIA-contra-cocaine, but mainstream media and federal investigations push back—yet CIA admits to “strategic indifference.”
• Multiple testimonies and later investigations (2013+) raise more red flags (e.g., cartel-jets going full circle from drug routes to Contra weapons transports).

Redacted Truths & Unanswered Questions

• “Even if you do a Freedom of Information request…anything that will actually make them look guilty…will be redacted because of state security.” – Hannah [70:37]

8. Legacies and Current Status of Key Players ([70:49]–end)

• Félix Gallardo: Still in prison, elderly, denies involvement.
• Don Neto: Served sentence, now free under house arrest.
• Caro Quintero: Released on a technicality in 2013, recaptured 2022, extradited to US in 2025, awaiting trial.
• Kiki’s family: Using the new terrorist designation of cartels to sue for compensation.

The Cultural Legacy

• Kiki is memorialized as a martyr and folk hero.
• Red Ribbon Week—anti-drug awareness campaign—founded in his name, reaching tens of millions.
• Media attention (TIME magazine cover, Netflix’s Narcos: Mexico) pass his story to new generations.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “This is the story of how one man’s horrific murder blew the war on drugs battlefield apart and changed the game when it came to US foreign policy and the cartel landscape in Mexico forever.” – Hannah [07:03]
• “The Guadalajara cartel owned Mexico.” – Sruti [25:27]
• “DEA agents were forced to listen to the sounds of their colleague’s bones snapping and skin sizzling as he was put through this unimaginable torture for over 30 hours.” – Sruti [36:26]
• “The operation’s aim was to work with foreign militaries to destroy cocaine production at its source.” – Hannah [48:41]
• “No points for guessing the extremely obvious answer. US intelligence services were actively facilitating the drug trade in Mexico to fund a secret war that the citizens of the United States knew absolutely nothing about.” – Hannah [61:03]
• “Multiple official investigations all led to the same conclusion, at least officially. There was no evidence of CIA involvement in either Kiki’s death or Contra linked drug trafficking. The CIA has always strenuously denied all allegations, with Kiki’s biographer Elaine Shannon shrugging them off as a deep state conspiracy theory.” – Hannah [69:48]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [03:03] — Contemporary fallout from El Mencho’s assassination
• [08:18] — Cartel roots and the “cottage industry” days
• [12:08] — Félix Gallardo builds the Guadalajara Cartel
• [16:52] — Expansion into cocaine trafficking
• [21:38] — Kiki Camarena’s background
• [28:39] — Major DEA raids threaten cartel profits
• [30:59] — Kiki’s abduction
• [36:26] — The torture tapes and discovery of the bodies
• [40:03] — Operation Leyenda launches
• [43:52] — Kingpins arrested, fragmentation of the cartel begins
• [49:15] — New cartels, new violence after the break-up
• [53:34] — The CIA/Contra conspiracy theory emerges
• [61:03] — The alleged covert pipeline of drugs and funds
• [69:48] — Official denials, persistent suspicion

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Tone & Speaker Dynamic

• Hannah and Sruti’s style blends irreverence, black humor, skepticism, and seriousness. They break tense moments with levity and wry asides (“Everything touched by the sun is your…” [11:29]), but never undercut the story’s core gravity.
• Their skepticism regarding both cartel and official US narratives is clear:
  • “I need no more information—sold. They’ve done so much worse.” – Hannah, on the CIA theory [54:06]
  • “Anything that will actually make them look guilty…will be redacted because of state security.” – Hannah [70:37]

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Final Takeaways

• Kiki Camarena’s death marks a turning point in the drug war, fundamentally reshaping cartel power in Mexico and catalyzing profound changes—some beneficial, many disastrous—in US law enforcement and foreign policy.
• Despite mountains of evidence and decades of rumor, the full truth about Kiki’s murder and the US government’s possible role may never be known—and as the hosts insist, the pattern of corruption and cover-up continues.
• With Mexico still mired in cartel violence and American demand fueling the trade, the legacy of the Camarena case is vividly, brutally alive today.

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For more: If you want deep dives into macabre history, true-crime intrigue, and sharp, skeptical commentary, make sure to check out RedHanded each week.

Transcript

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[Sruti]

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[Hannah]

We don't know what's in the water here at Red Handed hq.

[Sruti]

Is it crack? What's in the water?

[Hannah]

The water. Oh, no, we're much machine. Cocaine is in the water in this country, my darling. And 11 out of 12 toilets in

[Sruti]

the Houses of Parliament and on all of the banknotes.

[Hannah]

Anyway, we've done it again. What we thought was a case of yore, a pasto case, has actually turned out to be incredibly timely. And this used to happen to us, I would say pre pandemic and then during a bit, but then everything stopped, so obviously no trials were happening.

[Sruti]

Yeah, peak zeitgeist.

[Hannah]

We used to stumble across things all the time. We'd be working on a case that we thought that was really super duper odd and then something to do with it would magically occur the week we were releasing it.

[Sruti]

The last big one was Delphi.

[Hannah]

When was that?

[Sruti]

That was. Do you not remember me urgently rewriting the script on the way back down from Edinburgh?

[Hannah]

Oh, yeah. When I'd broken my ankle

[Sruti]

and you were sat in the seats next to me getting hammered with two random guys we met on the train.

[Hannah]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sruti]

And I was sat there on a solo seat.

[Hannah]

Yes, I do now it's, it's coming

[Sruti]

back to me, furiously batting away the, like, attendants who were asking me if I wanted a drink while watching Horrific news reports about the fact that they had arrested Richard Allen in the Delphi case.

[Hannah]

And I was getting good and drunk.

[Sruti]

You were. And I was like, keep one eye on her, one eye on this guy.

[Hannah]

They got off at Darlington, we were fine. I had ages till London to sober up.

[Sruti]

No, I mean I can get you off the train. I thought they were harmless. But anyway, we're background into the red

[Hannah]

handed Zeitgeist because as we prepared to record this episode that we've had on the schedule for quite some time, Mexico has been plunged into chaos as a part of ongoing military action to destroy its notorious drug cartels. On 22 February 2026 mere hours ago, the Mexican army killed the leader of the Jalisco new generation cartel, aptly named Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, AKA El Mencho, one of the most infamous and bloodthirsty narcotics traffickers in Mexico, responsible for pumping staggering volumes of fentanyl into the us fuelling the current epidemic. It's the biggest cartel boss takedown since the legendary kingpin and prison escapee Joaquin El Chapo Guzman was finally captured in 2016. Everything from 2016 is coming back.

[Sruti]

There you go.

[Hannah]

What's next?

[Sruti]

2016, El Chapo, 2026, El Mencho. So El Mencho's death has triggered a wave of retaliatory violence across multiple Mexican states, with cartel cells lashing out to show their loyalty and fury at his murder, whilst also of course, scrambling for control in this newly created power vacuum. Also, no doubt all of this violence that we are seeing on the streets of Mexico is to show the current president, Gloria Sheinbaum, who has been under increasing amounts of pressure from the US to crack down on the cartels, basically to show her that killing El Mencho won't do anything to stop the extreme violence. If anything, you doing that is only going to make us act even more crazy. Now, the chaos has involved prison breaks, vehicles being set on fire in the streets, explosions and gunfights with armed forces horses. Beach resort cities like Puerto Vallarta and the state capital of Guadalajara are currently under lockdown, with terrified tourists unable to leave.

[Hannah]

Oh my God. The World cup is supposed to be in Guadalajara.

[Sruti]

Oh yeah, this is the same Guadalajara that is set to host 4, 4 FIFA World cup games in mere months in June. But apparently a million people were expected to descend on the city.

[Hannah]

Oh, I believe that.

[Sruti]

So, yes, it's really, really, really scary out there right now in Mexico. The country is very much on its knees and the death toll is escalating I'm Sruti.

[Hannah]

I'm Hannah.

[Sruti]

And this is red handed.

[Hannah]

We've done it again. We have.

[Sruti]

And this is the perfect time for us to tell you how we got here. With a conflict that has been raging for decades, and just like now, was largely triggered by the death of just one man.

[Hannah]

So let us take you back to the front line of Nixon's so called war on drugs. We can't totally leave Nancy Reagan out of that, in my opinion, but I'm a bit of a Nixon slut, so never mind. Anyway, the 80s is where we're focusing. And in the 80s, there was only one thing more dangerous than being a part of the notorious Guadalajara cartel. And that was working for their enemy, the American Drug Enforcement Administration. One such brave agent, Enrique Kiki Camarena, dedicated his career to busting large scale drug trafficking operations across Mexico. Using his connections and charisma to persuade informants to spill their secrets. Kiki played a high stakes cat and mouse game with the violent criminal kingpins in charge of a deeply corrupt narco state until his time ran out in February 1985 when he was abducted, tortured and killed by the cartel he had devoted his life to hunting down. As for what really went down in Guadalajara, the official narrative is simple, straightforward. Kiki Camarina posed a threat to the cartel's profits, so they took him out. But in recent years, bombshell revelations from those who were actually there suggest there may be far more to the puzzle than meets the eye. A twisted web of intrigue, deep state secrets and Cold war espionage, with allegations that point not just to iced out drug lords, but my favourite, and I wouldn't say it's like a Scientology level of expertise for me, but it's up there. The CIA, the American Secret Service. So in what initially seemed like a black and white tale of good versus evil, suddenly things became way more complicated because they literally always are. This is the story of how one man's horrific murder blew the war on drugs battlefield apart and changed the game when it came to US foreign policy and the cartel landscape in Mexico forever.

[Sruti]

And led directly to what we are seeing today on the streets of Guadalajara and several other states by the time I'm recording this. So to understand how we got here, we need to zoom out for a second. In the 60s and 70s, Mexico's role in the global narcotics trade was were still pretty low key. The country wasn't yet dominated by massive cartels or fearsome kingpins skinning and decapitating their enemies on the streets. Instead, it was an Altogether more rustic affair, more of a drug cottage industry, if we will, focused largely on marijuana. Rural farmers pushed their homegrown weed north through family links and local smugglers. The trade was organised through rough regional groups bound by geography, kinship and convenience, rather than a centralised hierarchy.

[Hannah]

Still, powerful bosses emerged in various territories. The most notorious was Pedro Aviles Perez, a tough cowboy type known as El Leon de la Sierra, the Lion of the Sierra. And if Wikipedia is to be believed, which after having just recorded Gale Benson. Nope. But according to Wikipedia, he also has a different nickname, which is a slightly less cool version of, like, Sneaky Pete.

[Sruti]

Now, we repeated this ominous phrase, war on drugs, a few times already into this episode, but what does it actually mean? Well, it came into popular lingo in 1971 after a press conference where the US President, Richard Nixon, dramatically declared drug abuse to be public enemy number one. Now, at first it was just talk, but towards the end of the decade, it turned into action. Under pressure from the us, the Mexican government launched Operation Condor, a massive military campaign designed to stamp out drug production at the root, literally. With American funding, intelligence and support, Mexican troops stormed into the country's so called Golden Triangle, basically the mountainous region spanning Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua, and burned marijuana and opium poppy fields to the ground. Now, you might think that's game over, surely. Right, Torch it all to the ground.

[Hannah]

Torching the cops comes next.

[Sruti]

Torch the crops, not the cops. And leave the traffickers with absolutely no product left to sell. Job's a good un. But they hadn't bet on an enterprising young upstart named Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo. He had a dream of building an empire and he wasn't going to give up that easily.

[Hannah]

Born and raised in Sinaloa, Felix came up through the ranks as a protege of Pedro Avides, the infamous lion of the Sierra. Snooky Pete. But when Aviles was killed in a police shootout in 1978, which many suspect Felix might have had a traitorous hand in, the lion cub stepped right into his old mentor's considerable cowboy boots to take over the pride.

[Sruti]

Everything touched by the sun is your.

[Hannah]

Try again.

[Sruti]

I don't remember. I'm not good at quotes. What is it?

[Hannah]

Everything the light touches. Simba?

[Sruti]

Sure.

[Hannah]

Much better.

[Sruti]

Thank you. That's what Felix told himself. Give me a break. I haven't showered in three days. I'm very sad. The shower in my house is broken. I'm not just dirty.

[Hannah]

You smell fine. You stood pretty close to me earlier, actually. How nice you smelled.

[Sruti]

I oh, thank you. I'm just layering on more and more deodorant.

[Hannah]

Sure, sure, sure.

[Sruti]

And the only wet wipes in the house are like the industrial style ones that you used to like that have got bleach in, that have got like lots of chemicals in. So I haven't used that. So.

[Hannah]

Yeah, okay, you are forgiven. The old rural system was collapsing, leaving many traffickers scrambling to survive. But while others saw chaos, Miguel Felix saw an opportunity. A shrewd businessman with limitless ambition, he rose from the ashes of Operation Condor with a radical new plan to professionalize the drug trade in Mexico from fractured cliques into a well oiled corporation. He convinced the bosses of the regional trafficking groups to form one mega cartel with him at the helm, with the basic premise that they would be stronger together. And how did he do it? Not firepower with protection.

[Sruti]

You see, Felix had friends in all the right places. As a former officer in Mexico's Federal Judicial Police, he'd served as the Sinaloa state governor's bodyguard and was even godfather to his son. Along the way, he'd forged valuable connections with Mexican law enforcement, politicians and security officials. And as it turned out, well, they could all definitely be bought off for a price. Felix knew that by investing in institutional protection, he could make his operation basically bulletproof. And soon enough, the other drug lords all wanted in. In a move so genius that it is frankly amazing no one thought of it sooner, Felix unified Mexico's traffickers by turning state corruption into the glue that held the business together. With Sinaloa still smouldering from Operation Condor, the cartel relocated their base of operations to the urban hub of Guadalajara. By the early 80s, they'd absorbed Mexico's once fragmented gangs into a singular untouchable entity that utterly dominated the country's drug trafficking trade. The notorious Guadalajara Cartel.

[Hannah]

Felix didn't build this empire all on his own. The cartel's senior management consisted of high level capos, fellow Sinaloan traffickers who Felix entrusted with various strands of the operation. Each of these guys brought something very different to the table. At Felix's right hand was Ernesto Forsenka Carrillo, also known as Don Neto. The elder statesman of the group, Don Neto steered the reins with a respectable CEO image. Think finely tailored suits, but a distaste for the sort of flashy vulgarity you might expect from a drug kingpin. Don Neto apparently had strict rules for behaviour in the cartel, so unnecessary violence or getting high off your own supply was a total no, no. The other major boss was a Young maverick called Rafael Caro Quintero, who was in charge of prince production and organising farmers at the ground level. And let's just say that young Raffa, as he was known, was everything that Don Neto was not. He was worth billions in his early 20s and was every inch the stereotypical rock star drug lord, dripping in gold chains and notoriously trigger happy.

[Sruti]

Felix, Don Neto and Rafa were the three top dogs. But the cartel was massive, with huge numbers of capos supported by lower rank gunslingers known as pistoleros in every corner of Mexico. In prominent roles were notorious figures like Manuel Salchido Uteza, a vicious executioner whose nickname, El Cochiloco, the Crazy Pig, tells you pretty much everything you need to know about his role in slaughtering the

[Hannah]

group's enemies is my favourite one so far, though.

[Sruti]

Also in the ranks was a rising young thug whose name you might just recognise was, of course, Joaquin El Chapo Guzman. El Chapo's time in the spotlight would come later, but for now it was the reign of Miguel Felix and his band of not so merry men. At the very top of the cartel's pyramid sat its architect, Felix. He would ultimately earn the prestigious nickname El Padrino, the Godfather, and El Jefe de Jefes, the boss of bosses. Not bad for a Sinaloan cowboy.

[Hannah]

At first, the Guadalajara cartel focused chiefly on the Mexican drug trade's bread and butter, homegrown marijuana. Rafael Caro Quintero pioneered a growing technique called sinsemilla, which is seedless weed that's cheaper and easier to produce, and it can thrive even in the middle of a desert. And that made staggering profits for the cartel. But while their business may have grown from grass, the bosses quickly realised that the real money was in snow. The cocaine craze exploded in the early 1980s, and once again, Miguel Felix was ahead of the curve. He swiftly brokered strategic alliances with Colombian cartels in the late 70s, like Pablo Escobar's Mary Jin cartel, to transport their precious marching powder to the US by reusing established marijuana routes.

[Sruti]

And it paid off. By the early 1980s, about 50% of Colombian cocaine headed for the U.S. traveled through Mexico.

[Hannah]

Where else would it go? What's the other way around? Who cares? Who am I, the dea?

[Sruti]

Yeah, I guess it could have come by boat and you would take it like, you know where those San Blas islands are?

[Hannah]

Oh, okay, sorry, yeah.

[Sruti]

And you would take it by boat across, which obviously would be more obvious. Yeah, piratey, like people be like, what's that big boat doing? Oh, it's full of trucks. Like, I guess traveling it over land is going to be cheaper, easier, more effective. See China Belt and Road Initiative. Like it makes sense that just bringing it through Mexico would be a lot easier now. The cartel's profits soared because, like we said, much more effective. And soon Mexico was established as a global player in the distribution of heroin, cocaine, and marijuana in the United States. By 1984, the Guadalajara Cartel had reached the dizzying heights of its power, raking in well over $3 billion in revenue every single year. To put that into perspective, that's more than the biggest companies at the time like Ford Motors, Mobil Oil, and the chemicals company dupont were making combined. That is outrageous. And the richer the cartel grew, the stronger their grip on Mexico became. By the mid-1980s, they felt like they were utterly invincible. And then came along Kiki.

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[Hannah]

His name was Enrique Camarena Salazar, but to those who knew him, he was just Kiki. A true child of the border. He was born in 1947 in Mexicali, but his family moved to the USA when he was just nine to pick fruit in the fields of Southern California. Kiki went from Mexicali to Calexico, Twin Cities separated by little more than a wire fence. And eventually he became a naturalized American citizen. As a little boy, he begged his mum to buy him a toy gun, insisting that he would be a cop one day. And while many of his friends drifted into drugs and crime in their teens, Kiki never grew out of that single minded ambition. At just 18, he told his high school sweetheart who's called Geneva but nicknamed Mika for some reason, he told her he had only two goals in life. To become an FBI agent and to marry her.

[Sruti]

Chirps Ha.

[Hannah]

I'd take it. Fuck. And he did marry her. But he didn't quite join the FBI. He went to college and got a degree in criminal justice before serving two years in the U.S. marines and doing a stint as a firefighter.

[Sruti]

In 1970, now 23 years old, Kiki joined the Calexico Police Department. He first worked as a narcotics officer, a risky job that involved going undercover to facilitate cross border drug busts. It was a role that Kiki was born for. His biographer Elaine Shannon described him as a natural in the theatre of the street. That's a good line. Capable of convincing hardened Mexican criminals that he was one of them, Kiki found his calling going toe to toe with traffickers, vowing to stop the flow of drugs into the country that had adopted him. Despite his mum's fears for his safety, Kiki assured her that this is what he wanted to do. He told her, I know I'm just one person, but I can make a difference. Kiki had no idea of the difference he'd end up making or of the sacrifice that he'd have to give.

[Hannah]

In 1974, Kiki became a special agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration, the DEA that Hank works for. In breaking Bad. His work took him around California, but he always yearned to be where the real action was, as a soldier on the front lines of the war on drugs. So he requested a transfer to the DEA's resident office in Guadalajara, relocating his wife and their three young sons to Mexico in the spring of 1980. And it was around this time that the Guadalajara cartel were picking up some serious steam. For the first time. Kiki arrived in Mexico all fired up, ready to catch the country's most prolific traffickers. But what he found waiting for him was a bit of an anti climax,

[Sruti]

honestly, because Kiki's colleagues had been around long enough to get wise to the way things were here. And they knew trying to fight the Guadalajara cartel was totally hopeless. Mexico was a true narco state in the 1980s. The cartel now by this point had everyone in its pocket, from police officers to politicians, and ironically, the very group that should have been investigating it, the government agency called the Direction Federal de Seguridad. Dfs, which was basically the Mexican equivalent of the American CIA, was the most corrupt of the whole bunch. Former DEA agent James Koikendall called it an unholy alliance where the DFS unofficially became the cartel's very own private army and link to government. Many of the cartel's top figures actually had DFS credentials, giving them unrivalled political power and access. To put it bluntly, the Guadalajara cartel owned Mexico.

[Hannah]

In contrast, the DEA was a very small fish in a huge shark infested pond. And the sharks are on cocaine. Do you remember cocaine Bear? Do you remember when that happened?

[Sruti]

How could I forget?

[Hannah]

Never saw it. But I don't need to. I know enough. The DEA was a relatively young agency. It was only formed in 1973. So to put it into context, there were actually more women serving in the NYPD than there were agents in the entire DEA in the 80s.

[Sruti]

That blew my mind. That's mad. How like it's so. It's so kind of irrelevant in the 1980s, while the US's like main neighbor to the south is a fucking narco state.

[Hannah]

It really should give you an idea of how tiny the DEA was back then versus the enemy it was supposed to be taking down.

[Sruti]

It's crazy.

[Hannah]

And in terms of authority, it was pretty much the lowest of the low in pecking order standings. DEA agents on foreign postings were restricted from going undercover, using force in their investigations, or even making arrests.

[Sruti]

That's crazy. Like what are they, just like community support officers? It's mad. I mean, civilians can make arrests here.

[Hannah]

The DEA were understaffed, underfunded and totally disrespected. Therefore, the agents were jaded as they come, and I can't blame them. Their hands were tied. They couldn't actually do anything, but were faced with an enormous problem. They were basically just stuck as desk jockeys, gathering as much intelligence as they could from brave informants and hoping that maybe they might get the odd raid here and there, where it was possible.

[Sruti]

Still, Kiki tried his hardest to make a difference. Coming back to his biographer, Elaine Shannon, she notes that he was the best of all the DEA agents with informants. He had a knack for, quote, unquote, convincing a man to screw up his courage and venture where he never dreamed he would go. By boldly following every lead he could, Kiki gathered explosive intel. Like ranch locations, Kiki was making a name for himself as a new sort of DEA agent. And while he might not have been able to reach the cartel's inner circle yet, they certainly knew him. And the pressure started to take a toll on Kiki's family as his wife, Mika, began to notice that she and their young sons were being followed. Sick of living in constant fear, Mika was keen to get out of Guadalajara,

[Hannah]

because Kiki's work was ruffling serious feathers within the cartel. And in 1982, Kiki stepped things up further with his boldest move yet. He was the brains behind a 1982 raid on a huge marijuana farm in Zacatecas that spanned over 200 acres and employed hundreds of growers. The DEA estimated that over 4,000 tonnes of weed were destroyed, making it their biggest bust in Mexico to date. But the best was still to come. In late 1984, tipped off by the DEA, hundreds of Mexican soldiers stormed a vast 2,500 acres acre marijuana plantation in El Hinde, Chihuahua, known as Rancho Bufalo. At nearly 3,000 acres, it made the Zacateca setup look like Yonan's allotment. The plantation, run chiefly by Rafael Caro Quintero, was estimated to generate the cartel. An eye watering $8 billion per year, one of the most lucrative drug operations in the entire world, was up in smoke, quite literally. And the cartel bosses were not happy.

[Sruti]

For the first time in years, the Guadalajara cartel was rattled. Suspecting Kiki of being behind this enormous raid, they were afraid he might be on the verge of uncovering major trafficking routes that would blow a hole further in their profits and risk their relationship with international suppliers like the Medellin cartel. Eyewitnesses report that several urgent meetings were held in late 1984 and early 1985, discussing what to do about this pesky agent. These summits took place in bougie hotels and were attended by cartel leadership, including Felix, Don Neto and Rafa, as well as delegates from the dfs, the police and even senior political figures. And they ultimately came to one grim conclusion. Kiki Camanera had to die.

[Hannah]

Meanwhile, Kiki had finally agreed with his wife, Mika, that it was indeed time to leave Mexico. He'd actually handed in his notice at the Guadalajara DEA office and was due to be transferred to San Diego in just two weeks. It was supposed to be a fresh start for the Camarena family back in the States. But tragically, it wasn't to be. On 7th February 1985, Kiki planned to meet Mika for lunch at their favourite Chinese restaurant, Mimi's, at 2pm Already running late, he called out to the DEA secretaries as he left the office to tell his wife that he was on his way if she called. But as Kiki walked to his car, five armed men approached him. They ordered him into a different car at gunpoint, yanked his coat over his head and sped off. While his broad daylight abduction was witnessed by several people, no one intervened in Guadalajara. Scenes like this weren't unusual. It just looked like the DFS making another arrest. But it was the last time Kiki Camarena was ever seen in public.

[Sruti]

When Kiki didn't show up at the restaurant, his wife, Mika was frustrated, but not hugely alarmed. He often got held up at the office. But when he didn't come home that night before bed, pangs of worry started to needle her. No matter how late her workaholic husband had to work, he never stayed out all night. Still, Mika tried to tell herself something big must have come up for Kiki to still be at work. And eventually, she did fall asleep. When morning came, with still no sign of her husband, Mika reached out to his colleagues. But nobody had seen Kiki, and his car was still parked close to the U.S. consulate. This was an immediate red flag. That car was Kiki's pride and joy and he drove it everywhere. As his fellow agents put it, Kiki was like a cowboy and that car was like his horse. His desk at the office was also untouched, with yesterday's work still sitting on it. Which was, according to everyone who knew him, completely out of character for Kiki. And then came another chilling discovery. Kiki's personal pilot, a man named Alfredo Zavala, was missing too. There was no longer any doubt Kiki Camarena had been kidnapped.

[Hannah]

The story caused a media frenzy with Kiki's face plastered all over the American news. The kidnap of a DEA agent was more than just a crime. It was a diplomatic incident. It's over a border. It's an international fiasco. In an unprecedented move, President Ronald Reagan actually closed several U.S. mexico crossings and imposed intense security measures that had cars waiting up to seven hours at the border. This wasn't really because they thought one of those cars might have Kiki in it. Rather, it was a symbolic measure to put pressure on the Mexican government to investigate what the fuck had happened.

[Sruti]

Because to put it bluntly, the authorities south of the border were dragging their heels. Local law enforcement responded slowly and ineffectively to the DEA's calls for help based on a vague tip off. They arrested one veteran DFS operator, a guy called Tomas Mollet Boquez, and paraded him in front of the press to try and shut everyone up, only to quietly release him later on a lack of evidence. Next, they stormed a ranch where a dubious anonymous letter claimed that Kiki had been taken. There they shot up an entire family, including an elderly grandmother and young children, before it emerged that the tip was completely bogus.

[Hannah]

With their own powers of investigation limited abroad, Kiki's DEA colleagues grew frustrated by their Mexican counterparts utter lack of cooperation. Any action they did take felt performative and hollow and seemed to deliberately be misdirecting them from who had actually taken Kiki.

[Sruti]

Yeah, because they're all in on here.

[Hannah]

Yeah. No. Massive mystery to solve. Whilst in theory there were thousands of potential suspects for his kidnapping, in reality there was just one. The faceless mass of the Guadalajara cartel. And nobody could touch them.

[Sruti]

As the weeks crawled by with few leads, hope that Kiki might be found alive dwindled and those fears were confirmed when the DFS handed over several tapes they had uncovered of Kiki's interrogation and brutal torture. On the recordings, the voice of Rafael Caro Quintero was unmistakable. As he unleashed his fury on the agent he suspected of destroying his bumper crops. At Rancho Buffalo, Kiki could be heard moaning in agony while a revolving circus of hired goons took turns to waterboard him, jump on his back, beat him with butts of their AK47s, violate him sexually with a broom handle and sprinkle gunpowder on his skin and set it alight. DEA agents were forced to listen to the sounds of their colleagues bones snapping and skin sizzling as he was put through this unimaginable torture for over 30 hours. Despite his captors repeated demands to tell them his sources Kiki ultimately gave just one name out of desperation. The pilot who flew him over the fields. Alfredo Zavala. And when his voice ultimately fell silent on the tapes, the outcome was clear. Kiki Camarena had been tortured to death.

[Hannah]

Kiki's body was found almost a month later, on 5th March 1985, in a patch of rural parkland in the state of Michoacan, just east of Guadalajara. He'd been buried alongside the pilot Zavala in a shallow grave wrapped crudely in plastic. Pathologists noted less decomposition than would be expected after a month, suggesting the bodies had been stored somewhere. First, Kiki's body showed evidence of the intense torture he had suffered. His facial bones were shattered, his teeth had fallen out, he had a crushed windpipe, broken ribs and a hole in his skull. Zavala showed less damage, but his face was allegedly contorted in fear and his hands furled up in front of him like he was in a defensive position, like he'd been buried alive.

[Sruti]

Kiki Camarena's flag covered coffin was repatriated to the usa, as his colleague James Kuykendall remembers the scene on the airstrip. And this is what he had to There was no fanfare, no drumbeat, just 60 EA agents on foreign soil carrying the body of their fallen comrade. Hundreds of Kiki's loved ones and law enforcement representatives attended his funeral. And following Kiki's wishes for cremation, his ashes were spread over Mount Signal near Calexico, where he'd grown up. President Reagan personally called Mika Camarena and pledged his support to the family, vowing that no matter what, the US would get justice for Kiki.

[Hannah]

Kiki's murder changed everything between the United States and Mexico. For the first time, ordinary US citizens were forced to confront the true brutality and scale of the drug trade south of the border. Until now, the Reagan administration had been working hard to push the fiction that the so called war on drugs was being won and the cartels were being conquered. And here was a shocking wake up call that that was all a lie. The cartels were all powerful and they were even bold enough to start picking off U.S. operatives in cold blood, filming themselves in the act, no less. And while everyone knew about the inherent risks linked to the job, this was the first time a DEA agent had ever been assassinated on foreign soil. No matter how bad the blood between the cartel and the dea, there had always been an unwritten rule the cartel would never dare touch a U.S. agent. But now that line had been crossed and the US Government had to be seen to respond or risk being undermined on the world stage. Heads had to roll.

[Sruti]

With that, the largest homicide investigation in the history of the DEA was launched. Operation Leyenda. Meaning legend. Its aim was simple. To round up those involved in Kiki's death and bring them to justice. But despite the powers that be pouring millions of dollars into this operation, investigators still faced a major hurdle. The intense culture of fear the cartel had fostered in Mexico. It was like an open secret, but nobody dared to talk on record. As a result, they initially struggled to build a strong case against any key suspects. And they weren't just going after the cartel kingpins here. There were some seriously big fish implicated alongside them.

[Hannah]

The tapes pointed to the presence of several high level state figures, including the ex head of the Federal Judicial Police and Mexico's Interpol boss during Kiki's torture. As Leyenda gradually gained intelligence, it also emerged that the house where Kiki was held actually belonged to the former president's brother in law, Ruben Zuno Arce. Even the men who grabbed Kiki off the street were accredited law enforcement officials acting on the cartel's request. Corruption ran so deep in Mexico that it was a political minefield trying to round up everyone linked to his death.

[Sruti]

They should have just rounded up everyone not linked to his death and see who's left.

[Hannah]

The carte were hiding in plain sight, protected by their wall of men on the inside.

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[Sruti]

still, the US ultimately put enough pressure on the Mexican government to start tearing down that wall by bringing in the literal army. They started by going after Ernesto Funsico Carrillo, AKA Don Neto. After a brief gunfight between Mexican soldiers and his own private army of bodyguards, Don Neto calmly emerged from his Puerto Vallarta villa and tried to cut a deal. But for the very first time, his chequebook wasn't enough. He was arrested and thrown in jail for his role in Kiki's kidnap and murder. Behind bars, Don Neto basically blamed Rafael for everything, claiming that he was furious Rafa had gone too far in killing Kiki. And the tapes do seem to indicate that Don Neto wasn't actually present for the interrogation of Kiki. But he was still an integral part of the plot to abduct and torture Kiki.

[Hannah]

Don Neto's arrest and capture might have been a little more low key than you would expect for a criminal kingpin. But as for Rafa, he went down in a blaze of glory. Immediately after Kiki's murder, he hopped onto a jet and fled to Costa rica, taking a 16 year old girl that he'd taken a shine to with him. Predicting that said girl, who's called Sara Corcio, would inevitably start missing her family and call home, the authorities tapped their phone in the hopes of tracking Rafa's location. It worked. Busting Rafa in bed with Sara, they dragged him back to Mexico to be jailed. The Mexican godfather, Miguel Felix, was a far more slippery catch. He remained at large in Guadalajara City for the next four years, prompting a running joke that everyone in Mexico knew where he was, except for the cops. He was eventually captured at his family home in 1989 and taken into custody. Felix denied any part in Kiki's abduction or his murder. The trio at the head of the fearsome Guadalajara cartel were all found guilty and locked up, receiving sentences of 40 years each.

[Sruti]

But even with the cartel's senior leadership behind bars, there was a sense among the DEA agents that true justice still hadn't been served. Kiki's death had made the DEA hungry to take decisive action in dismantling the cartel. But how much had actually changed? Held in Mexican prisons, the head honchos continued to pull all the strings, just from less bougie surroundings. And with the United States ramping up the aggression in its public facing war on drugs, there was a real thirst for a taste of good old Yankee justice in this case. Still, US Authorities couldn't exactly just swoop in on a bald eagle and lock these crooks up themselves. Or could they?

[Hannah]

No surprises. They tried. But it came with significant backlash. One major capo, a Honduran pilot named Juan Ramon Mata Balestros, who was in charge of the cartel's international transportation, was extradited via the Dominican Republic in 1988 and taken into U.S. custody. This act fanned the already burning flames of anti American sentiment in his native Honduras where his constitution prevented Honduran citizens from extradition. Over a thousand students marched on the US Embassy in Tego Sigalpa in protest, setting the embassy on fire and resulting in the deaths of five people.

[Sruti]

Still, when DEA agent Hector Bareilles took over the Leyenda operation in 1989, he was determined to bring those involved across the border to face justice. He first caused a stir with the US arrest of Reuben Zuna, AKA who was chummy with a Texan congressman and had naturally thought himself to be quite invincible. And in 1990, DEA boss Jack Lorne actually tasked Belarus with kidnapping Humberto Alvarez McCain. A cartel whipped Dr. Heard on the tapes injecting lidocaine into Kiki's heart to prolong his torture. And the plan was to bring him into the US to go on trial. Even though they were on shaky legal ground. Belarus did it and this turned out to backfire massively. The Mexican president at the time kicked up a stink about the doctor's unlawful extradition and his 1992 trial in LA ended in acquittal. Since the waters were so muddied. Kiki's death exposed glaring flaws in US foreign policy when it came to diplomatic incidents like this, making it clear that going forward, things had to change.

[Hannah]

The so called Camarena affair utterly transformed the DEA as an institution. Before Kiki's death, it was generally considered to be the poor relation of beefier law enforcement agencies on the sidelines and chronically overlooked by Washington. Now the US government put their full backing behind the DEA with increased funding, political support and increased powers of authority overseas. Lawmakers passed the Anti Drug abuse Act in 1986 which allowed the USA to withhold foreign aid from countries that didn't adhere to their narcotics laws, essentially forcing the Mexican government to cooperate with the DEA for their own national security. The government also invested in large scale enforcement programs in Latin America like Operation Snow cap between 1987 and 1995, widely posting DEA agents across the continent. The operation's aim was to work with foreign militaries to destroy cocaine production at its source. The changes were monumental and lasting and Kiki's murder was the Catalyst for all of it. Hector Bareilles called it the match that ignited the modern American war on drugs. And a bellwether for the geopolitical narco policy that still exists today.

[Sruti]

Bikiki's death didn't just change things in the dea. It was also the fuse that blew the Guadalajara cartel apart. Under intense pressure during Operation Leyenda, Miguel Felix dismantled the unified cartel structure that he had built, dividing Mexico into regional territories called plazas that were individually run by. By local bosses. I've seen it described as like, he basically goes into, like, a franchise model. He's just like, okay, we can't maintain this, this whole, like, big, monstrous, behemoth situation. We split it up, we franchise it, everybody takes a chunk. You pay some of it back to us, and you can keep some of the money. From that fragmentation, a new generation of cartels emerged, like the Tijuana cartel, the Juarez cartel and the Gulf Cartel. And the notorious El Chapo rose to power as the boss of the biggest and baddest of them all, the new and not so improved Sinaloa cartel. It was a new dawn for the drug trade in Mexico and not exactly for the better. Splintering the cartel into smaller parts and redistributing power might have made it harder for the authorities to land a single decisive blow. But with no centralised power structure, all bets were off. Warring egos and spiralling ambitions ignited a wave of vicious turf wars that would terrorize Mexico throughout the 90s and beyond. Now the cartels weren't just at war with the feds, they were at war with each other. El Chapo's brutal reign turned violence into a public spectacle, with decapitations, dismemberments, castrations and public hangings. In the street, bodies would be propped up with narco mantras, banners with messages to rival cartels or the government to send a powerful message about what would happen if you crossed them. There were mass graves of hundreds littered all over the US Mexico border linked to the cartel wars, with the authorities admitting it would take them at least 100 years to identify all of the victims.

[Hannah]

But the 90s also proved wildly lucrative for these divided gangs. The collapse of the Meridian Cartel in Colombia, capped off by Pablo Escobar's death and his hippos in a hail of bullets in 1993, presented an opportunity for Mexican traffickers to take over. Instead of being paid a flat fee to move cocaine north, Mexican traffickers started selling it themselves and building their own distribution networks across the usa. In simple terms, they stopped being the Middlemen and started running the whole show. And profits skyrocketed. Cartels were no longer just glorified smugglers. They had become global criminal enterprises with massive wealth, power, and an endless appetite for violence. Even more new and powerful groups popped up in the 2000s, including the Jalisco New Generation cartel, run by the notorious El Mencho, who, as we said at the top, was recently assassinated and his card had been marked for years. In 2006, newly appointed President Felipe Calderon finally said enough was enough and declared all out war on drug trafficking. Since then, the Mexican army has been engaged in active military action against the cartels. Between 2006 and 2020, the conflict resulted in 41,000 people dead and over 60,000 missing. And those figures are only continuing to rise. And it's worth noting that the police and army themselves are responsible for a lot of those deaths, with civilians caught in the crossfire. But even as leaders fall, the cartels keep on regenerating. So even today, the war shows absolutely no sign of ending.

[Sruti]

But circling back to Kiki, there's one more element that we have deliberately saved for last. A rumour that has haunted this case for decades, and one that blows the entire story wide open, if true. Because according to the man who led Operation Leander, Kiki Camarena wasn't just killed by the vengeful Guadalajara cartel. He was silenced with help from none other than the CIA.

[Hannah]

I need no more information sold.

[Sruti]

They.

[Hannah]

They've done so much worse. I just.

[Sruti]

Anything.

[Hannah]

Anything in the world. They're the ones that have decreased the price of my flat, for all I'm concerned. But I'm gonna give you the information

[Sruti]

if you insist, if you have to.

[Hannah]

During his investigation, Hector Bereles began to notice that some things just didn't quite sit right. The details of Kiki's abduction felt unusual, like the blindfolding and the existence of taped interrogations.

[Sruti]

Why tape it? Why tape it?

[Hannah]

Why call the Russian embassy in Mexico City pretending to be Lee Harvey Oswald? Who speaks fluent Russian? I don't know. They do this shit all the time.

[Sruti]

If it wasn't the CIA, why would the cartel have filmed it? That's a question that I have. Especially because you can hear Rafa's voice on it.

[Hannah]

Exactly.

[Sruti]

I guess, like they felt pretty untouchable. Like, what did they care? Even if they filmed themselves torturing a person. They probably thought, nothing is going to happen of this. But yeah, it is a weird thing to have done. It's who did they need to prove it to?

[Hannah]

Why would you document something that in no way serves you to document.

[Sruti]

I don't know.

[Hannah]

I do. Because it wasn't them.

[Sruti]

Maybe it's like how they leave bodies out with messages to other cartels and the government.

[Hannah]

They don't have your voice on it, though.

[Sruti]

Yeah, but I guess they say who it's from. I don't know. It's weird. It is weird. But continue with your CIA. I'm not saying the CIA weren't involved.

[Hannah]

No, I know, I know. Cartel operatives were usually much more into a shoot em and dump em style of murder rather than fiddling around with recording devices that could be presented in, I don't know, a court. And according to Barriles, the official narrative behind the cartel's alleged motive didn't quite hold up to scrutiny either. While the destruction of Rancho Bufalo was undoubtedly a huge blow, Bareilles reckoned that it had been overstated as the cartel's supposed lifeblood. And Vareles learned that Kiki wasn't even the one in charge of that particular bust, which was spearheaded by another agent called Charlie Lugo. And also, we've spent quite a lot of time on how little power the DEA had in Mexico. He's the least of their problems. Maybe. Perhaps the cartel had wrongly assumed that Kiki was to blame based on his previous work. But even then, killing him feels really extreme and reckless. Because up until that point, the DEA and the cartel had always circled each other rather than engaging in open combat. There was a tacit understanding that the DEA agents were just doing their jobs like the traffickers were. So many factors about Kiki's murder fell out of place for the cartel, but perfectly sat in keeping with another organisation's dirty tricks.

[Sruti]

As Operation Leyunda progressed, one name kept resurfacing in eyewitness accounts of Kiki's abduction and torture. A Cuban man with the alias Max Gomez.

[Hannah]

Oh, here we go.

[Sruti]

Multiple informants independently identified him as Felix Ismael Rodriguez, AKA El Ghato, a fiercely anti communist Cuban exile and CIA operative who'd been involved in several notable incidents, including the Bay of Pigs invasion and Che Guevara's capture. For Belarus, El Gato's presence suggested something deeper than just cartel revenge. And another incongruous figure kept cropping up in Belarus's witness statements. A guy known as Gringo Larry, who apparently worked for the dfs.

[Hannah]

What a great disguise.

[Sruti]

Now, this was odd in itself. As the DFs didn't employ US citizens, Belarus went on the hunt and tracked down a man named Lawrence Larry Harrison. And he was indeed A gringo. Harrison admitted he was CIA. Not very CIA of him. And he just kept spilling the beans because he said that he had been placed inside the DFS to keep an eye on things in Mexico. Whistleblower Larry had one crucial piece of advice to follow. The money when it came to questioning why Kiki had been killed.

[Hannah]

Up until now, the assumption was that Kiki had been targeted for attacking the source. Burning crops, raiding plantations, etc. But Bareilles learned that Kiki had started using a new strategy known as Operation Petrino that allowed the DEA to investigate cartel finances and even freeze bank accounts across the US And Europe. So Kiki wasn't just going after the crops anymore. He was following the profits and uncovering where they ended up. And so Bareilles came to believe that Kiki had stumbled onto an explosive secret. I've had the morbs so bad this week already, and this is just pushing me closer to the edge, but I've

[Sruti]

got a fucking massive hole in my ceiling to fix, so we gotta get to work. Chop chop.

[Hannah]

What about the ceiling in my soul?

[Sruti]

I will get Dion round to come fix it. Our lovely handyman.

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[Hannah]

So Perez came to believe that Kiki had stumbled onto an explosive secret. No points for guessing the extremely obvious answer. U.S. intelligence services were actively facilitating the drug trade in Mexico to fund a secret war that the citizens of the United States knew absolutely nothing about. So Kiki Camarena didn't just know too much about the cartels. He knew far too much about his own masters.

[Sruti]

So to understand this theory, we need to take a quick detour to Nicaragua. At the height of America's Cold war paranoia in 1979, the Nicaraguan Revolution saw long standing dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle ousted by a left wing socialist group called the Sandranistas. The Nicaraguan Contras were a ragtag coalition of right wing guerrilla fighters whose mission was to overthrow the Sandranistas and go back to the old regime. And naturally, the United States at the time were right in their corner in the grip of Red Scare paranoia. The last thing Washington wanted in its own backyard was another Central American nation going commie, no thank you very much. The only problem. In early 1989, Congress passed a motion preventing the United States from directly funding the Contras. But would those sly dogs at the CIA be held back by a bit of paperwork? According to Hector Bareilles and quite a few others, no, no, they would not.

[Hannah]

Needing a sneakier way of funneling cash to the Contras under the table, the CIA allegedly found it in the illegal narcotics trade. Just redact the allegedly. For the record, but what about the war on Drugs? Well, let's just say that the CIA were more bothered about winning the Cold War than President Reagan's promises to clean up America's streets from the evils of drugs. So the theory goes that during the 1980s, U.S. intelligence services covertly worked with and supported the Guadalajara cartel in exchange for a cut of its profits. All to support their super secret mission in Nicaragua. So everything that's happening in the news this week is directly the CIA's fault.

[Sruti]

Well, that's Hannah's opinion. It's facts.

[Hannah]

And for the cartel's part, why would they play along? Well, as ex DEA agent James Kukendel put it, dope dealers are not trying to tear down the system they love. Was in the cartel's best interests to maintain the political status quo. Because that's the way the CIA built it. Of course, why would they?

[Sruti]

Now, this theory didn't actually start floating around with Hector Bareilles. As early as 1985, the year that Kiki died, press reports were already asking questions about the relationship between Latin American drug trafficking and and the Contras. And there was growing suspicion that in spite of the funding ban, the United States might be more involved than its leaders were willing to let on. So in 1986, Senator John Kerry chaired a Senate Subcommittee investigation, later known as the Kerry Committee, tasked with examining those potential links. And it found evidence that over $800,000 of state funds that were earmarked for humanitarian support in Nicaragua had been paid to known drug traffickers. Now this doesn't exactly prove that the US was directly involved in international drug trafficking, but it did establish a clear financial link between US backed Contra operations and notorious wrong UN's in the narcotics game.

[Hannah]

Who's a more wrongen my question questions. Investigating Leyenda in the early 90s, Hector Bareilles was blindsided by his discovery. Fucking shouldn't have been. Because he considered himself a soldier for his country in a righteous battle against drugs. Yet here he was learning that the war itself was being sabotaged from the inside. He didn't want to believe it, but like all of us, if you look a little bit too long, you can't ignore the flacks. Bareilles presented his evidence to his superiors at the newly reorganised dea and it went down like a lead balloon. And from that point on, Bareles claims that he was blacklisted and pushed out by the Agency. After the messy 1992 trial of Dr. Humberta Alvarez Makin, the new DEA leadership tried to distance themselves from the kidnap their predecessor had authorised, claiming Bareles was a rogue agent and letting him take the fall. Mexico put out requests for Bareilles extradition and he eventually left the DEA under a dark cloud, muzzled and essentially forced into hiding.

[Sruti]

But despite the attempts to silence Bareles, the rumours never really died. In 1996, journalist Gary Webb published a series of reports in the San Jose Mercury News that claimed CIA backed Contra networks were partially to blame for the urban crack epidemic in 1980s America. The backlash was immediate, with major outlets including the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post launching their own investigations that rejected Webb's allegations. Three federal inquiries followed, all of which found no evidence that the CIA deliberately conspired to flood US cities with drugs. But ironically, it was an internal CIA report that acknowledged a more uneasy truth, that the Agency was aware of Contra involvement in 80s drug trafficking and in some cases discouraged the DEA from pursuing investigations into those networks. In other words, they weren't actively involved, just strategically indifferent.

[Hannah]

Let's Fast forward to July 2013 when Mexico's extradition request expired. Hector Bareilles finally broke his silence with an explosive interview on Fox News. And this time he wasn't alone. Former DEA intelligence chief Phil Jordan backed his claims alongside a pilot named Tosh Plumlee, who claimed he'd flown covert Missions for US intelligence linked to the Contras. With these public bombshells, the conspiracy theory was cooking on gas. Later that year, Mexican journalist Jesus Esquibel reported that back in the heyday of the Guadalajara cartel, cache and weapons were transported directly to the Contras in Nicaragua using aircraft owned by Honduran kingpin Juan Maramon Mata Balestros. And those same planes had concrete ties to known CIA operations. Esquivel's reports allege that CIA operative Felix Rodriguez Elgato was actually the one to personally introduce Mata Balestros to the Guadalajara cartel. He literally cleared the Runway for Mata Ballestros to move drugs for the cartel as a long chunk of the profits ended up in the CIA's pocket. And remember Rafael Caro Quintero, the one who fled to Costa Rica after Kiki's murder with a 16 year old? Well, he did that in one of Mata's jets. According to Esquival, the planes were the vital piece connecting the three CIA, cartel

[Sruti]

and contra between 2013 and 2015. Yet more respected journalists like Charles Bowden and Molly Molloy, which is quite the name, would echo these claims. And historian Will Pansters went a step further by linking Kiki's murder to the 1984 assassination of Mexican journalist Manuel Buendia. The official line was that Buendia was killed for daring to speak out against the cartel. But Pansteras suggested something far more provocative. The Buendia, like Kiki, had exposed what the CIA were up to and that's what really got him killed. In the Cold War context. That scoop was just far too dangerous to let loose.

[Hannah]

In 2019, the United States Department of Justice announced that it was re investigating Kiki Camarena's death. In light of these new claims, multiple official investigations all led to the same conclusion, at least officially. There was no evidence of CIA involvement in either Kiki's death or Contra linked drug trafficking. The CIA has always strenuously denied all allegations, with Kiki's biographer Elaine Shannon shrugging them off as a deep state conspiracy theory. So none of it's been proven in the like legal sense of the word, but it's compelling. And also, guess what they do? They just say state Security. Sorry, you can't have that one. Even if you do a Freedom of Information request, which you are, as a US citizen completely entitled to do, that is how MK ULTRA was exposed. Anything that will actually make them look guilty, anything that is actually concrete will be redacted because of state security. That is what they will say.

[Sruti]

Oh, of course, of course. So where are all the key players now? Miguel Felix remains imprisoned in Mexico and at 80 years old, has truly aged into his former nickname as the Mexican Godfather. He still denies having anything to do with Kiki's murder, And in a 2021 TV interview, he even had the nerve to send comfort to his widow. In July 2016, Ernesto Fonseco Carrillo, aka Don Neto, was released after 31 years and placed under house arrest for the rest of his sentence due to failing health. He completed that sentence in April 2025 at the tender age of 94.

[Hannah]

As usual, Rafael Caro Quintero's story is a bit more chaotic. In August 2013, after 28 years behind bars, a Mexican appeals court released him based on a technicality from his first trial. This did not go down particularly well stateside, who put pressure on Mexico to re arrest and extradite him back to the state. But it was too late. Wild card Rafa had already disappeared into the wind. It was rumoured that the old dog had gone right back to his old tricks, fuelling turf battles in the border state of Sonora. He remained at large until 2022, when Mexican authorities finally caught up with him. But this time, the United States weren't content to just leave it at that. In early 2025, Trump declared major Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations and demanded the extradition of several high profile criminals, including Rafa. He was extradited to the US in February 2025 to face federal charges. Now aged 72, he has entered a plea of not guilty and is awaiting trial.

[Sruti]

Not guilty? Just not guilty. Anything? What have you got? Not guilty? Yeah. You think at 72 you'd just be like a trial? Fucking hell.

[Hannah]

With the cartels now legally classified as terrorists, Kiki Camarena's family were able to file a civil lawsuit against the cartel and its surviving leadership, including Caro Quintero, Fonseca Carrillo and Miguel Felix, seeking financial compensation. It won't bring Kiki back, but it would be something. And I would absolutely love literally anybody from the CIA to answer any questions or face any kind of consequence.

[Sruti]

As for Kiki Camarena, he gained a legacy as a folk hero. In November 1988, his face appeared on the COVID of Time magazine and a 1990 miniseries called Drug. The Camarena story went on to win an Emmy. Kiki was also posthumously awarded the DEA's Administrator's Award of Honour, the agency's highest distinction. Shortly after his death, California Congressman Duncan Hunter and Kiki's school friend Henry Lozano launched Camarena clubs in his hometown of Calexico. Kind of like high school abstinence clubs, except instead of sex, its members swear off drugs. The campaign morphed into the iconic Red Ribbon Week, still celebrated today in the last week of October with over 80 million participants. And Kiki's story reached a whole new generation. In 2018, when Netflix released the spin off series Narcos Mexico, the writers chose not to include the CIA theory, something which seriously pissed off Hector Bareilles, who declared Netflix to be complicit in covering up the actual facts of Kiki Camarena's abduction, torture and murder. But don't worry, Hector, we have told

[Hannah]

our listeners at least I'm worried for everyone.

[Sruti]

Well, we do not have time to get into a list of all of the things that the two of us are worried about, but that is, for your information, the zeitgeist rundown of what is going on right now in Mexico and the murder and torture of the man that led to so many warring cartels fighting it out in Mexico. If you are in Mexico, I sincerely hope you are safe. And yeah, it's fucking unbelievable. But there you go. That is the story very coincidentally timed by us at red handed. So we hope you learned something.

[Hannah]

Well, I hope it's compounded for you. The CIA Aura Cartel. The end.

[Sruti]

There you go. So we will see you next week week for something else. Goodbye.

[Hannah]

I won't be here.