← The Underworld Podcast
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- [00:01]
A
All right, remember, the machine knows if you're lying. First statement. Carvana will give you a real offer on your car. All online.
- [00:08]
B
False.
- [00:08]
C
True.
- [00:08]
A
Actually, you can sell your car in minutes.
- [00:11]
B
False. That's gotta be true again.
- [00:13]
A
Carvana will pick up your car from your door, or you can drop it off at one of their car vending machines.
- [00:17]
C
Sounds too good to be true. So true.
- [00:20]
A
Finally caught on. Nice job. Honesty isn't just their policy, it's their entire model. Sell your car today too, Carvana. Pickup fees may apply.
- [00:32]
B
It's 1970 at Dulles Airport, Washington, D.C. and Juan Ramon Mata Ballesteros, a slim 25 year old Honduran, is arriving on a flight from Bogota, Colombia, carrying a little more than Hawaiian shirts and toiletries. Mata, a smooth talking former pickpocket from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, ramshackle capital city, has tried for almost his entire adult life to live in the United States. Each time he's overstayed his visa, been booted out, then returned under a different alias. Can't knock a guy for trying. After all, as Bobby Kennedy said, only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly. You can knock a guy, however, for carrying with him a suitcase stuffed to the brim and with bricks of high grade Colombian blow. 24.5 kilos in total. Hardly small time stuff. You see, Mata is far from a pickpocket these days. His social circles are politicians, military generals, business magnates and narco kingpins. He's built a rep in the Latin American underworld, smuggling drugs and emeralds across some of the most dangerous borders on earth. Now, Mata reckons it's time to show his friends in organised crime what he's really made of and sneak into the biggest consumer market around. But Mata's plan is over almost as quickly as you can say narco, trafficante and definitely before I can say it, border agents pull him aside, peer into his suitcase and throw him in a cell. Somebody else must have placed the cocaine there. Mata pleads. 25 kilos is a hell of an oversight. Officers arrest Mata and they charge him with drug importation. Incredibly, somebody in the judiciary believes Mata's pleads because he dodges the drug rap. Authorities convict him instead on the lesser charge of visa fraud and dispatch him to serve a five year term at Eglin Air Force Base prison in the Florida Panhandle. It looks like the end for Mata's criminal career just years after it began. But he's cannier than that. Barely a year into his sentence, he bribes prison officials, escapes and flees to Mexico. Mata keeps getting arrested there too. But each time the federales grab him, he wriggles free once more. Mostly because he's already friends with narco royalty. Through Cuban capo Alberto Sicilia Falcon, Mata meets Miguel Felix Gallardo, a Sinaloan who's building what will soon become the Guadalajara cartel. He also takes trips to Colombia, hooking up with the men leading a small but growing criminal enterprise out of Medellin. Mata is the binding agent, the glue that bonds the cocaine producers of Colombia with distributors in Mexico all through his tiny home country. Mata's closest colleague in Tegucigalpa is a husband and wife, emerald and drug smuggling duo, Mario and Mary Ferrari. They're members of a Honduran elite that has for decades turned the country into a corrupt US client and a linchpin of organized crime. The trio work great. Mata the jet setter, matchmaking in Colombia and Mexico. And the Ferraris bribing and sweet talking Honduran political and military leaders. Airports, border crossings, harbours. They've got access to the lot. But the thing about narcos, they're about as loyal as Judas Iscariot or that shifty little guy who sold out the Spartans in 300. Some say Mario Ferrari cheats Mata out of a cocaine payday. Others say he sexually assaults Mata's wife. Whatever the reason, it's something Mata can't, won't forgive. And in 1977, just a few years after his Florida escape, Juan Mata Ballesteros will carry out an act of vengeance that will transform him from a silver tongued underworld fixer into a brutal, merciless killer. One the DEA will call a Class 1 violator. One with property on three continents and billions buried in accounts worldwide. A criminal who will control up to a third of America's cocaine imports. Who is plotting to take over his entire home nation. A criminal friends and foes will soon know simply as El Negro, the black one. This is the Underworld Podcast. Hello and welcome to the weekly organized crime podcast that turns over the stoner society and talks about all the creepy crawlies riddled about underneath it. I am Sean Williams. I am back in New Zealand after a long trip on the road in Japan. Absolute scorcher here, and I am joined by the brilliant, the unrivalled Danny Gold in New York City. Home of big buildings, but some of the tiniest egos in world media. Funnily enough, we are both card carrying reporters. We've investigated gangs from Brooklyn to Bangkok and we speak about it each week for money. How are things Going over there. Is it good news for those of you who comment about hating baseball chat? I guess the season's almost over now. But bad news to those of you who hate chat in general because it's the Ashes in a month.
- [06:25]
C
I don't, I don't know what that means and I also hate living in New York. But what are the Ashes?
- [06:30]
B
I mean, just tell me, dude, it's England versus Australia. Test match cricket. I am going to go to the Melbourne cricket ground in around a month after this comes out, and I'm going to be sat with 105,000 people watching eight hours of cricket, which is, it's good. It's good, Danny.
- [06:47]
C
Now do you, when you people watch cricket, do you drink beer for eight hours or what? Is that why people like it? Because you can just drink for eight hours as opposed to most sports games that are like four hours?
- [06:56]
B
Okay, Correct.
- [06:57]
C
Three hours.
- [06:57]
B
Yeah. Okay. You don't have to watch the game. You can drink steadily for, for a whole day. And that's why people enjoy it.
- [07:03]
C
Makes sense.
- [07:03]
B
Especially in Australia. Yeah. Thanks for listening guys to that and other more relevant chat. If you want more shows, interviews, stash house roundups, notes, and reading this, you can of course sign up to our Patreon for just a few bucks a.
- [07:16]
C
Month, patreon.com nworldpodcast or you can sign up on Spotify or on itunes to get those bonus episodes like straight into your. Into your timeline, whatever it is, without having timeline to finagle it, you know?
- [07:29]
B
Yeah, into your postbox. Yeah, we get it, guys. Like you don't like banter, all right? It's no foreplay with you guys. It's straight down to the heavy stuff. So let's all pull down our podcast trousers, get down to it.
- [07:43]
C
Some people do, first of all, weird first of all, second, some people do like the banter. I think most. A lot of others just complain that it's not like a 55 minute episode. Just like the Cold open, which is like, would be a 55 minute movie script. We can't do that every week, guys. It just, it's not possible. So, you know, learn to learn to like the rest of it.
- [08:00]
B
Yeah, just be like the people who do like the banter and don't post comments because I think there's a, there's a confirmation bias here anyway. Yes. Honduras, population just under 11 million, is sandwiched on the Atlantic coast between Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua, one of the so called bridge nations on the Latin American drug trafficking route. Going back around a Century and run by a succession of corrupt narco presidentes. And often the scene of some pretty spectacular drug related violence. In fact, I dug up so many stories researched in this episode that's going to be split into two parts. Today's show will chart the rise and kind of full of Juan Varamon Mata Ballesteros, one of the biggest but least spoken about narcos in history. And I really do mean that, like it's nuts. And then episode two is going to get into Honduran crime post Mata. Warring cartels, coups, corruptions and scandals. And all of that is very much ongoing today. It's the Honduran narco epic everyone has been demanding. Danny It's a tegusigalpatusam.
- [09:04]
C
You know, I'm rewatching narcos right now and Mata's actually, he plays a. Not a central role, but he's in it. And I always, yeah, I always wanted to go to Honduras and report there, you know, during when I was doing all The El Salvador Ms. 13 stuff in El Salvador. The gangs in El Salvador really hide things a lot better. You know, they're not out in the open. Like by the time I got there like 2015, they weren't like showing their face tattoos to you all the time. You have to really work for that. Where in Honduras, which had similar problems with Ms. 1318 street, they would just be like posted up in a neighborhood with like AK slung around their neck like 15 year olds. So better visuals, you know?
- [09:39]
B
Yeah, yeah. Sales of concealer going through the roof in El Salvador, but not in Honduras. They do not give an S. If you download and listen to this show to learn about how the cocaine trade works, guys, you are not going to be disappointed. Honduras might be small, but it's crazy significant and is packed with characters. And to understand how it's like this, we have to actually go way, way back. All the way back in fact to 1821 when Honduras wins its independence from Spain and and the country falls almost immediately into political chaos, military rule and mountains and mountains of debt. And to alleviate this debt, the country turns right away to foreign investors who it all but just allows to take the place over throwing cash at controlling stakes in Honduras mineral wealth, which at the time is gold, silver, copper, zinc and bananas. By the end of the 19th century, Honduran elites, many of whom have emigrated from turmoil in other parts of the world. So European Jews, Armenians, for example, they're working hand in hand with British, French and American oligarchs to construct Honduran roads. Railways, factories, and agricultural projects. And over time, this turns the country into something of a feudal state. You've got the foreign millionaires and their allies in the local elite. In the early 1900s, bananas overtake mining as Honduras, key export. And in 1905, American writer O. Henry actually coins the term banana republic. Penn. Based on his experiences on the vastly unequal banana fields of rural Honduras. His phrase, writes an Economist editorial about the writer Henry neatly conjures up the image of a tropical, agrarian country. But its real meaning is sharper. It refers to the fruit companies from the United States that came to exert extraordinary influence over the politics of Honduras and its neighbors. By the end of the 19th century, Americans had grown sick of trying to grow fruit in their own chilly country. It was sweeter and cheaper by far to import it instead from the warmer climes of Central America, where bananas and other fruit grow quickly. So none of these American mega grocers is as powerful as Samuel Zamuri, a New Orleans businessman originally from Kishinau, Bessarabia, which is modern day Moldova, who is the head of the Kouyumel Fruit Company. Zemuri, AKA Sam the Banana man, controls not only the banana fields, but the the shipping routes out of the region. And he bankrolls a 1911 coup that provides the blueprint for a lot of how the US is going to handle Central America. It's extension of the Monroe Doctrine, the oas, or Organization of American States. But you can probably head to a Ken Burns documentary for more on that, guys. Zamori sells Kuyamal to the far larger and far better known United Fruit Company in 1929. And he steps away from banana life, TM. But just two years later, he makes a comeback. United Fruits has taken a nosedive in the Great Depression. So Sam the Banana man is brought back as president. I mean, why would you not with a name like that? And he gets to work slashing costs. Yeah, buying up massive tracts of land. And by 1935, United Fruits has acquired almost 3.5 million acres of land across Central America. That is almost the entire size of El Salvador. And it's making around 300 million per year in today's money. Zamori consolidates his power by allying with an authoritarian dictatorship, which lasts until 1948. And all of this serves to calcify and entrench the influence of Honduras. Small circle of landowned elites, almost all of whom live in the capital, Tegucigalpa. This is similar to what's going on across the region, especially as the Cold War Kicks in the gere and Washington is threatening over Marxist and land reform movements bubbling Latin America. But in Honduras, the situation is a little more stark because of that oligarch elite nexus that's been going on for over 100 years. Political leaders can be bought with ease and they will squash any threat of leftism to suit their patrons in the States. So Honduras is effectively a US client state. It's reliant not just on exports, but those specifically controlled by foreigners, writes Mexico City based reporter called Rachel Cedar. Quote the root of Honduran exception was the country's insertion into the world market and the development of its domestic political apparatus. Wow, this is such like smooth writing, Rachel. Under the aegis not of a natural agro exporting oligarchy, but of US monopoly capital.
- [14:21]
C
You keep including these quotes. I think people really like them.
- [14:24]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I really love academic academies. It's great.
- [14:29]
C
The commenters, they go crazy for it, dude.
- [14:31]
B
Ah, they just want more and more. There's nothing they need. We'll just put a bunch of it up on Patreon and you guys can pay us $50 a month for that. Zamari is going to be most infamous for his role instigating the 1954 Guatemalan coup, convincing the CIA that his president wants to make the country a Soviet satellite. He dies in 1961, having changed Central America forever. But this and Samson Murray's world is is the world into which Juan Ramon Mata Ballesteros is born in 1945 in the neighbourhood of Soto Tegucigalpa. Details of Mata's early life are sketchy, but in the man's own words. He's born the second of four kids to an absent or maybe even dead father and a mother who scrapes by selling fruit, vegetables and candy at a local hawker's market. Soto is known as a hub of marijuana production, but Mata gets his criminal start in pickpocketing and then small theft. And then as a teenager, Mata turns his sights on drugs. Here is an early acquaintance of his talking to Insight Crime. Quote. I remember we used to call him the Pusher man because that was when that song was a hit. If anyone knows how to find the the Honduran song Pusher man, let me know. It was a hymn for a lot of people.
- [15:50]
C
It's not the Honduran song Pusher man, dude, it's the. It's the Curtis Mayfield song.
- [15:53]
B
Oh, my God, it is the Curtis Mayfield song.
- [15:56]
C
Did you really. Do not. Dale, do not edit this out. Leave this in. You thought there was like A Hu Duran song called Pusherman.
- [16:02]
B
Pusherman? Yeah.
- [16:04]
C
Yo, I don't even.
- [16:06]
B
Wow.
- [16:07]
C
Yeah.
- [16:08]
B
Yeah. I used to love Coast Maple. No, that's just me trying to get back, clearly. I don't know if you.
- [16:12]
C
Dude. Yeah.
- [16:13]
B
Oh, okay. This guy says it was a hymn for a lot of people in the neighborhood and apparently all over the world who were dealing marijuana. And everyone knew that Mata was the best. He lived in a house next to the cemetery, and everyone knew he was in the game. There would be lines of poor people who'd be there asking for money, for gifts, everything.
- [16:33]
C
I mean, I think it would have been a great time to be a drug dealer when that song came out, because it's incred. It's like your anthem, you know? And then even like Eminem had like, not like a remix, but he did the chorus in one of his songs in like the 90s, and that was actually pretty. Pretty amazing. Both good eras, probably to be a drug dealer.
- [16:48]
B
Yeah, yeah, good eras to be a drug dealer.
- [16:50]
C
Get the music, you know, but good theme music.
- [16:52]
B
Not like, yeah, yeah, good thing. Music that I entirely forgot. Anyway, by his early 20s, matter has switched up from weed to emeralds, with nearby Colombia accounting for almost the entire planet's supply of the precious stones. He moves out to Colombia himself, and he makes great money smuggling emeralds across the Colombian border. And this is no mean feat, right? Emerald mining is a notoriously corrupt and crime ridden industry, co opted by left and right wing rebels like the FARC and by local drug traffickers. There's border guards too, who are liable to shoot first and ask questions later. But Mata excels. He's got the gift of the gab. And he realizes early on that it's far less hassle to pay folks off than to kill them.
- [17:37]
C
You know, you don't hear a lot about emerald smuggling these days. It's a very niche industry. Good margins, I assume, but like, organized criminals should be getting into that. It just sounds. It sounds a lot more fun and classy than the stuff that we see a lot of these days.
- [17:51]
B
Yeah, yeah, this. This episode isn't going to get much class out of it, but yeah, emeralds, they're quite nice, right? Are they emeralds? They're like green. Greeny kind of color.
- [18:02]
C
I believe so.
- [18:03]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not. I'm not usually swimming in vats of precious stones. Anyway. Throughout this time, Mata is getting into the US on a variety of aliases, getting deported and. And then just trying again. And then in 1970, he gets a bunch of Cocaine. And he's nabbed at dulles Airport in D.C. which is the story from today's Cold Open. Matta somehow wriggles off the drugs charge, which is insane. I don't know how he does that. But he's sent to Florida for five years. And then a year in, he escapes and he finds his way down to Mexico. And it is there that his criminal life really kicks off. He meets Miguel Felix Gallardo, a plucky Sinaloan on his way to becoming one of the most powerful criminals on Earth. Danny is done some fantastic shows on him. Other leading Mexican drug lords in the past just, I guess, search their names in the show bar and. And you'll find a ton of them. Yeah.
- [18:55]
C
Gallardo is the man who creates the first sort of Mexican super cartel, the Guadalajara cartel. Well, not really. The Gulf is involved and then sort of eventually breaks it apart and kind of creates the modern day cartel system with Sinaloa and Juarez and Tijuana. I actually have an episode on Tijuana coming up probably in a couple weeks, but yeah. Oh, very. The guy who basically revolutionized the game in Mexico. One of many.
- [19:18]
B
Yeah. And yeah, and so he's a good guy to know, obviously. And Mata, he kind of flits then across Latin America. He connects narcos in the producing country of Colombia with the Mexicans who can get it through the region and off into the United States.
- [19:35]
C
So he essentially becomes like a broker.
- [19:37]
B
Right.
- [19:38]
C
But he just networks his way into this and just starts meeting with these high level folks like he's. That he just knows how to do it.
- [19:44]
B
Yeah, yeah, he's kind of. He's got the gift. And it's because he's kind of like from Honduras as well. Right, because it's got his captured state and this kind of pliable public officials and elites. So it becomes this key transshipment point, whether via land, sea or air. But Mata isn't just a matchmaker alone. He runs his own cocaine refinery in Colombia, perhaps alongside the Marxist farc. He continues ferrying emeralds and even moonlights as a sicario or hitman for mobsters in Medellin, including Carlos Leda and Pablo Escobar. Very early Escobar at this point, especially after 1973. Right. Because that's when the Chilean coup that kills Salvador Allende shuts down routes through that nation, making Medellin way more important. Here is the book Bribes, Bullets and Intimidation by Julie Bunk and Michael Fowler, which I used a bunch for information for this show. Quote, Mata's criminal background led him toward not only a thorough understanding of the different facets of the drug business, but a wide circle of influential acquaintances deeply involved in it. In particular, Mata reportedly served as a key connection between an early Mexican cocaine kingpin, Cuban Alberto Cecilia Faudel Con and coca suppliers in the Andes. Mata also introduced Mexican traffickers to top Medellin boss Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, thus helping to broker one of the initial arrangements by which Colombians paid Mexican smugglers to transport cocaine across the US Border. Another of Mata's key skills is a preternatural ability to slip away from justice. In 1973, shortly after its foundation, the DEA designs a sting operation against Mata, but it fails. The following year, Mexican officials jail Mata on a charge of selling 10 kilos of cocaine. He manages to cut his sentence down to under two years, and by the time he emerges in 1975, he's been accused of ordering the deaths of two of his inmates. Back on Main Street, Mata forges even closer ties with Gallardo, who is bringing together Rafael Caracintero and Ernesto Fonseca Carillo and others into what will soon become the Guadalajara cartel. These guys have well established distribution networks across Mexico and the United States. Mata, meanwhile, has access to massive amounts of Andean cocaine ready for market. It is a match made in heaven. Like a young me in a leather harness or Danny in a pair of persol shades, which have just a kind of cracked bed. Again, on my own behalf there. As the main bridge between north and South America, Mata is growing wildly rich. His income is stretching into the tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars. And he's investing it wisely. Not in just flashy suits and nice homes, but in Honduras. Fleet of corrupt leaders and oligarchs. The same folks who are making money hand over fist during the salad days of United Fruits. United Fruits, by the way, became Chiquita is currently based in Switzerland, which is cool.
- [22:58]
C
Not really into bananas these days. You know, I gotta tell you, I'm more of a Kiwi guy right now. And frozen blueberries. But be nice to have a normal podcast. We could just talk about our fruit preferences for 15 minutes, but, you know, this is the life we chose. We can't do that.
- [23:10]
B
I mean, we can always do that on the. On the Patreon, but also the people out here would get very annoyed that you call them Kiwis. They're Kiwifruit, dammit. Yeah, I don't give a shit about it.
- [23:20]
C
Get over it.
- [23:21]
B
Anyway, as I mentioned at the top of the show, Mata's main Powers in Tegucigalpa are Mario and Mary Ferrari, auto dealers, emerald and drug smugglers, and members of the country's elite. Through Mary's uncle, who just so happens to be a former Honduran president. Mata and Mario Ferrari go way back. They smuggled emeralds together in their youth, and they own a nightclub together. They're also closely in bed with Honduras military, which is the key to their success. Right. Mata and the Ferraris need access to Honduras ports, roads, border, bureaucracy, the military, they want money. The partnership is, writes Insight Crime, a symbiotic relationship at the most basic operational level. But as we got into a bit in the cold open, this partnership sours. Some reports say that Ferrari had Mata cut out of a million dollar cocaine dealing with. Others say Ferrari sexually assaults Mata's wife. Whatever the truth, around mid-1977, Mata divorces his wife. Okay. And then hatches a plan to dispose of the Ferraris alongside members of Honduras military intelligence. He also pays corrupt officials at the National Department of Investigations, which is the Honduran FBI, to, quote, fix his criminal record, hiring them to deliver literal piles of documents from police archives, including taped witness testimony. This paves the way for Mata to get even closer with Honduras security apparatus. And Mata develops a particularly close relationship with Policarpo Pass Garcia, a podgy Mustachio military general who's planning to seize Honduras from its existing military hunter. A mess, yes, but this is Mata's big push. He's making his move. And things, of course, are about to get bloody. On December 3, 1977, the Ferraris are snatched into Gusi Galpa and then driven to a remote jungle airstrip and flown to Colombia. There they are tired and tortured, everything overseen personally by matter. But he doesn't want the Ferraris to die in Colombia. He orders his men to fly them back to Tegucigalpa so they could be murdered on home soil. Six months later, in 1978, the wife of one of Mata's sicarios reaches out to cops. The Ferraris are dead, she tells him. Soon after, searchers find the couple's broken bodies in a well near the capital, and reports emerge of military cooperation in the crime, as well as the complicity of Honduran security forces in Mata's growing drug smuggling operation. Around this time, media also report that Mata owns large swaths of Honduran real estate alongside Paz Garcia, the mendacious military general. A local Interpol chief even comes out, and he says that Pascar Sias buried evidence of the Ferrari murders, claiming they had died at the hands of, quote, many stars within Honduras military and intelligence sectors. But this doesn't spell arrest for Mata or Pascarcia. Quite the opposite, in fact. The Interpol guy is soon arrested for slander and thrown into solitary confinement with no access to his lawyer. This is all straying very quickly into narco state territory. And it comes at an incredibly precarious time for Honduras ruling military junta. The country is wedged between civil conflicts in El Salvador and Nicaragua, where Marxist rebels backed by Cuba and the Soviet Union are fighting CIA backed authoritarians and they're quarterbacking their own violent paramilitaries. Refugees from both wars are spilling into Honduras, which is causing enough headaches alone. But there's an impossible political equation too. On one hand, given Honduras history under united fruits, there is huge public sympathy for the leftists, which the country's leaders don't want to inflame. But neither can Honduras afford to piss off the Americans who are still in bed with Tegusigalpa's elites and have intelligence operatives all over the place. And equally though, by trying to play both sides, they are playing right into the hands of organized crime, which can exploit the inaction and chaos to increase its grip on the state and ramp up corruption. And the threat of cartel violence. And the murders of Mario and Mary Ferrari are a massive red flag to the Hunter.
- [27:54]
C
Wait, so I thought the junta was in bed with Mata. Like a red flag for the junta or of the junta? Like, I'm, I'm a little confused.
- [28:01]
B
It's kind of both. Right, so the junta is getting money from organized crime and matter and the Ferraris, but there's increasing concern that the violence that is taken over other countries is starting to come to Honduras. And so this like, hugely, this massive profile double killing is like, oh, I think we've, we've got a real problem on our hands now. So it kind of shows everything, right? It shows how Mata is in bed with the state, how untouchable he clearly feels he is. And the leaders know the bloodshed is soon going to be spilling into the homes of regular Hondurans, tearing the country to bits. And they've got, you know, these kind of peasant revolutionary movements flaring up all over the region. They don't want anything there, but they can't really do anything. Mata, for one, is living most of the time over the Atlantic in Spain. And not a single person has been charged with the Ferrari deaths. And worse for the Hunter, when leftist students and unions riot in support of it, rivals claim this shows they've lost control of the nation altogether. So they're kind of being assailed from all sides. Right. They can't win. Mata's work so in bedlam has come to fruition, and he doesn't let it slip. He backs Pascarcia, his friend in the military financing him, and two other generals who in August 1978, sweep the junta in a bloodless coup d'. Etat. And the elites, well, they don't like students or unions, so they fall into line. This, it goes without saying, is great news for Mata. Not only has he hitched his wagon to the most powerful up and coming narco kingpins in Mexico and Colombia, but he's now pulling the strings of power in Honduras. And the quantities of cocaine matter is shipping skyrockets. Colombian authorities bust over a ton of Mata cocaine, and they accuse him of operating two refineries in Colombia. Later, in 1978, they discover 800 kilos on a matter owned property north of bogota. And in 1979, sources tell US agents that Mata is about to make a multi million dollar delivery into the States himself. He is sourcing, refining, and distributing product, not to mention stewarding stuff on behalf of the Guadalajara and Medellin cartels.
- [30:25]
C
So this is like, super early days, right? Like, 1979 is literally right when Guadaljara was founded, and I think really early days for Escobar, too. He's like, in his, what, late 20s, mid-20s?
- [30:36]
B
20S? Yeah, yeah. This is like when everything is just kind of springing up, which is why I kind of wonder why Mata isn't spoken about more on this stuff. I know, like, he's kind of plays his spoiler in narcos, but it's not big and no one really talks about him.
- [30:51]
C
He's a broker, you know, so he's not like the. The grower or the dealer sort of thing. So I guess. Well, I guess the Mexicans play broker roles, too, but also, like, he. I mean, if it's 79, Gualajara's focus is weed then, right?
- [31:02]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's also doing marijuana. Like, he's not just cocaine.
- [31:07]
C
Okay, okay, that makes sense.
- [31:09]
B
But he's like. He's refining this stuff. He's, like, finding it, refining it, he's sending it away like he's doing the whole thing. Mata wastes no time cementing his power back home in Honduras either. He partners with the chief of military intelligence, who the CIA believes is directly involved in drug shipments. Anybody who speaks out is quickly silenced when a Honduran lieutenant says publicly that, quote, the chief of the armed forces has recordings and and documents of officials who are linked to the drug trade and who have received money from the Mafiosos. His superiors throw him in solitary confinement, and when they release him, the lieutenant chooses, perhaps wisely, to keep his mouth shut. All this is occurring at a time when cartels are seeking alternative routes for gear to the Caribbean, where the DEA is having considerable success and where political turmoil is making some routes more precarious. So they turn to Mata, and like always, he's got all the answers. Here's bribes, bullets and intimidation again, quote. In supervising the transit of many thousands of kilos of cocaine from Mexico into Arizona and Southern California, Mata, drawing on his knack for devising smuggling schemes, was said to have thoroughly modernized the drug trade through Mexico. As a native Honduran, Mata was credited with special expertise in trafficking through Central America, knowledge that proved of vital importance in the early 1980s as Colombian kingpins came to favour pathways through Central America over their prior Caribbean roots. In 1980, General Pasc Garcia froze a bit of a spanner in the works by promising to hand Honduras back to civilian rule. In 1981, the people voted a new president, centrist Roberto Soasso Cordova. He and other leaders draw up a constitution which pledges a republic, a democratic government based on the American system. No more military rule, no more coups. Power to the people. In theory, Honduras also qualifies for its first ever FIFA World Cup. Things are looking up. Only things aren't quite so simple. The country's elite don't just disappear and they hold the lion's share of Honduras wealth. And as the civil wars rage on in El Salvador and Nicaragua, the Reagan White House puts even more pressure on Honduras to help it fight Latin American communism. Honduras, says a US military spokesman, is the keystone to our policy down there. So greenlights US troop maneuvers on Honduran soil, the building of US bases, and even the training of right wing Salvadoran militias. Honduras also provides space and material support to the Contras, the right wing rebels fighting to take Nicaragua from its left wing government. Part of this includes the hiring of Honduran civilian aircraft to run supply missions for Contra groups across the region. The largest of These is a 1981 founded airline called Setco Servicios Ejtivos Turisticos Comander. Can you guess who runs it? Yes, Mata. Setco's principal role until this point has been to run cocaine and marijuana sorties into Mexico for Mata and his cartel allies. Product might arrive in Honduras via sea, ripped from Large so called mother ships onto small Honduran shrimp fishing vessels. That's hard to say before heading off via Setco, or could simply be flown in. It's not really dissimilar to how the thing works today. But Setco also has contracts delivering guns and ammo, uniforms and soldiers for a leading Contra group operating on Honduran soil called the Fuersa Democratica Nicaraguinci, or fdn, using bank accounts opened by the CIA. Yes, we're skirting into Iran Contra territory, but don't worry, not for long, because we have done a bunch of other shows that go deep into that. From Cuba to El Salvador, there's tons. You can type it into the search bar. Anyway, starting in 1983, the CIA and U.S. state Department contract SECO to run thousands more flights for the FDN. Which means, of course, a lot more money in Matter's pockets, but also the opportunity to smuggle tonnes more drugs under the COVID of Contra supply missions. Which Matter does. And it unleashes a new wave of drugs into the United States. The Americans, they know this. One of Setco's pilots, for example, a guy named Frank Moss, has been under investigation by the DEA for drug trafficking since 1979. He even opens his own airline in 1985. And a Costa Rican pilot for the Guadalajara cartel testifies that Mata and the Mexicans are moving blow on the CIA's dime. Having himself received 150 grand for contra flights in 1984, Mata Brokers a deal between the Medellin and Guadalajara cartels. The Mexicans will charge the Colombians between 1 and $2,000 per kilo of cocaine transported into the US with of course, the Honduran taking a cut. This works so well that within a couple years, up to 90% of US cocaine will come from Mexico, making its narcos incredibly wealthy. At one point, Mata even manages to bring together members of Colombia's warring Medellin and Cali cartels to broker a ceasefire. Despite his nationality, Mexican media often refer to Mata as the boss of bosses of Mexico's cocaine industry. And some US authorities now reckon he's supplying up to a third of all the blow consumed in the United States. This, unsurprisingly, makes Mata an incredibly rich man. DEA agents soon estimate that he and fierce Gallardo are crossing more than 5 million bucks per week. At one point, the agency reports that Mata has played Bolivian and other Latin American authorities a $50 million bribe to help ship his stuff through the region. And he buys interests in tobacco, coffee Spices, dairy and meat industries. Mata implies 5,000 Hondurans, and he piles money into crafting this image of a kindly, benevolent businessman, investing in community projects and briefing media about how he'd risen from poverty and was being hounded by US imperialists and Honduran elites jealous of its success, all the while profiting directly from them. He buys medicine for the sick and even offers to donate 25 grand during a live telethon, winning him even more kudos from regular Hondurans. He's plain spoken, and it's said that Mata enjoys eating in the kitchen with his cooks rather than at the dining table. And at one point, echoing Pablo Escobar and Bolivia's Roberto Suarez Gomez, Mata even offers to pay off his home nation's entire public debt.
- [38:15]
C
You know, you sound very critical, Sean. I'd like to see you provide 5,000 jobs.
- [38:20]
B
How many would you say we're providing now? Not even one each.
- [38:24]
C
Well, ourselves.
- [38:26]
B
Dale. That's it. Dale. Uh huh.
- [38:29]
C
There's probably some, maybe someone at Glassbox. I don't know, man, I feel like 4.2 is somewhere. Yeah, maybe 5.2.
- [38:38]
B
All right, all right. Well, yeah, that's pretty sad, isn't it? Anyway, and all of this stuff is just what Matter is doing in Honduras. He owns property worth $10 million in Colombia and a huge villa outside Madrid, Spain. Mata even takes over prominent import export businesses in Spain's northwestern Galicia region, which is just above Portugal. And he rakes in even more cash importing luxury vehicles and Colombian tobacco.
- [39:08]
C
You know, Spain kind of goes under the radar, but it's sort of like operated. It was like Dubai before Dubai in terms of crime. Bosses could go there and just be unbothered. You know, I think it still has a little bit of that. Maybe not as much, but it definitely was that for, for, for decades.
- [39:23]
B
Yeah, it's more like the British guys, right? The kind of like Scottish gangsters who are now hanging out in bars on the Costa del Crime, shooting each other up. Yeah, yeah, But Spain, yeah, Bit of a dark horse. It's not a coincidence that matters. Rise coincides with Honduras descent into grand scale narco violence. And the state, corrupt at its core, is growing ever more brittle. In 1984, an Arms and drug trafficker named Gerard Lachinian, an elite of Armenian heritage, he pays an assassin over 300 grand plus a kilo of cocaine to murder President Soasseau La Chinnian, whose Latin American arms dealing has earned him the title the Ambassador of Death. I guess something variation on Merchant of Death, which is like 20,000 people hopes that Soissau's demise will prompt a period of civil unrest during which Lucinian can install his own military cronies, much as Mata had done in 1978. Licinian will finance the hit via a 350 kilo cocaine shipment from Colombia to a remote follow the landing strip. It all sounds like the perfect plan, but unfortunately for Licinian, his prospective sicario is an FBI agent. The plot falls apart, and Licinian is sent to the US to face trial. Remember his name for part two, though, because we're not quite done with Senor Gerard just yet.
- [40:50]
C
How do the patient, like, the payment negotiations work for someone like that when they're like, all right, $300,000, and we'll. We'll throw in a kilo on top of it for fun, you know, have a good time. Like, is that.
- [41:00]
B
I think, like what I think I read that he also offered the guy a helicopter so you can have the whole thing. You can just pile your money and your coke onto a helicopter, shoot the prison, and fly away. That's pretty good deal because, like, one.
- [41:13]
C
Kilo of coke, you're not getting that. Like, you're not going to make the 100 grand and then just go sell one kilo of coke. You know what I'm saying? Like, you're doing that. You're having a good time.
- [41:20]
B
No, I don't know. I'm not an expert, mate. You need to tell me. The thing that confuses me is like, the story from the Cold Open where he's got a suitcase with 25 kilos of Coke. How did he think he was going to get that? Yeah, I know. I got a hundred dollar excess baggage charge because I tried to get a 8 kilo bag into Vietnam, which is very, very annoying. It was full of clothes, by the way. It's not. It's not cocaine. That would be on point, but not actually the truth. Anyway. Authorities are drawing closer to matter as well. In 1981, US cops had busted a stash house in a Los Angeles suburb of Van Nuys. Is it called Van Nuys? Van Van Nuys.
- [42:06]
C
I think that's how you say it.
- [42:07]
B
Yeah. Yeah. They discover almost 1.4 tons of cocaine worth $73 million. So he's really stepped up in that decade of which Mata is alleged to own a third. Seven guys are arrested at this address, and they soon snitch to officers of the incredible power of their boss, El Negro. A ledger found at the stash house also happens to include the address of a home Owned by Mata's second wife. Agents close in on Mata and the Guadalajara cartel. And the kingpins soon realize they're under investigation from an unnamed DAA agent. Busts continue chipping away at their profits. And when Mexican soldiers torch a 2,500 acre marijuana plantation in Chihuahu in late 1984, Guadalajara Cartel leaders decide they need to smoke this agent out. By that December, they have a name. Enrique Kiki Camarena, a 37 year old from Mexicali, Baja California.
- [43:06]
C
That's the. The infamous billion dollar wheat field spearheaded by, I think Miguel Arnel and Rafa Car Quintero, that when it goes up in smoke, it's a huge deal.
- [43:16]
B
Yeah, this is, I mean, this is maybe the biggest story of all. And I'm sure most of our listeners will know what happens next. Right. So on February 7, 1985, Camarena is leaving the DEA's Guadalajara office. I feel like that's quite a dangerous thing to walk out of the DEA office in Guadalajara at all. I probably would take the back exit when corrupt Mexican officials snatch him in broad daylight. Later in the day, they also kidnap Alfredo Zavala Abelard, a pilot who'd run missions with Camarena. Both men are shackled and delivered to a home in the center of the city, where over the next 30 hours, they're tortured and then killed. A few weeks later, on March 5, Camarena and Abelard's bodies are discovered wrapped in plastic in a small town in Michoacan. Camarena's death is one of the biggest moments in cartel law. It prompts the widest homicide investigation in DEA history. And it completely changes the face of US engagement in the war on drugs. In recent years, rumors have emerged that CIA operative took part in the killing, that the agency wanted Camarena's dead for uncovering info related to the Contras and drug trafficking. But I mean, most reputable sources have poo pooed that. And I don't really buy it either.
- [44:32]
C
I don't buy it either.
- [44:33]
B
No, no, it sounded like when it came out, especially when the whole thing, Right, like the Imran Contra thing is about to come tumbling out in public. Anyway. Mata, though, he is involved in the death all the way. He's seen checking out of a Guadalajara Hotel on February 12, five days after Camarena and Avellar's abductions. US agents use a phone intercept to locate Mata in Mexico City. But federales fail to respond to the information in time, and he slips out of the country. When DEA agents finally discover the Address where Camarena and Avellar had been brutally tortured and killed. They find strands of hair consistent with matters in a bedroom and guest house. Here ensues one of the most extraordinary manhunts in criminal history. U.S. officials are by this point working with counterparts in Spain and Colombia to get their man. And soon after, Mata flees Mexico. They track him down in Spain, but he's tipped off again, and he heads back across the Atlantic. Later in the year, Feds find Mata again in Cartagena, Colombia. This time, they manage to arrest him, and he's flown to a prison in Bogota. DEA agents then interrogate Mata. He denies killing Camarena, but he admits to having some knowledge. What knowledge? They ask him. I can't tell you that, he says. I'd be killed if I do. Mata figures his time is running out. Before the DEA is back at him, he reckons he can make it to Honduras. His connections there will keep him safe. And after all, he's thought to have personally ordered the deaths of 13 people by this point. And he's a free man. So the Medellin cartel plots an escape from Bogota, smuggling in contraband for him to break loose. But at the last moment, the prison warden orders a surprise inspection of Mata's cell and the scheme is ruined. In revenge, the cartel dispatches a motorcycle sicario who shoot the walden while he's car is stuck in Bogota traffic. A diplomatic cat and mouse begins. The US is requesting Mata's extradition. Colombia is dragging its feet. All while Mata and his friends in Guadalajara plot yet another escape. In November 1985, a great month, best month, Colombia refuses America's extradition request, deciding instead to prosecute Mata themselves for operating a cocaine lab. Soon after, the cartel bribes a total of 18 prison officials and guards, a combined US$2 million to look the other way for a second escape. And then, on March 18, 1986, Mata shaves off his beard, puts on the prison guard uniform and walks straight through not one, not two, but seven security gates without being stopped. Associates then whisk him to a private airport outside Bogota and and fly Mata to Guatemala. Two weeks later, he slips into Honduras and alongside his lawyer, turns himself in to authorities in Tegucigalpa on outstanding charges related to the Ferrari murders. Honduran lawmakers deny Mata Bell while he's awaiting trial, but he bribes them $500 a pop to head back to his villa. Each time he does, hundreds of poor Hondurans queue up outside, and Mata stands at his door, giving them handouts, pruning his image of the benighted business magnate being hounded by the feds. In August 1986, the court finds Mata not guilty of Mario and Mary Ferrari's deaths, convicting six of his underlings. Instead, Mata returns to regular life, this time managing his cocaine business from Tegucigalpa, renewing his connections to Honduran politicians and military figures, and just generally cocooning himself by within the country's power structure. US officials reckon he's worth around $2 billion by this point. As influential as Gallardo or Pablo Escobar. Wow.
- [48:35]
C
I mean, he really is under the radar for that level of money and power. Damn.
- [48:39]
B
Yeah. Maybe people just didn't care about Hondura. I don't really get it. But incredibly, while people in the US are figuring out ways of bringing him to justice, the CIA is still using Mata's airline, Setco, to supply the contras with the full knowledge that Mata is using the flights to get cocaine and marijuana across the border. A State Department ledger, in fact, shows that it pays almost a quarter of a million dollars to Setco between January and August of 1986. This is long, long after Mata's suspected involvement in Camarena and Avellar's slayings. US Political turmoil, meanwhile, has been brewing over the connection between the Contras and drug smuggling since 1985. And in early 1986, the State Department had admitted that, quote, evidence of a limited number of incidents in which known drug traffickers tried to establish connections with Nicaraguan resistance groups. By April 1986, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has begun conducting hearings on Contra involvement in marijuana and cocaine smuggling, concluding that Mata is a major figure and involved in the murder of Kiki Camarena, a member of the Medellin cocaine cartel. Juan Mata Baresteros has set up shop in Honduras, says a New York congressman. Already he is extending his corrupting influence in that society. He is attempting to buy off officials in the Honduran government. Ballesteros is a tough and savvy drug trafficker. I hope that Mr. Ballesteros has not already succeeded in building a drug trafficking network in Hondur with the cooperation of some of these corrupt military officials. I mean, yeah, the horse is well and truly bolted, mate. This all puts the White House in a bit of a bind. On one hand, Honduras has become such a key ally in the fight against communism that it's known as the, quote, SS Honduras. And going after Mata could potentially destabilize the Honduran military, which is packed full of Mata's cronies. But drug related violence on American streets is becoming chronic, not to mention the horrors of the emerging crack epidemic. And with all this cartel information spilling out in the congressional hearings, including Mata's involvement in the killing of one of the DEA's own men, officials finally realize they just cannot keep working with this guy in any way. And so at dawn on April 5, 1988, when Mata is out for a jog near his Tegucigalpa home, four U.S. marshals, aided by Honduran Special Forces, grab him, tie his hands, throw a black hood over his head, and chuck him into the back of a U.S. operational vehicle. Agents then beat Mata and allegedly attack him with a cattle prod before bundling him onto a plane bound for the Dominican Republic. From there, he's flown to the United States to face charges related to drug trafficking and the murder of Kiki Camarena. While all this is happening, members of Honduras Cobra commando team enter Mata's home. They find three pistols, three shotguns, an AK47, large stashes of ammo, and a kilo of coke. Which is only what Danny takes on his weekends upstate. But it is enough to nail Mata on a bunch of other charges if the Americans fail to prosecute him.
- [52:00]
C
I think this is like a good bit for me that I have a lot of guns and cocaine, whereas your bit is that you wear leather at weird parties in Berlin basements and do heavy fetish stuff. And I think that works for both of us.
- [52:13]
B
Yeah, it's so pathological now that I'm making jokes about myself wearing leather harnesses. I've conditioned you, dude. I'll discuss that with my therapist later on this week. Anyway, such is Mata's popularity back home that thousands of locals, allegedly encouraged by the military, Mata's friends, they stormed the US Consulate, burning down one of its annexes. Five die in this carnage, with US Officials claiming that Honduran counterparts had taken two hours to answer their phone calls. And the violence doesn't end there. One evening in January 1989, Mata's defense attorney is walking from his car to his home in Tegucigalpa. A man calls out his name and the attorney turns around. Suddenly, a group of men run at him, firing a hail of bullets from Uzi's submachine guns. Nobody knows who the killers are, but most suspect Mata has ordered the hit either because he suspects the attorney had double crossed him or because he'd failed to see Mata's extradition coming. This theory is lent a little bit more credibility by the fact that Gallardo and Quintero's chief attorney had also been killed a few months previous. US Authorities charged Mata with seven counts, including racketeering, drug trafficking, and the murder of Kiki Camarena. Before he goes to trial, U.S. marshals discover that matters. Associates have concocted yet another plan to spring him from custody. Paying three men $5 million to attack the fan, transporting him to court on motorcycles with automatic weapons. The gunman would disable Mata's van, blow off its side door, kill all the deputies inside, and free their man. But intel leaks to the marshals, and they have Mata taken to trial instead in a helicopter.
- [54:03]
C
This guy is incorrigible.
- [54:05]
B
He is. And he probably would know the word incorrigible, too. He's pretty darkly impressive, this guy. I cannot believe there is not more about him. I actually, like, searched his name Crush for podcast. I mean, I do like another guy called Bass Vibes.
- [54:22]
C
Does he wear, like, a suit? Is he a handsome man?
- [54:28]
B
Well, okay, so look at a picture of him now, and you will not see a handsome man. Well, yeah, I mean, he's been in.
- [54:34]
C
Prison for 40 years.
- [54:36]
B
Yeah. Yeah. So to give him his dues and. And he definitely deserves his juice. I think perhaps he was known as a bit of a smooth guy. Yeah, the vibes. The vibes are good. But, yeah, I searched for his name. Like, I was like, surely someone's done a bunch of stuff about him. It's been barely anything. It's nuts. Anyway, Mata, unsurprisingly, refuses to cooperate throughout the process, telling prosecutors that, quote, silence is golden. And it seems to help prosecutors soon drop the Camarena murder charge, pursuing Mata only on the DEA agent's kidnapping. But at trial, they call two guys whose testimony buries matter. One is a Colombian pilot who'd smuggled drugs with Setco. The other is an American who'd run cocaine distribution for Mata in Arizona in 1990. A jury finds Mata guilty on all counts, ordering three consecutive life sentences without parole and a fine of $225,000. Really wonder how they got there. Mata, prosecutors say, is, quote, perhaps the most significant narcotics trafficker in custody in the world. Mata says Honduras president, by now a civilian leader named Rafael Callejas has caused so much damage to Honduras to Honduran youth and is a confessed assassin. I am not going to move one finger to bring him back. But Mata's wealth remains intact. Nobody seizes a single thing of his in Honduras, much less all the property and dark money is stashed all over the world. Since his rise to power, Honduras doesn't even apply a law allowing for drug related assets to be confiscated until 1994. By that time, Mata's drug empire has already re upped by his brother in law who was arrested in the mid-90s for shipping cocaine to the United States via Costa Rica. Will this finally be the end of Juan Mata Ballistiros narco empire? Well, no, of course it won't be. Honduras biggest ever kingpin is behind bars with no prospect of freedom. But the empire lives on. In fact, Honduras descent into narco statehood is arguably just beginning, which is why in part two of this show will begin on a remote jungle freeway near the Honduran border with Nicaragua, which is not coincidentally, far from the home of Mata's brother Ramon. And then we'll have massacres, coups, drug flights, a president convicted on trafficking charges, and Honduras dubious honor as the murder capital of the world. That is all to come. For now, enjoy your week and do not instagram your crimes.
- [57:22]
C
Patreon.com theunderworldpodcast to make this all worthwhile for us because I don't know, sometimes. Sometimes. Anyway, that's all we have.
- [57:33]
B
Optimism. We love it. It.