At 69, he was already a millionaire thanks to his ability to mass-produce a seedless variety of marijuana that consumers prefer and requires less space to hide
Why are you smiling so much? Has life been good to you?
– “Yes, he treated me well, because I am alive.”
That was his answer Rafael Caro Quintero – then 33 – to a reporter in 1985, the day he was first taken to prison. He had just been arrested with his girlfriend in Costa Rica and was the biggest marijuana dealer in the world.
A few days ago he was arrested again, this time in Sinaloa, about 93 miles from the city where he was born, writes “El Pais”. In the world of drug lords, making it to 33 is a blessing, but making it to 69 is an extraordinary privilege, rewarded with a “pension” of total freedom. However, Caro Quintero responded to this freedom in the same way as the legend of the scorpion and the turtle: he returned to drug trafficking.
Born in 1952 in the small town of Badiraguato, Sinaloa (in northern Mexico), home to other notorious drug lords such as Joaquin El Chapo Guzmán and Ernesto Fonseca, Don Neto’s life experience combined equal parts business know-how, love and violence , qualities that took him to the top of the drug trade. Indeed, among the major drug lords of the 1980s, Caro Quintero is a classic example.
He was the son of a peasant couple who had 10 children, the nephew of Lamberto Quintero and the cousin of Amado Carrillo Fuentes (known as the “Lord of the Skies” because of his ability to bring small planes to the United States), Carrillo Quintero barely knew how to he could read and write when he started, but his business acumen made him rich through marijuana in just a few years.
Before he turned 30, he had built the largest drug production center the world had ever seen, some 1,482 acres, and bought off the police, military, politicians and judges across the country. Quintero revolutionized the marijuana world when he was able to mass produce seedless female plants that also took up less space. His farm in El Búfalo employed 4,000 workers and truckloads of marijuana left there every day, the result of a sophisticated irrigation system and the construction of the first greenhouses in all of Mexico. His marijuana was not only the first choice of consumers, but his production was also the largest, bringing more trucks and planes into the United States than any other supplier.
One day in November 1984, hundreds of soldiers appeared on the farm, arrested all the workers and burned the 8,000 tons of marijuana they found. This was the largest single drug seizure in history. The evidence—an aerial photograph of the massive camp—forced Mexico to act, under pressure from the United States.
After the coup, Quintero vowed revenge and three months later killed both Kiki Camarena, a DEA agent who had managed to infiltrate the farm, and the pilot of the plane. But he didn’t do it quickly: he tortured them for weeks while a doctor kept them alive so the boss could prolong the torture. Since then the DEA has vowed revenge.
Those were the days when drug dealers frequented bars, flaunted their money in nightclubs, pulled up shops in pick-up trucks and posed for pictures with ministers and governors, posing as successful businessmen from the countryside.
In one of the bars, the handsome and charming Caro Quintero, who had just finished elementary school, met Sara CosÃo Vidaurri, a 17-year-old from the conservative high society of Guadalajara, niece of the former governor of Jalisco, Guillermo CosÃo Vidaurri. With the Drug Enforcement Administration chasing him, he fled with her to Costa Rica. Her family reported her abduction. The day the young woman called her parents to tell them she was safe, the call was intercepted. When police entered the home of Sinaloa couple Bonnie and Clyde, she told them, “I haven’t been kidnapped, I’m in love,” according to reports at the time.
After spending 28 years in five different prisons, Rafael Caro Quintero was released in 2013 due to a legal loophole. A judge ruled that he should not be tried in federal court, but in a local court in his hometown, and released him long enough to allow him to escape. So, at the age of 59, the former drug lord got his long-awaited freedom and returned to his illegal lifestyle.
When he was arrested last Friday afternoon, army officials said he was hiding in some bushes and was found by a dog. In the pictures, he appears in each case as a well-dressed man wearing a jacket and ironed shirt. Forty years after Kiki Camarena’s murder, the Drug Enforcement Administration made Quintero the number one target on its most wanted list and offered $20 million for his capture.
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