He is an elderly man, in a wheelchair, struggling with ailments while trying to tell his story.
"My health is terrible, my family is digging a hole for me to be buried in a tree,"
says Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, 75, founder of the Guadalajara Cartel, one of the first drug trafficking organizations in Mexico.
“I have no prognosis for life, since I lost everything.
I lost my sensibility, my ears, my eyes,
”explains Félix Gallardo in an exclusive interview with Noticias Telemundo, in the maximum security zone of the Puente Grande state prison, Jalisco.
This is the first time that the 'Chief of Chiefs' breaks the media silence during his long 32-year confinement in prisons.
Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, 75, founder of the Guadalajara Cartel.Noticias Telemundo
[The United States designates Lucio Rodríguez Serrano, a friend of Caro Quintero, as drug lord]
Although he often denies the accusations against him,
Félix Gallardo was arrested in 1989 as part of the investigation into the murder of Enrique 'Kiki' Camarena Salazar
, an agent with the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
Among other charges, he was accused of stockpiling weapons, bribery, crimes against health and murder.
He was also sentenced for crimes such as drug trafficking and money laundering.
He starred in what, according to many experts, was
the longest trial in the history of Mexico that lasted more than 28 years
until, finally, in 2017, he was sentenced to 37 years in prison for the murders of Camarena and the Mexican pilot Alfredo Zavala Avelar .
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Recognized as a mastermind of drug trafficking, according to the DEA and multiple investigators, Félix Gallardo founded together with Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo and Rafael Caro Quintero an organization that the DEA would call the Guadalajara Cartel, because the drug lords lived in that city, but all they were from Sinaloa.
The term 'cartel' was coined to describe this criminal gang.
The three men were convicted of their participation in the kidnapping, torture and murder of Camarena Salazar
, who managed to infiltrate the organization to obtain information on drug trafficking but, upon being discovered, was assassinated.
However, Félix Gallardo is the only one who remains incarcerated in a penitentiary because Fonseca Carrillo, sentenced to 40 years in prison, is serving house arrest due to his state of health and Caro Quintero was released in 2013 by a court that considered that he had been sentenced by an instance that did not correspond to him.
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That decision was reversed by the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation and, since then,
Caro Quintero has been actively sought by the governments of Mexico and the United States.
"I am a corpse which does not expect more than to be buried in the root of a tree," said Félix Gallardo during his conversation with Issa Osorio, correspondent for Noticias Telemundo.
This interview will be broadcast exclusively on the 6:30 pm newscast on Wednesday, August 18, and will then be broadcast on the Noticias Telemundo website and app, as well as on its social networks.
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A criminal empire
The activities of the Guadalajara Cartel redefined the drug trafficking and organized crime scene in Mexico because the vast majority of the collaborators and lieutenants of that trio of capos continued to expand the drug business.
Félix Gallardo had under his command notorious criminal bosses such as Héctor Luis 'El Güero' Palma Salazar, the brothers
Arellano Félix, Amado Carrillo Fuentes 'El Señor de los Cielos' and Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán Loera
, among others.
By 1989, 'El padrino' (as Félix Gallardo was also known) had forged a criminal empire with multiple ramifications in states such as Sinaloa, Durango, Jalisco, Guerrero, Chihuahua, Baja California and Nayarit where he controlled the traffic of poppies and marijuana, in addition to initiate connections with the Colombian cartels to traffic cocaine to the United States.
Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo during his interview with Issa Osorio, correspondent for Noticias Telemundo.Noticias Telemundo
[He received his alias because of his short stature, his father cultivated opium and other data from "El Chapo"]
It is believed that he was the first Mexican trafficker who managed to establish
air routes between South America, Central America and northern Mexico
where the drug passed to the United States by land.
His figure is part of Mexican popular culture: the actor Diego Luna played him in the series
Narcos: México
and, although it has never been confirmed, it is said that 'Boss of bosses', the famous corrido of Los Tigres del Norte is about his life.
According to DEA estimates, he had a personal fortune of more than $ 50 million from cocaine trafficking at the time he was arrested.
The journalist Albinson Linares contributed to the writing of this story.