The complete interview with Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo. He speaks from jail about the murder of 'Kiki' Camarena

Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo appeared in a wheelchair in the maximum security area of ​​the Puente Grande state prison, in Jalisco.

It was an afternoon, at the beginning of August, and he was coming from the prison's medical ward.

His left arm is in a cast because he fell a few weeks ago.

He has lost vision in one of his eyes and is deaf in his left ear.

Those last two conditions made the interview a bit difficult, so we had to write the questions on a poster board for him to read.

"I have half my body paralyzed,"

says Félix Gallardo, 75, founder of the Guadalajara Cartel, one of the first drug trafficking organizations in Mexico.

Few traces remain of the man who during the 1980s was considered one of the most powerful criminal leaders in the world.

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“My health is terrible.

My family is making a hole for me to be buried in a tree.

I have no prognosis for life since I lost everything, I lost my sensation, my ears, my eyes ”, explains the man known as the 'Chief of bosses', while complaining about the health ailments he has suffered in recent years.  

The first question was, why after so many years had he decided to grant an interview.

It was a very big question, because it took me five years to meet him.

In April 2016 I had the first contact with one of his lawyers in Mexico City.

It took five years and four months to face it.

"

This is the first time that I have granted an interview,

you are asking me why I am granting you the interview, because of your struggle, because of your desire to fight," he commented.

He knows better than anyone that I never stopped insisting during all these years.

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A corpse that breathes

Félix Gallardo was arrested in April 1989 and has spent 32 years in prison in Mexico.

In 2017, he was sentenced to 37 years for having been involved in the

murder of DEA agent Enrique 'Kiki' Camarena Salazar.

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 convicted for the murders of Camarena Salazar and the Mexican pilot Alfredo Zavala Avelar.

In various judicial and academic investigations, his figure is closely linked to the beginning of the large drug trafficking organizations in Mexico.

According to the Drug Control Administration (DEA) and multiple investigators, Félix Gallardo founded together with Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo and Rafael Caro Quintero an organization to which the DEA would give the name of the Guadalajara Cartel.

The three men were convicted for their participation in the kidnapping, torture and murder of Camarena Salazar

, but only Félix Gallardo remains incarcerated in a penitentiary center.

Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, 75, during his interview with Noticias Telemundo in the state prison of Puente Grande, Jalisco, August 2021.

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Drug trafficking has raised the levels of violence and conflict in Mexico, in 2019 the Mexican government raised to

60,053 the number of people disappeared

during the war on drug trafficking and only in 2020 a total of 34,515 homicides were registered.

According to organizations such as Criminal Stoplight, about

80% of these homicides are executions

perpetrated by drug trafficking groups.

Many things have been said about Félix Gallardo, that he was a businessman with a lot of money in Guadalajara, that even his parties were attended by politicians, governors and public officials.

Recently

Narcos: Mexico

, a television series, spoke about his life.

He showed him as the creator of the Guadalajara Cartel, as

the first drug trafficker to create a bridge between South America and the United States

for the export of cocaine, for which he had to negotiate with Colombian drug traffickers such as Pablo Escobar.

Even the screen shows him as a man with brilliant and innovative ideas who was able to unite different criminal organizations in a kind of federation of drug traffickers.

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In popular culture almost everyone knows that the nickname 'Chief of Chiefs' is for him and although it has never been clarified, most people associate the song of the Tigres del Norte with this drug lord.

His name is still seen on t-shirts and when the first great bosses are mentioned, his name comes up.

Félix Gallardo was a 28-year-old prisoner when he was sentenced by a judge in Jalisco to 37 years in prison for the murder of Camarena Salazar.

In theory, since 2017 he would be paying for that sentence.

That is why he has lost all illusion and believes that he will die in prison.

“32 years have passed.

It is an eternity for a man who did not commit any crime, ”he says with dismay.

This is the first interview that Félix Gallardo has granted during his long sentence.

- How has your life been in prison?

"I'm not going to talk about ... because we've all been treated badly."

I mean, no visits, no phone booths, no lawyers.

I don't even know why I am.

Very unfortunately.

- How was your capture in 1989?

-I was in a house in Cosmos in Guadalajara.

When they knocked down the door, without any arrest warrant, without any presentation order, [I was] with my family.

There was my daughter, my son.

I was beaten and pulled out in less than a minute and ... four ribs were broken.

I asked why and all I got was more torture.

I received a bag to suffocate, 'tehuacanes', blows.

This was my torture.

–You were sentenced to almost 40 years in prison for the murder of Enrique 'Kiki' Camarena Salazar, DEA agent ...

- It is a very regrettable subject.

This Mr. Camarena, who they were, who they have been, there are material authors and intellectuals imprisoned, who have paid their lives in prison and who have done very badly.

I do not know why he is related to me, because I did not know that man.

I am not a gun person.

I'm very sorry because I know he was a good man.

"Would you say something to Agent Camarena's widow?"

- That I wish you resignation and that you have the satisfaction that those guilty of that are paying their faults.

Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo during his interview with Issa Osorio, correspondent for Noticias Telemundo.Noticias Telemundo

- What relationship did you have with Caro Quintero and Fonseca Carrillo?

–I don't know them.

We did not meet on the street.

These people and I have never talked about it.

-Recently a television series spoke about his life and is portraying him as a drug trafficker, as the cocaine czar for having opened the coca routes from South America to the United States and having deals with Pablo Escobar.

–I didn't even know that person.

This person that you are mentioning to me.

I was never in Medellín or Cali, as the series says.

I didn't know him (…) When I was in jail, he died.

There is no tsar, there was no such thing.

Cartels never existed in Guadalajara.

Who knows now.

Never existed.

In other words, we led a family life.

I took my children to school.

- Do you identify with the character that appears in the series?

-Do not.

Miguel Félix Gallardo is an honest man.

- You have spent many years in prison, have you ever thought of escaping?

"A leak never crossed my mind."

"What did you do before you were arrested?"

- I dedicated myself to agriculture and livestock since I was a child.

My parents were the first to export legumes to the United States in 1942. I was born in '46. I am going for 76 years.

It also had a pharmacy and two old hotels.

- Do you regret something?

"Since I haven't made a mistake, I don't have to regret it."

I did not participate in such an event.

Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, 75, during his interview with Noticias Telemundo in the state prison of Puente Grande, Jalisco, August 2021.

"What would you like to do if you were to regain your freedom one day?"

–I lost more than half of my family in jail: a daughter, my parents ... my mother died without her furniture being returned to her, her furniture!

I am not thinking of freedom.

I think of my grandchildren.

- Do you hope to get out of prison?

–No (…) I was cut from the stomach.

Eight hernias were removed.

They deprived me of my life, they deprived me of my ears and as you can see, I cannot walk.

I'm not waiting.

Of course!

We all believe in miracles, but ...

- With the amnesty of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador for inmates over 75 years of age, do you hope to benefit from that measure?

"I'm not looking for that."

I know that the president is a man of good will who is fighting social inequality.

He is giving pensions, he is giving many things and I would not take his time.

I am a corpse which does not wait more than to be buried in the root of a tree.

I'm not asking the Lord for anything.

On the contrary, hopefully and it goes well.

This bacterium thing greatly lowered the purchasing power of Mexicans, but this man is of good will and hopefully God helps him.

- How do you see the situation of violence in the country?

- Violence is a consequence of unemployment, of social inequality, which Mr. López Obrador is solving little by little.

You have to give it time.

How would you like to be remembered?

-As the honest person that I always was, a man who was not a weapon.                                                                                                                               

The journalist Albinson Linares collaborated in the writing of this story.