When former President Ronald Reagan launched his war on drugs in the 1980s, America was already awash in cocaine.
At least five million people used it regularly, according to the government.
It was the hot drug among
Wall Street
yuppies
and celebrities who danced on the Studio 54 floor.
At the beginning of the decade, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had recruited a group of agents of Mexican origin, Spanish-speaking, to combat the groups that brought cocaine and marijuana to the United States on their land.
One of them,
Enrique 'Kiki' Camarena
arrived in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1980
, when the Guadalajara Cartel was beginning to prosper transporting cocaine that arrived from Colombia.
Camarena was on their heels for five years until in 1985, drug traffickers tired of being hunted and kidnapped him as he was leaving his job at the US consulate.
That was the starting point of
Operation Leyenda
, the investigation that the agency commissioned agent Héctor Berrellez to clarify the death of his partner.
Héctor Berrellez was the head of Operation Legend of the DEA that investigated the death of Enrique 'Kiki' Camarena.Noticias Telemundo Investiga
Berrellez's investigation still has unanswered questions and yields some answers that have not been corroborated by the United States authorities.
On February 6, the day before the kidnapping, a meeting was held
at a house of drug dealer Rafael Caro Quintero
on Hidalgo Street in Guadalajara, to plan everything:
“At that meeting were Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, leader of the Guadalajara Cartel, his colleagues Rafael Caro Quintero and Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, the then Secretary of Defense of Mexico Juan Arévalo Gardoqui, General Vinicio Santoyo Feria, and
a CIA agent
named Félix Ismael Rodríguez, among other Mexican politicians and military, ”Berrellez assures in an interview with Noticias Telemundo Investiga.
The names of Arévalo Gardoqui and Santoyo Feria, now deceased, have appeared in different United States court files on Camarena's death.
Enrique 'Kiki' Camarena, was transferred with his family to Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1981 to join the DEA office in that city.
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
The next day, the drug traffickers surrounded the United States consulate in Guadalajara, where Camarena worked.
At noon, the agent left to meet his wife Geneva 'Mika' Camarena, and there the men of the Guadalajara Cartel picked him up, says Ramón Lira, a former judicial policeman from Jalisco who in those years served as
a personal guard for boss Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo
, known as Don Neto.
"Be alert, because when they say 'the doctor has already seen the patient', it is because they have already caught Camarena", were the instructions that Lira had received from Don Neto.
Once they kidnapped Camarena, they took him to a house on Calle Lope de Vega 881 in Guadalajara, owned by Mexican businessman Rubén Zuno Arce, who died in 2012 in a Florida prison while serving his sentence as a co-defendant in the Camarena case.
Ramón Lira García, a former judicial police officer from Jalisco, claims to have been Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo's personal guard and to have been present at the interrogation of Kiki Camarena. News Telemundo Investiga
The CIA, the drug traffickers and a DEA agent tortured
According to Berrellez's investigation,
'
Kiki' Camarena was tied up in a room in Zuno Arce's house for 36 hours, and was interrogated by hitmen from the Guadalajara Cartel, Mexican police and military, and the former agent of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA, in English) of Cuban origin Félix Ismael Rodríguez, "the same one who killed
Ernesto 'Che' Guevara
in Bolivia and cut off his arms to send them to Washington," adds Berrellez.
Rodríguez appears with Guevara in the last photographs that were taken of him alive and has repeatedly said publicly that it was he who informed 'Che' of the Bolivian government's decision to execute him, despite the fact that the CIA wanted him alive, but not he was present during the execution.
Félix Ismael Rodríguez has also denied having questioned Camarena or having traveled to Mexico at the time.
The former CIA agent assures that the version of his role in the Camarena interrogation was
fabricated by the Fidel Castro regime
as a disinformation campaign.
We consulted the CIA about these Berrellez accusations, but so far we have not received a response.
The DEA also did not respond to its stance on these alleged Operation Legend findings.
Former Cuban-born CIA agent Félix Ismael Rodríguez (left) who participated in the arrest and death of Ernesto 'Che' Guevara in Bolivia in 1967, denies having questioned Kiki Camarena.Noticias Telemundo
"They
asked
Kiki
what she knew about the relationship between the CIA and the drug traffickers
, what she knew about the Nicaraguan Contras, and what information she had about the relationship between the Mexican government and the Guadalajara Cartel," says Berrellez.
Ramón Lira claims to have been at the house of Lope de Vega, 881 during the interrogation of Camarena, accompanying his boss Fonseca Carrillo, and to have seen various personalities there.
"Camarena was very beaten, and there were Fonseca Carrillo with the then Secretary of the Interior Manuel Bartlett Díaz, the Secretary of Defense Juan Arévalo Gardoqui, Félix Gallardo, Caro Quintero, all of them drinking brandy," says Lira.
The name of Bartlett Díaz, current secretary of the Federal Electricity Commission of Mexico, appears in several court documents on the investigation of Camarena's death, but he has always denied having any relationship with drug traffickers.
Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, alias 'Don Neto', was arrested in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, on April 7, 1985 accused of the death of Kiki Camarena. Telemundo News
Camarena died evicted by the severe beating he received during interrogation, according to Berrellez, who claims to have had access to the audios and transcripts that were recorded during the torture of the former DEA agent.
"Why was Camarena blindfolded?
Why did they record it?
This is not the work of drug traffickers
, this is how governments operate ”, assures Berrellez.
Ramón Lira maintains that when Camarena was badly beaten, Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo ordered that he be transferred to a hospital but Rafael Caro Quintero prevented him.
"Fonseca slapped Caro Quintero and told him that if Camarena died it was his fault," says Lira.
He remembers the scene as a tense moment where the gunmen of both drug traffickers drew their weapons and took aim.
At the end of the discussion, Fonseca Carrillo and his men left.
"Undoubtedly it was Caro Quintero who, if he did not physically kill him, gave the order, because he and his people were the last to be there," says Lira.
The FBI is offering a $ 20 million reward for information leading to the capture of Rafael Caro Quintero, accused of being the mastermind behind Kiki Camarena's death.
"There was a photo of Camarena at Félix Gallardo's ranch"
On March 6, 1985, Mexican authorities found the body of Kiki Camarena in a rural area of Zamora, Michoacán, and a month later
Rafael Caro Quintero was arrested in Costa Rica
and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco.
In command of the cartel was Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, arrested on April 8, 1989 for the murder of Camarena.
In an exclusive interview with the journalist Issa Osorio from Noticias Telemundo,
Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo
, 75, denied having met 'Kiki'
Camarena, much less having been part of a drug trafficking cartel.
“I don't see why he relates to me because, that man, I didn't know him.
I repeat: I am not a person of arms;
I am very sorry because I know he was a good man, "said Félix Gallardo from the Puente Grande prison in Jalisco, where he is serving a 40-year sentence for the crime he is charged with.
Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, assured in an exclusive interview with Noticias Telemundo that he never met Kiki Camarena.
Berrellez assures that Félix Gallardo is lying, and that he and his men did participate in the planning and kidnapping of Camarena, as well as in the interrogation and subsequent logistics to transport the corpse of the former agent to Michoacán.
“Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo is a bloody thug and had a lot to do with Camarena's death.
Even days after Camarena was kidnapped, we searched his ranch and found Camarena's photo.
That he doesn't know anything, it's a lie, he knows a lot, ”says Berrellez.
Guns and drugs hidden on a ranch
Since his move to Guadalajara in 1981, Camarena began to follow in the footsteps of the cartel members, discovered some marijuana plantations and thanks to his investigations, one of them in Fresnillo, Zacatecas, belonging to Caro Quintero and Fonseca Carrillo, ended up burning for order of the American authorities.
According to Berrellez, in his intelligence work Camarena was getting closer and closer to uncovering the alleged relationship between the CIA, the Guadalajara Cartel, and the Mexican government.
Héctor Berrellez (right), received the Medal of Honor from the US federal agencies for his fight against drug trafficking in Mexico.
News Telemundo Investiga
Berrellez argues that, after the triumph of the
Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua
in 1979, the United States government was looking for different ways to arm and train the Contras, the insurgent army that wanted to take the country back from communist hands.
As a few years ago the United States had emerged weakened from a controversial war in Vietnam, the country could not directly enter a new conflict, and Congress had approved the Boland Amendment in 1982, which prohibited support for the Contras in Nicaragua.
For this reason, Berrellez says, the CIA began executing under-the-table strategies to defeat the Sandinistas.
For this reason, he also says, he
went to the Mexican government
to ask it to serve as a bridge to finance and transport arms for the Contras in Nicaragua, something that the US government has not corroborated.
Berrellez maintains that in his research he discovered that high-level Mexican politicians, such as Manuel Bartlett Díaz,
contacted the CIA with Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, and Rafael Caro Quintero
, because they had many territories that could be used for the purposes of the CIA.
The Mexican government has not confirmed this claim.
“They had the ranches where the big American planes could land and they had secret routes to move the weapons.
That is why a meeting was held between Barlett Díaz, elements of the Federal Security Directorate (DFS) with the drug traffickers of the Guadalajara Cartel, and the CIA, ”says Berrellez.
Héctor Berrellez assures that one of the training camps of the Nicaraguan Contras organized by the CIA was in Rancho Veracruz, owned by Rafael Caro Quintero.
(Photo by © Bill Gentile / CORBIS / Corbis via Getty Images) / (Photo by © Bill Gentile / CORBIS / Corbis via Getty Images)
According to Berrellez's account, the planes went up from Colombia, unloaded the cocaine in Mexico, and returned to the south, stopping in Nicaragua to bring arms to the Contras.
Berrellez describes it as a great business.
The narcos brought the drug safely to Mexico, the CIA managed to get weapons to the Contras in Central America, and everyone earned a percentage from the sale of drugs in the United States, including Mexican politicians and military.
Berrellez assures that
one of the operations centers of this alliance was Rancho Veracruz
, owned by Caro Quintero, where in addition to serving as a storage place for weapons and drugs and a landing strip, it also had a military training ground where the Americans they instructed the Contras.
“
Kiki
Camarena said she was going to start an investigation on Rancho Veracruz.
He knew something was happening there, ”says Berrellez.
Within a few weeks, he was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered.
Operation Legend concluded in 1996 and
Berrellez was transferred
to an administrative position
in Washington, D.C. Within a few months, he retired as one of the most decorated agents in DEA history and is currently dedicated to raising horses in his ranch in Arizona.
The results of Berrellez's investigation were never commented on, confirmed or denied by the DEA, the CIA or the Mexican government, but he claims to have collected dozens of testimonies and evidence indicating that 'Kiki' Camarena was betrayed by his own government. The case is still open.