Sentenced to 28 years in prison Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, the last great heir to the Juarez Cartel

Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, historical leader of the Juarez Cartel, is escorted to a helicopter from the defunct Federal Police of Mexico in 2014. Hector Vivas / Getty Images

Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, who was the last great leader of the historic Juárez Cartel, has been sentenced to 28 years in prison this Tuesday, according to a statement released by the Attorney General's Office (FGR).

The Office of the Special Prosecutor for Organized Crime, a unit of the FGR, has found him guilty of organized crime for the purpose of committing crimes against health, operations with resources of illicit origin and collection of firearms.

Carrillo Fuentes, popularly known as El Viceroy, was arrested in October 2014, accompanied only by a bodyguard, in Torreón, Coahuila, thanks to a joint operation by the Army and the now-defunct Federal Police.

He is currently imprisoned in a federal center in Oaxaca, according to

Milenio

.

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The prison order against Carrillo Fuentes was issued in June 2015, although in 2016, in an amparo trial, he was "granted constitutional protection and ordered the reinstatement of the procedure," according to the FGR statement.

Finally, in April 2017, a formal prison was issued again.

The drug trafficker also has pending charges in Texas and New York.

At the time of his arrest, the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was offering a reward of more than two million dollars for his capture.

His search warrant and an indictment of "conspiracy to possess cocaine with intent to distribute" can still be seen on the agency's website.

The Viceroy, born in 1962 according to his DEA file,

He was the brother of the also historical drug trafficker Amado Carrillo Fuentes, one of the most famous and represented Mexican drug traffickers in popular culture, who received the nickname of Lord of the Skies

for owning a fleet of planes that he used to smuggle drugs into the United States.

Amado Carrillo Fuentes inherited the business after the death of Rafael Aguilar Guajardo, who moved in the orbit of the Guadalajara Cartel, led by Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo. Under his control, the Juarez Cartel "grew exponentially," according to the think tank InSight Crime. During the 1990s he became one of the most powerful and bloodthirsty in the country. Their modus operandi consisted of importing narcotics from Colombia, camouflaged in the fuselage of the aircraft, to later introduce the merchandise by land into the United States. For this, both brothers consolidated the corridor between Ciudad Juárez and El Paso (Texas) as the main point of entry for drugs — it is estimated that up to 70% of the traffic passed through here — to the world's largest cocaine consumer.

Amado Carrillo Fuentes died in strange circumstances in 1997, while undergoing a surgical operation to change his face. "It was not an end with the smell of gunpowder, one of those that corridos composers like so much," wrote the journalist Maite Rico in the chronicle of EL PAÍS of that July 6, 1997. His death was confirmed by the DEA, not thus by the Mexican Government, which only found "signs" that the body could be Carrillo Fuentes, which has since fueled rumors that the capo is still alive. With the death of his brother, Vicente Carrillo Fuentes became number one in the Juarez Cartel along with Juan José Esparragoza, alias El Azul

,

who years later would join the ranks of the Sinaloa Cartel.

During his tenure, the cartel developed a complex economic money laundering structure. Vicente Carrillo Fuentes was responsible for introducing and distributing hundreds of tons of cocaine in the United States between January 1990 and October 2014, according to a 2019 DEA report. "To ensure the success of your organization," the statement states, "He employed individuals to obtain transportation routes and warehouses to store narcotics, as well as hit men who carried out kidnappings and murders in Mexico in retaliation against rival groups that threatened the cartel."

In 2004, the Juarez Cartel started a war for control of the routes and the territory with its former commercial partners of the Sinaloa Cartel, then controlled by the also detained —and extradited to the United States, where he is serving a life sentence— Joaquín El Chapo Guzman. As of 2007, the dispute was also joined by the Gulf Cartel. The sum of these conflicts - which made Ciudad Juárez one of the most violent cities in the world and left behind at least 8,000 deaths, according to InSight Crime - gradually weakened Carrillo Fuentes' organization. , which fell into a decline from which it has never recovered, surpassed by other stronger drug trafficking organizations. At present, it has been reconverted into the New Juarez Cartel.

Despite showing a lower profile than other famous drug traffickers, far from ostentation, Vicente Carrillo Fuentes is considered one of the most violent elements of the criminal family to which he belonged.

The story of both brothers is synthesized by a famous narcocorrido by Gerardo Ortiz: “And among false stories the stories continue and I am not forgotten / they started my operations strong and we left the ranch / money always attracts problems and we became violent / because that's the way the Carrillos are ”.

His arrest in 2014, and now his sentence, serve to seal the fall of the last great heir to the Juarez Cartel.

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