The DEA was part of the operation that precipitated the fall of Rafael Caro Quintero.
This has been recognized by the United States Drug Enforcement Agency in a message published on its website.
“Our incredible team in Mexico worked in conjunction with Mexican authorities to capture and arrest Caro Quintero, accused in the US of torturing and murdering special agent
Kiki
Camarena”, celebrated Anne Milgram, at the head of the institution since the middle of last year.
The arrest closes a practically personal lawsuit between the anti-drug force and the so-called Capo de Capos, accused of orchestrating the murder of Camarena in 1985, an episode that marked one of the deepest crises in memory in the relationship between the two countries.
The collaboration between the DEA and the Mexican Navy also represents a radical turn after the conflicts with the Andrés Manuel López Obrador Administration, which has considered the agency's operations a threat to the country's sovereignty and has sought to limit the room for maneuver of US elements in Mexican territory.
The Narco de Narcos was the most wanted man by the DEA, an obsession that lasted for decades that resulted in "blood, sweat and tears", in the words of Milgram.
"For more than 30 years, the men and women of the DEA have worked tirelessly to bring Caro Quintero to justice," said the head of the Agency.
The statement portrays the capture as an unprecedented victory, only surpassed by the memory of Kiki, exalted as one of the great martyrs in Washington's fight against drug trafficking.
"Agent Camarena's legacy lives on in all of you and in the rectitude of the work you do every day in the service of the United States," Milgram's message reads, and he concludes: "We will never forget."
"The arrest is the culmination of the tireless work of the DEA and its Mexican partners," US Attorney General Merrick B. Garland confirmed in another bulletin published late on Friday.
Garland has announced that he will request his immediate extradition.
In Mexico, on the other hand, the arrest of Caro Quintero has been widely described as a success for the Secretary of the Navy.
The capture, however, gives credit to López Obrador in the face of the demands of the White House and the criticism in Washington of his security strategy, which has left the persecution of the heads of criminal groups in the background, unlike his predecessors. in the
drug
war .
The capture of Caro Quintero breaks an inertia of disagreements between the DEA and the Mexican security forces.
The failure of the operation to capture Ovidio Guzmán, son of El Chapo, in October 2019 in Culiacán fueled the distrust of US institutions towards the Mexican Army, which was singled out on the other side of the border for alerting the capo that they were after the.
The crisis deepened after the arrest of the Secretary of Defense during the Government of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), Salvador Cienfuegos, at the end of 2020 in Los Angeles.
The López Obrador Administration converted the
Cienfuegos case
in a matter of State and repatriated the general under the promise of judging him under the laws of the country, but the investigation by the US Department of Justice was discredited and archived in Mexico.
Around that time, the ruling bloc pushed through a new law that tightened control over foreign anti-drug agents.
In October 2021, United States security officials complained that the López Obrador government had stopped the issuance of visas for 24 DEA agents in Mexico, according to the
Reforma
newspaper .
The blockade exhausted the patience of US diplomats, especially in light of revelations made this year by the head of the Northern Command about the presence of Russian spies who acted freely in the Latin American country.
In April 2022, López Obrador defended the closure of a DEA unit that received confidential information from its Mexican counterparts, a group that collaborated, among other cases, in the capture of
El Chapo .
Guzman.
The Mexican president has not hidden his distrust of her for the DEA: he has publicly accused her of "fabricating crimes" and has expressed his "disappointment" with the work of the Anti-Drug Agency.
Beyond the exchange of accusations and the deterioration of the relationship in the discourse, the Government of López Obrador has managed to impose a new tone and a new dynamic in bilateral cooperation in security matters.
But the specific cooperation of the DEA in the capture of Caro Quintero is made known a couple of days after López Obrador's visit to the White House and the issuance of a joint statement in which it is ensured that the collaboration to stop organized crime will be a priority.
"We promised to deepen our cooperation to combat transnational criminal organizations that promote violence in both countries," reads the document signed by both governments.
We reaffirm the robust operational efforts among law enforcement agencies to address these paramount security efforts.
For this, the DEA turns to the Mexican corporation it has trusted most in recent history: the Navy.
More information
The limbo of Caro Quintero
Caro Quintero is not the first big hit after a work visit.
For example, there is the announcement of the arrest of César Duarte in Florida in July 2020. The former PRI governor of Chihuahua fell just during a visit by López Obrador to Donald Trump.
The political moment of the capo's capture and the recent operations against the Sinaloa cartel have also given rise to all kinds of political interpretations of the behind-the-scenes message that was discussed in the White House on July 12 and suggest that in politics there are no coincidences.
It remains to be seen if the long chain of disagreements between the DEA and Mexico, whose first link was the murder of Camarena, is broken with the arrest of Caro Quintero or, at least, marks a kind of truce around the mutual claims that are aired in public.
The capo's extradition to the United States is also in suspense, how the Mexican government will play that card and whether the sudden boost to security cooperation will translate into other blows against organized crime.
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