Mexico stops the release of Hector 'El Güero' Palma, one of the founders of the Sinaloa Cartel

MEXICO CITY – Mexican drug trafficker Hector Luis El Güero Palma Salazar will remain in prison, despite the fact that in the early hours of Wednesday he had been notified of his release to the authorities of the Altiplano prison, the highest security federal prison in Mexico.

According to official information, agents of the Federal Ministerial Police of the Attorney General's Office (FGR) executed an arrest warrant against him for his alleged responsibility in the crime of aggravated homicide.

"There is no certainty that they can have him detained for specific crimes. He was charged from 2016 to here for organized crime and it was proven that he did not participate. Since he was arrested there has been no sentence," José Gabriel Martín Hernández, Palma Salazar's defense lawyer, said outside the prison.

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"His health is stable although it is diminished by all the emotional damage he has suffered, because he should have been released since 2021," said the lawyer.

The authorities have not yet specified whether Palma Salazar, 63, will continue to be held in the Altiplano prison or will be transferred to a penitentiary center in Guerrero. Local media have reported that outside the penitentiary a security device was activated with members of the Army and the National Guard.

[Drug trafficker Hector 'El Güero' Palma, associate of 'El Chapo', gets out of prison and rearrested for another cause]

According to the Mexican newspaper Milenio, the arrest warrant was granted by Cecilia Crockman Flores, in charge of the office of the Court of First Instance of the Judicial District of the State of Guerrero, within criminal case 301/2023.

"One of the heaviest drug traffickers"

Palma Salazar, who is recognized as one of the founders of the Sinaloa Cartel, in 1995 was imprisoned in Mexico and then transferred to the United States where he was imprisoned from 2007 to 2016 when he returned to Mexican territory.

Since then, he has been detained in the Altiplano prison, a prison where some of Mexico's most dangerous capos and criminals are held, such as Rafael Caro Quintero, Eduardo Arellano Félix and, more recently, Ovidio Guzmán López, one of the sons of Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán, another of the leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel.

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"He was one of the heaviest drug traffickers of the nineties. He worked a lot with El Chapo and they did business together, and they began to have control of the territories creating routes and ways to move drugs," Ioan Grillo, an English researcher and journalist who has focused on the analysis of organized crime in Latin America, said of Héctor Luis El Güero Palma Salazar.

It's not the first time the Mexican drug lord has been on the verge of getting out of jail. On May 4, 2021, El Güero was released and even left the Altiplano prison at dawn, but was again detained by the authorities for another pending case.

"It was a procedure that is not the most appropriate, you cannot issue an order to release an inmate accused of organized crime on a Saturday morning," Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico's president, said at the time.

Who is Héctor Luis "El Güero" Palma?

Palma Salazar was born in Mocorito, a town in Sinaloa, on April 29, 1960 and grew up in the town of Noria de Abajo. During his adolescence his skill as a car thief and hitman led him to venture into the world of drug trafficking where he would be recruited by Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, founder of the Guadalajara Cartel.

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El Güero Palma was noted for his cruelty. He was one of those who began to project this ruthless violence against family and friends. He was an emblematic figure of the nightmare that began to be lived with violence in Mexico," explains Erubiel Tirado, a researcher specializing in public security issues at the Universidad Iberoamericana.

Over the years, Palma Salazar allied with "El Chapo" Guzmán and together they began to lead the smuggling of drugs from Sinaloa to the United States.

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In the late eighties they decided to become independent from Felix Gallardo and found the Sinaloa Cartel, which today is considered one of the most powerful criminal organizations in the world. Part of his story is told in Narcos: Mexico, the Netflix series in which he is played by Spanish actor Gorka Lasaosa.

As expected, Felix Gallardo decided to take revenge on his former collaborators with a series of incidents that reached their climax with the infiltration of Venezuelan Rafael Clavel Moreno in the Sinaloa Cartel.

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In 1989, Clavel Moreno seduced Guadalupe Leija Serrano, wife of Palma Salazar, who fled with two million dollars and their two young children to the United States to continue her relationship with Clavel Moreno.

However, the Venezuelan slit her throat in a hotel in the city of San Francisco and sent the head to Palma Salazar. In July of that year, Clavel Moreno moved the Mexican drug lord's sons to the Venezuelan city of San Cristobal, where he threw them off a bridge. For many experts, this series of incidents presages the wave of violence that has subsequently characterized Mexican cartels.

"Everything that happened to El Güero's wife and children was like a prologue to the violence that in the nineties began to normalize in Mexico. In addition, then he took his revenge which was ruthless and very harsh. I think that was a precedent," says Grillo.

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From 1990 to 1995, Palma Salazar controlled drug trafficking routes and had territorial disputes with the Arellano Felix of the Tijuana Cartel.

During those years, the Sinaloa kingpin was linked to the murder of Cardinal Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo, during a confrontation at the Guadalajara International Airport and to the execution of Francisco Rodolfo Álvarez Fárber, Sinaloa's attorney general. Both murders took place in 1993.

The capture of 'El Güero'

By June 1995, the United States had already accused Palma Salazar of trafficking large quantities of cocaine, and by chance he was captured by the Mexican military in Guadalajara.

The capo was traveling in a small plane to the State of Mexico but the aircraft presented problems and had a bad landing in Nayarit. Although he was injured, he managed to take refuge in Jalisco where he was arrested.

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Palma Salazar spent almost 12 years in the Puente Grande prison, where he coincided with El Chapo Guzmán, who had been captured in 1993 but in 2001 managed to escape for the first time.

In 2007, he was extradited to the United States where he was detained in a prison in Phoenix, Arizona, but when convicted of drug trafficking he was transferred to the ADX Florence penitentiary center, where Guzmán Loera has been serving a life sentence since 2019.

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"He has been imprisoned for many years, but we still need to investigate whether he still has influence and power despite the confinement. There are several cases of capos who have been released by legal formalities and the Mexican government must avoid that, "says Tirado.

Due to his good behavior, Palma Salazar was released from US prison on July 15, 2016 but, upon being deported through the Matamoros, Tamaulipas port of entry, he was immediately detained by Mexican authorities who transferred him to the Altiplano prison, where he has remained ever since.