He was walking towards his truck when five armed men shoved him to a waiting Volkswagen, before speeding away. On that fateful day, Kiki Camarena left the DEA office within the American consulate in Guadalajara to grab lunch with his wife, Mika. He was dangerously close by February 1985, he was three weeks from being reassigned out of fear that he had become a target for the cartels a fear that would come to be well-founded. He formed his own network, slowly inching towards his goal of taking down the heads of the group. Kiki Camarena looked at the enigma that was the Guadalajara Cartel and wanted to crack it open. They worked with the Colombian cartels, most notably the Cali cartel, and were paid in cocaine. What made him even more dangerous was that he was one of the heads of the Guadalajara Cartel, who controlled the major drug routes going to the United States. The US government estimated that he was pulling in at least $5 billion a year in drug money. The plantation produced over eight billion dollars’ worth of cannabis annually and was operated by Rafael Caro Quintero.Ĭaro Quintero was a dangerous man. In 1984, Camarena, acting on a tip, led 450 Mexican federales to Rancho Búfalo, the largest marijuana plantation in Mexico, and razed it to the ground. Working undercover, he sought to disrupt operations of large-scale marijuana plantations all over Mexico. Kiki Camarena went straight to work in Guadalajara. President Ronald Reagan had declared his “War on Drugs” and DEA agents were sent to do battle all across the world, regardless if the other country wanted them there. His mother even tried to dissuade him from taking it, but he was set, saying, “Even if I’m only one person, I can make a difference.”īy the 1980s, drug production and smuggling was at an all-time high in Central and Latin America, and the United States fought back the way it knew best how: by extending her laws beyond her borders. It was in June 1974 when he found his true calling as a Special Agent for the Drug Enforcement Agency. He would graduate high school and join the United States Marine Corps, serving for three years.Īfter his stint the Marines, Camarena worked in Calexico as a fireman and police officer while attending Imperial Valley College for an associate’s degree. Camarena was nine years old when their family moved across to Calexico and called it home. Mexicali sits right on the border: across the street is the United States and the town of Calexico, California. Kiki Camarena was born in Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico. Enrique “Kiki” Camarena Salazar would never be seen alive again. He is surrounded, gagged, and shoved into a beige Volkswagen. A man walked down the street just outside the DEA office in Guadalajara, Mexico, to have lunch with his wife.
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