Caro Quintero Bought the Weapons Used to Abduct ‘Kiki’ Camarena in the US: He Spent $50 for Each One

Rafael Caro Quintero was the man who grabbed the headlines in the press, radio, and television. He was the man most wanted by the DEA, the anti-drug agency, and the protagonist of that “fiasco,” as his compadre Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, Don Neto, warned him when he learned of the murder of Kiki Camarena, which put the relationship between the governments of Miguel de la Madrid and Ronald Reagan on edge.

At seven o’clock in the morning on April 7, 1985, the man who years later would be nicknamed El Narco de Narcos (The Narco of Narcos), was giving his second ministerial statement in the cells of the then Federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR), in building number 9 of the Eje Central (Central Axis). Four days had passed since his arrest in Quinta California, in San José, Costa Rica. Rafael Caro Quintero shook off his memories to dust off the origin of the arsenal seized by the authorities.

The first statement took place on April 5, after his arrest on the flight that transported him from Costa Rica to Mexico, in the Attorney General’s plane with the registration number XC-PGR. Florentino Ventura Gutiérrez, first commander of the Federal Judicial Police, was in charge of the interrogation. But now, the drug trafficker was before the general director of Preliminary Investigations of the PGR and the agent of the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office, César Augusto Osorio y Nieto.

The sparse beard. The abundant mustache was again beginning to take shape. The matted hair. The sleepless hours. The torture of the last hours. The hunger and thirst. Rafael Caro Quintero ratified his first statement. He answered mechanically. He narrated his life in a few minutes. The authorities are specifically interested in the events of the last two years.

In the dreaded building on Eje Central, Caro Quintero listened to the incessant clatter of typewriters. He watched the secretaries transcribing every word that came out of that room that five months later would be crushed by the earthquakes of September 19 and 20, 1985.

The 29-year-old man, originally from the community of La Noria, in the municipality of Badiraguato, Sinaloa, with a primary school education; who in 1976 began to dedicate himself to the planting, cultivation and sale of marijuana, with harvests of 30 to 50 kilos; who according to his calculations at that time had a fortune of one billion pesos from the drug trafficking business, and who provided the private telephone number of Guadalajara 15 86 87, was answering the question about his arsenal.

A certified copy of the judicial file of the Kiki Camarena case, in possession of DOMINGA, shows that the kidnapping and murder of the DEA agent and the Mexican pilot Alfredo Zavala Avelar was operated with weapons that were acquired on the black market in the United States. An equation that has intensified in the following four decades: arms factories, gun shops, middlemen, mafias and hundreds of thousands of dead and disappeared.

The compadres, the mythical founders of the first organized mafia in Mexico dedicated to drug trafficking, later baptized by the DEA as the Guadalajara Cartel, did not know that these declarations would be the backbone, 40 years later, of the demand of the last two administrations, of the demand by Mexico’s last two administrations – that of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and that of President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo – for U.S. companies to stop selling the powerful weapons they manufacture, which are then purchased in gun shops, and which find their way into the hands of criminal groups south of the Rio Bravo, seven of which have now been declared “terrorist organizations” by Donald Trump.

The Guadalajara Cartel bought weapons from across the Rio Grande.

Since the early 1980s, the Badiraguato compadres knew that guns were the skeleton, the neuralgic system, the brain of the mafias. Caro and Don Neto didn’t finish elementary school, but they knew that in the criminal business you need high-powered weapons and men determined to use them. Corruption in the PRI regimes and lax U.S. arms regulations were the best combination.

The capos, according to their ministerial declarations, needed these weapons for their personal bodyguards and to guard their properties; to guard the land where the marijuana was planted, harvested and packaged, like the El Búfalo ranch, which Kiki Camarena detected in November 1984; to steal, disappear and murder; to match them with the fake badges of the feared Federal Security Directorate, the Federal Judicial Police or the Jalisco Judicial Police, to kidnap and then murder a DEA agent.

In the PGR, Caro Quintero declared: “that he has twenty long weapons, including AK-47s and AR-15s, which he acquired in the United States of America in different gun shops of which he cannot provide their names and addresses, they were acquired by the [defendant], who is one of the persons he trusts and according to what he understands the defendant pays different people the amount of $50 for purchasing each one of the weapons and of course they’re registered”.

Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo and 24 of his gunmen were captured that same April 7, but in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco. In a lightning operation they were transferred to the then Federal District in a military plane. Once in Mexico City, they were taken to 81 Soto Street, in the Guerrero neighborhood, where the Interpol-Mexico police station was located.

There, the drug trafficker, originally from Santiago de los Caballeros, municipality of Badiraguato, Sinaloa, said on April 9 that “regarding the weapons used by his boys or gunmen, whose number is unstable and fluctuates between 25, the weapons they use, as he said, pistols, .45 and .38 caliber, AK-47 rifles and AR-15, he buys them through his second in command, Samuel Ramirez Razo. He said that he was in charge of buying them and that “he buys them in San Diego and Los Angeles, Ca., he passes them to Mexican territory, the friends he has can inform him in detail”.

Two days later, Don Neto gave his second statement to the PGR. And he talks about the origin of his arsenal. “That he acquired these weapons through a purchase he made through his nephew, who lives in Los Angeles, California… that his nephew brought them into the country in a clandestine manner, he brought them hidden in vehicles and, of course, without the corresponding permits from the Ministry of National Defense,” said Fonseca Carrillo.

In those years of recurring economic crises, perpetual devaluations, inflation hovering around 83% and aggressive neoliberal prescriptions from international financial organizations, the exchange rate fluctuated at around 500 pesos to the dollar. In other words, Caro Quintero and Fonseca Carrillo bought for approximately 25,000 pesos each of the weapons acquired by the Guadalajara Cartel in the United States.

Reagan was sparing no resources and the arms industry was rubbing its hands together.

Mexico was getting ready to host its second Soccer World Cup. Colombia had resigned from the organization of that event due to several corruption scandals. The Colombian cartels, Medellin and Cali, were bleeding the South American country dry with arms from the United States, in the so-called “era of terror”, which lasted from 1984 to 1989.

The Cold War was in its last throes. The administration of the Republican Ronald Reagan was seeking to accelerate the collapse of the Soviet Union and was squandering multi-million dollar resources all over the world on anti-communist armed organizations. Some of them, later on, were labeled as terrorists by the American Union itself. The ‘Hollywood’ cowboy didn’t skimp on the dollars to fight “the enemies” of the West. The machine of war schizophrenia was well oiled.

Delivery of chemical, conventional and weapons of mass destruction to the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein in his war against the fundamentalist state of the ayatollahs in Iran. Triangulation of resources for the shipment of armaments, unauthorized by the US Congress, to the Nicaraguan Contras that were boycotting and destabilizing the Sandinista revolution. A Marine invasion of Grenada, an Antillean island that was accused by the Reagan administration of implementing “Soviet-Marxist-Cuban” measures. Bombings in Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya. Financing of the ‘mujahideen’, led by Saudi Osama Bin Laden, in the bloody war between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union.

The obese U.S. arms industry was rubbing its hands together. The first years of neoliberal policies under the tutelage of Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were seasoned with the business of war, with an unquenchable arms industry. But the trickle of weapons also fed the still incipient Mexican mafias. At that time, marijuana trafficking was beginning to attract the attention of the DEA, especially a group based in the city of Guadalajara. The leaders of this gang were Rafael Caro Quintero, Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo and Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo.

Since those years, the anti-drug agency and its agent Enrique Camarena Salazar were focused on drug trafficking from Mexico to the United States. Not so on the illegal trafficking of powerful weapons that served the Mexican criminal gangs to operate their millionaire businesses and corrupt the authorities. Cocaine coming from Colombia and making a stopover in Mexico began to generate noise. Nothing was ever mentioned about the weapons coming out of the factories and armories in the United States.

Once kidnapped, ‘Kiki’ Camarena confessed he was after Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo.

Samuel Ramirez Razo, El Sam, was Fonseca Carrillo’s gunman. He was one of the five gangsters who picked up Kiki outside the U.S. Consulate in Guadalajara on February 4, 1985, and hours later interrogated him in one of Caro Quintero’s safe houses at 881 Lope de Vega Street, Sector Juarez, in Guadalajara. Don Neto and El Sam said in an expanded statement on April 11 of that year:

“I remember that I did order my compadre Samuel Ramirez Razo to talk to Mr. Enrique Camarena Salazar, to ask him why the DEA was throwing so much at him and to ask him what the cause was and to see what information he could get out of him […].

“I remember that my compadre informed me that Mr. Enrique Camarena Salazar had told him that the DEA didn’t have a big problem with me, but that the person they were looking for and that their attention was focused on was my compadre Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, because he was moving very strongly in the United States with cocaine and that they had already hit him hard, the DEA knew that this cocaine was leaving Mexico and that Miguel Félix Gallardo was the owner”.

Cornered, Don Neto continues to respond to the interrogation: 

“The second reason for the DEA and because of his importance was my compadre Rafael Caro Quintero, he was the primary introducer of marijuana to the United States and he was the one who was producing more marijuana here in Mexico. In addition, they considered him dangerous and he was also half crazy. Last but not least he was the one with the authority.”

The National Defense denied having issued permits for weapons purchased in the US.

In his second statement, Caro Quintero had indicated that the 20 weapons he acquired in the United States, at $50 each, “of course had a registration. This made the authorities of the PGR jump to attention. On April 11, 1985, the agency sent official letter 5.-16762 to the Secretary of National Defense to request the permits that the weapons referred to by the Badiraguato drug lord had.

The person in charge of responding to the request is not a mid-level military commander. The Secretary of Defense, General Juan Arevalo Gardoqui, is the one who answers the request on April 12. In official letter 14755, the high command of the Army addresses the response to the Attorney General of the Republic, Sergio Garcia Ramirez.

“The General Directorate of the Firearms and Explosives Registry of the Ministry of National Defense has never issued a permit to Rafael Caro Quintero to possess the weapons described in his letter; the weapons themselves were never registered in the aforementioned Directorate, nor has a permit been issued to carry said weapons […], all of the weapons described are classified as being for the exclusive use of the Mexican Army, Navy and Air Force”.

Also on April 11 of that year, the commander of the 15th Military Zone, with headquarters in Guadalajara, notified the PGR about the arsenal seized from Don Neto and his gunmen in Puerto Vallarta, a few days before. The weapons, acquired on the black market in the United States, according to Fonseca Carrillo’s testimony, remain in the custody of the Army. The official letter 5.-17169 mentions that based on the agreement of the preliminary investigation 2567/85, the seized arsenal includes five Colt .45 caliber pistols, one Itaka .45 caliber pistol, one Randall .45 caliber pistol, one Sauer .45 caliber pistol, two Colt .38 caliber pistols, and two Browning 9 millimeter pistols.

And the list goes on with high-powered weapons:

“One AK91 380 caliber rifle with telescopic sight. Nine 7.62 caliber AKS rifles. Three Chinese-made 7.6×39 caliber rifles. Three unmarked 762×39 caliber rifles. One 762×39 caliber ARM rifle. Four ARK Colt 223 caliber rifles. One Remington 12-gauge shotgun. One SM11-A1 380 caliber submachine gun with a suppressor. Eleven defensive hand grenades, apparently loaded with American gunpowder. Ten hand grenade bodies adapted with electronic system. One grenade body with stabilizing tube and rocket ammunition. One practice hand grenade. 328 rounds of various calibers for the weapons and 50 magazines of various types for the aforementioned weapons.”

Kiki’s son lent his father’s handcuffs to immobilize Caro Quintero.

Caro Quintero doesn’t seem to observe the DEA agents’ camera lens. His countenance is confused with rancor and fear. The man from Badiraguato has a naked torso. His arms behind his back, possibly with his hands cuffed. The mythical mustache is shaved. Behind navy blue pants that look like jeans, unbuttoned, with the fly down, white underpants can be seen.

The man who years later was baptized Narco de Narcos is leaning against an exterior column of the Quinta California. Days later he says that he bought that farm from an Iranian for $800,000 dollars and that he paid for it in cash. It is the first photograph taken of Caro Quintero after his arrest in the Central American country. The original of that plaque is exhibited as a trophy at the DEA Museum in Arlington, Virginia.

Below that image, a diamond-encrusted pistol that was seized after his arrest is presented to the public. It is a U.S.-made .45 caliber Colt. “Diamond pistol, American. Confiscated from Rafael Caro Quintero when he was captured in Costa Rica in 1985, this diamond-encrusted Colt .45 pistol commemorates operations in the Pacific in World War II,” states the description card of the piece on display.

Caro Quintero was sentenced to 199 years in prison until 1989. It was a symbolic sentence. Mexican law at the time only allowed for 40 years in prison. In 2013, after 28 years in prison, a collegiate court in Jalisco granted him his freedom.

The mobster took advantage of the ruling and went on the run for nine years. During this period he founded the Caborca Cartel. In July 2022 he is captured again in a Navy operation in the municipality of Choix, Sinaloa.

In the images, the Narco of Narcos looks devastated, in frank decline. There were less than three years to go before the greatest of his nightmares would come true: to set foot on U.S. soil only to be handed over to Kiki Camarena’s companions. Yes. In the same country where in the early eighties he went to buy weapons.

Forty years after that photograph in Costa Rica, the DEA achieved one of its greatest desires: the drug lord who ordered the execution of its agent was handed over to US authorities by the government of President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo along with 28 other criminal gang leaders, on February 27, 2025. In a symbolic act, the DEA agent’s son lent the handcuffs his father used to restrain Rafael Caro Quintero when he set foot on US soil.

Five days after the surrender of the Narco of Narcos to the US authorities, in New York, 363 kilometers from that city, in Washington D.C., the US Supreme Court took the first step to bury the lawsuit of the last two Mexican administrations against at least ten gun-producing industries: Smith & Wesson, Beretta, Colt, Glock, Century Arms, Ruger, Barrett, SnG Tactical, Ammo AZ, Diamondback Shooting Sports, Sprague’s Sports and The Hub.

The main argument for this complaint is that between 70% and 90% of the weapons recovered from organized crime at crime scenes, or from the seven “terrorist organizations,” as the Trump administration labeled them, come out of those companies.

After a little more than four decades, Caro Quintero is once again on US soil. He was in that nation between 1982 and 1984. There he acquired weapons for himself and his gunmen. He bought them for $50 a piece. With those rifles and pistols, added to those that Ernesto Fonseca had also paid for in the United States for his “boys,” they abducted and then murdered DEA agent Enrique Camarena Salazar in February 1985. This is what they stated in their ministerial declarations.

With a lost look, shackled, without his characteristic mustache and messy hair of his youth, Caro Quintero came down the steps and walked from the Mexican Air Force plane towards the men who had waited for this moment for 40 years. The man from Badiraguato seemed to be dusting off memories.

At 72, he was arriving in a nation where he might be sentenced to life in prison or given the death penalty. On that New York night, the drug lord may have recalled his appearances in the prison in Mexico City’s Reclusorio Norte. The khaki-colored prison uniform with his Federal District Department stamp, where he revealed: “That he wishes to state that he made different trips to the interior of the Republic and to the United States aboard the Falcon 10 plane that he owns.

Source: Milenio