‘El Azul’ Died, But There Was No Body. The Tireless Search for Juan José Esparragoza

On June 7, 2014, the history books added new lines of lies to the volumes dedicated to drug trafficking: that Saturday afternoon, the legendary Juan José Esparragoza Moreno, El Azul, was said to have died. His death from natural causes, like that of any commoner, would seem unworthy of a king of drug trafficking: he is credited, under the orders of Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, with organizing the mythical summit of drug traffickers in April 1989, where the criminals divided the country among themselves like slices of a cake.

El Azul was the only one who, respected and admired by drug lords from all corners of the country, could bring even the most bitter enemies together under the same roof. From that meeting in Acapulco, Guerrero, the system of “plazas” was born, which to this day divides the country with invisible borders.

That Saturday, the country was lamenting that the Mexican national team had lost to Portugal just days before the start of the World Cup in Brazil. Millions were worried about the international embarrassment, unaware that a theater of the absurd was unfolding at home: hundreds of social media accounts spread, as if choreographed, the news that El Azul had died of a massive heart attack.

The capo’s followers celebrated amidst the mourning, believing that Esparragoza Moreno had achieved what very few accomplish in organized crime: he escaped death in a prison cell, in some remote area killed by the military, or in a safe house tortured by his enemies. He had gone unpunished and untouchable.

That afternoon, his biography reached legendary proportions: his heart stopped when he tried to get out of bed, and he died a free man.

The gaps in the information were gradually filled throughout the day with a strange and generic account: 15 days earlier, El Azul had supposedly been in a car accident somewhere in Sinaloa. The collision had been so severe that it fractured his hip, requiring immediate surgery at a hospital.  Given that he was a 65-year-old man, a high-risk operation was anticipated, which initially went well but became complicated during the post-operative period.

To speed up his recovery, the patient was supposed to walk short distances within the hospital. One step here, another step there. During one of these attempts, he got out of bed and collapsed. Resuscitation efforts failed, even though they were performed in a hospital equipped to handle emergencies.

Social media profiles that announced his death quickly amplified the rumor: black and white photographs of the drug lord, farewell messages, ballads in his honor, and expressions of grief circulated online. They even provided the date, time, and location of a supposed funeral in a town in the Sierra Madre Occidental.

There was only one problem: no one could provide a single piece of evidence that El Azul was no longer among the living. He had died, but there was no body.

The Death of El Azul: An Act of Faith

The death of Esparragoza Moreno raised suspicions from the start: no one could pinpoint the location of the car accident that supposedly caused his death, nor was there any police record of a traffic incident that had resulted in injuries or fatalities.

Social media also failed to provide the name of the hospital or the doctor who treated El Azul.  The information regarding the location of the medical facility was contradictory. Some placed the capo’s death in Mexico City, while others pointed to Guadalajara, Jalisco, or Culiacán. There were no photos of the body or a copy of the death certificate. Only death as an act of faith.

More incongruous details were added to the information: that he had been buried in Badiraguato, Sinaloa, or that he had been cremated and his ashes were in Culiacán; that the doctor responsible had fled the country for fear of reprisals or that he had already been murdered and that was why no one could locate him; that his remains rested in a lavish mausoleum under a false name or that his family kept them in an urn inside a discreet house, just as he would have wanted.

The day after the supposed death, the then Attorney General’s Office, headed by Jesús Murillo Karam, announced that it was launching a formal investigation to confirm his death. To lend credibility to the outcome, the investigators included agents from the now-defunct Center for Research and National Security (CISEN). And the military discreetly joined the effort.

Journalists in national and Sinaloan media outlets conducted their own investigations: the newspaper Noroeste revealed that two high-ranking officials in the Sinaloa government couldn’t confirm the capo’s death; the weekly magazine Ríodoce was also unable to independently verify the death; and local reporters quoted Governor Mario López Valdez:

“Nothing official, nothing truthful about them bringing the ashes. We, the directors, are gathered here, evaluating the City Council. But there’s nothing.”

The federal government closed the case a week later with an inconclusive verdict: perhaps he’s dead, perhaps he’s alive. The uncertainty prompted the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to launch its own investigation. They were looking for a body to perform a DNA test, a funeral that would have shaken Badiraguato, a violent power struggle that would confirm the leader’s absence. They found nothing but dust.

Only one person, fully identified by the authorities, corroborated the drug lord’s death: a month after the rumor, on August 20, 2014, federal police arrested two men in Culiacán who were driving a vehicle containing marijuana, cocaine, weapons, ammunition, and 2,746,000 pesos.

One of them, the passenger, claimed during an interrogation in Toluca that he himself had touched the drug trafficker’s corpse. An invaluable witness to the death. He identified himself as José Juan Esparragoza Jiménez, son of El Azul.

“However, it wasn’t possible to obtain a positive match, since there’s no genetic information available to establish the family relationship; additionally, a comparison was made with databases from other agencies, which also lacked information to provide scientific certainty of the family affiliation,” the federal government detailed in a statement.

The rumor was the only thing that, without a doubt, remained alive.

El Azul’s beginnings as a marijuana and poppy grower

If Juan José Esparragoza Moreno’s death is a mystery, so is his birth. The Mexican government claims he was born on February 3, 1949, but some U.S. records show the date as March 2 of the same year. Like many in his native Badiraguato, he quickly left school to seek a life in the countryside. First, as a cattle herder, then as a marijuana and poppy grower. He began trafficking drugs within the criminal organization of Pedro Avilés, “The Lion of the Sierra,” who convinced him to join the state police as a detective to be more useful to the drug lords.  With a badge, and later without it, he joined the Guadalajara Cartel, founded by Félix Gallardo, Rafael Caro Quintero, Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, and other old-school drug kingpins. From then on, family and friends knew him by his nickname: his skin was so dark that it resembled the color of a murky, turbulent sea.

When those three made the fateful decision to kidnap, torture, and murder DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena for infiltrating the cartel and ruining their business by reporting a massive marijuana plantation known as El Búfalo to the United States authorities, the Guadalajara Cartel collapsed without the protection of Mexican politicians.

El Azul ensured that each of the bosses kept a piece of Mexico and that the others paid a fee to travel through each other’s territory. An effort that would soon go to hell due to the ambition of the generation of drug traffickers at the end of the last century.

“He was in prison for seven years and was released in 1992. He then joined the Juárez Cartel and worked under the command of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, until Carrillo’s death in 1997,” reads his brief biography published by Insight Crime.

Then, unlike many others, he transitioned to the Sinaloa Cartel: he became the right-hand man of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán and Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada. While the former was in prison, he acted as the on-the-ground operator; and when El Mayo had to attend to other tasks, El Azul took the position of undisputed boss, the only one capable of building bridges between drug traffickers, politicians, and businessmen.

Before others, Esparragoza Moreno understood that alliances in organized crime are not made for love, but for business. No one resists making deals with the family. He married El Chapo’s sister-in-law, was the godfather of one of Amado Carrillo Fuentes’ sons, also of one of El Mayo’s nephews, and one of his sons is married to one of the Beltrán Leyva daughters. Related to everyone, respected and loved, his position was consolidated as the most effective mediator among the Mexican cartels.

“During a party, Juan José Esparragoza Moreno […] approached the head of a drug trafficking gang and asked to speak for a few minutes. ‘Don’t be so quick to pull the trigger,’ he advised, referring to the hitman’s habit of shooting his rivals. ‘These businesses don’t mix with killings and they get ruined.’” “The conversation was recorded in the trial file against General Francisco Quiroz Hermosillo, accused of drug trafficking and money laundering,” journalist Alberto Nájar wrote in 2014, days after the alleged death, in an article for the BBC.

The most widely told story in Sinaloa is that El Azul never stopped working. He operated for decades because he avoided being seen in public or photographed. He even demanded that the narco corridos composed in his honor not be played. Discreet, he continued pulling the strings of drug trafficking for the Sinaloa Cartel until the administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto. Until one day he simply vanished.

The Uncertain Fate of ‘El Azul’

Some say he truly died, and the Sinaloa Cartel orchestrated a detailed operation to prevent his body from being touched by the authorities, as a show of respect for his criminal stature. Others say he didn’t die, but that he was in a hospital undergoing plastic surgery to retire from drug trafficking without fear of being recognized.

Some claim he still lives in the Sinaloan mountains under another name, far removed from crime; that he fled to another country where he lives with a secret identity; that he still makes decisions for the Sinaloa Cartel; that he negotiated his surrender with the Mexican government; that he lives, dies, or is in some kind of limbo, like the ghosts that appear, the saints who perform miracles, or the demons who unleash earthly curses.

No one knows for sure the fate of El Azul. His name is in the category of drug lords whom Mexico’s drug trafficking history considers dead, but without a body to prove it: there are, for example, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, El Señor de los Cielos, of the Juárez Cartel, who supposedly died in a Mexico City hospital after undergoing extensive plastic surgery to change his appearance. Or Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, El Mencho, leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, who is frequently reported as having died from a kidney disease that was revealed by the Mexican Navy.

Others have faked their deaths, only to die twice: Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano, El Lazca, founder of Los Zetas, was said to have died in a confrontation with the military in 2011, but his body had been stolen from a funeral home… only to die definitively months later, when the government recovered his remains and performed a genetic verification. Or Nazario Moreno González, El Chayo, founder of the Knights Templar, who died in a shootout in 2010, supposedly came back to life and was finally killed in 2014.

The only certainty is on the internet: the U.S. government still lists Juan José Esparragoza Moreno, El Azul, as one of its most wanted fugitives. They believe he might now be using the names Juan Esparragosa Ualino, Juan José Esparragoza Italino, Arturo Beltrán, Raúl González, or Juan Robledo.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) doesn’t believe the rumor of his death. At 77 years old, El Azul is considered armed and dangerous. And most importantly: alive and among us.

Source: Milenio