U.S. drug warriors knock on heaven's door

0 Comments | Insight on the News, April 21, 1997 | by Jamie Dettmer

The Durango years were not Carillo's most reckless. During the mid-eighties the young Sinaloan became the lieutenant in Chihuahua of the freewheeling, freebasing Pablo Acosta Villareal, an ill-disciplined and flamboyant drug baron who pioneered using light aircraft to ferry drugs across the border. When his gunslinging addict of a boss overstepped the mark and was killed in a 1987 shootout with Mexican police, Carillo fled and teamed up with brother Cipriano in the Durango town of Torreon. That union lasted two years as 1989 saw deep and bloody rivalries break out among the trafficking families, prompted by the arrests of several top smugglers, including Carillo's uncle, for involvement in the torture and murder of DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena. Capriano died in mysterious circumstances -- an AK-47 bullet to the mouth finished him.

It isn't known when Carillo returned to Chihuahua state nor exactly how he slithered up the cartel's hierarchy, though some drug watchers south of the border suspect the close ties he formed during his apprentice years with the Cali cartel's Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela were crucial. The detailed ins and outs aside, three things are clear about the Lord of Heaven: He's quick to seize opportunities and exploit the misfortunes of rivals which he often engineers, he's a shrewd and patient tactician and he generally balances savage retaliation with a readiness to compromise and form alliances.

Certainly Carillo benefited from inheriting a cartel that was well-organized and rich even before his elevation to drug-baron status. According to PGR assessments, in 1988 and 1989 the cartel moved 250 tons of 100 percent pure cocaine with a street value of $21 billion. But with remarkable swiftness he has transformed Mexico's narcotrafficking pecking order and established the Juarez organization as primus inter pares. "Amado has wrestled the top spot -- the other families, particularly the Arellano Felixes, resent it but in the end he's in the driving seat," says a Customs source.

One way he secured his position was to enrich his cartel even further by pioneering the use of Boeing 727s and French Caravelles to shift massive Colombian cocaine loads into Mexico. And Carillo has maintained his grip and expanded his influence by continuing to learn from the indiscretions of his onetime boss Acosta: He can be the homicidal gunslinger with rivals or associates suspected of inefficiency or disloyalty but he also can be a peacemaker and has widened the cartel by contracting out drug loads and shipments to new families, say DEA agents. Until recently he presided over regular secret meetings with the bosses of rival cartels, including the Arellano Felixes and the Meraz and Quinteros families, according to a highly placed informant who infiltrated one of the cartels for US. Customs and the DEA.

In an interview with Insight the informant says Carillo met other family heads about every 90 days at a resort near Golfo de Santa Clara. Fearful of U.S. electronic surveillance, the narcotraffickers would only talk business when out on a luxury fishing vessel in the Gulf of California. The purpose of the meetings? "Straighten out differences and keep the flow of business going without the disruption of cartel violence," says the source. Those get-togethers no longer take place -- fearful of Carillo's capo di capo ambitions the Arellano Felixes have tried at least once to kill the Sinaloan.