Operation Kingslayer was a American covert military operation undertaken by the CIA, DEA, and JSOC in Bolivia in 2019 with the objective of dismantling and destroying the Mexican Santa Blanca Cartel, which had effectively taken control of the country two years earlier. The operation was carried out by the "Ghost Recon" squad of the 5th Special Forces Group, who worked with the communist Kataris 26 guerrillas to fight against both Santa Blanca sicarios and government La Unidad police units and neutralize Santa Blanca's leadership. The operation ended with the capture of El Sueño and several of his buchones (lieutenants).
Background[]
The Mexican Santa Blanca Cartel, led by Rodrigo Carlos "El Sueño" Pérez Morales, arrived in Bolivia in 2008 after El Sueño ostensibly received a vision from the cult figure Santa Muerte and grew determined to build a narco-state in her honor. Over the next several years, the Santa Blanca Cartel gradually assassinated the leaders of rival cartels and took over their operations, while also murdering or intimidating cocalero (coca farmer) union leaders into becoming cogs in Santa Blanca's cocaine production machine. Through the manipulation of public education, religion (in the form of Santa Muerte's cult), and even politics, Santa Blanca became a powerful "state within a state" in the Bolivian countryside. The Bolivian government responded by forming the La Unidad military police unit to destroy Santa Blanca, but the ensuing Bolivian Drug War of 2017 ended in failure for the government, leaving thousands dead and whole villages razed or turned into warzones. Eventually, the Bolivian president negotiated a truce with Santa Blanca, allowing the cartel to operate freely from Bolivia in exchange for El Sueño minimizing his men's violence. Bolivia quickly became the epicenter of the pan-American drug trade, and the cartel reportedly made $2 billion a week from its smuggling of drugs as far as Canada and Europe.
As the United States suffered the brunt of Santa Blanca's cocaine trafficking, the DEA dispatched agent Ricky Sandoval to infiltrate Santa Blanca and eliminate its leadership. Sandoval was able to become close to El Sueño while also establishing ties with Kataris 26, an indigenous Maoist revolutionary group formed by Pac Katari with the objective of returning control of the coca industry to the cocaleros and overthrowing the corrupt regime in La Paz. Sandoval secretly arranged for the US embassy in La Paz to be bombed in order to pressure the American government to dispatch the military to take on Santa Blanca, which was much more powerful than anticipated. After he organized a Kataris 26 ambush of El Sueño that failed, Sandoval was outed as an infiltrator and was tortured to death over 47 hours. This, along with the wounding of two US Marine Corps guards in the embassy bombing, led to a strong response from the United States government.
Operation[]
In a joint JSOC-CIA-DEA operation, a team of four special forces operatives from the elite "Ghost Recon" team assembled in Bolivia, having entered the country in disguise and from different borders. Supervised by CIA agent Karen Bowman, the team was transported by helicopter to Itacua province, the heartland of the Kataris 26 movement, and they immediately established contact with the rebels at a safehouse. In conjunction with Pac Katari and his rebels, they rescued Kataris 26 ideologue Amaru, conducted several raids on Santa Blanca operatives in the province, and eventually assassinated Sandoval's killers Gloria Fernandez and Zapatero Gonzalez at a hunting lodge. With Itacua liberated, the team gradually gathered intel in the other provinces and worked with both their CIA handler and the rebels to take down Santa Blanca's other operations, including a submarine drug-trafficking operation in Caimanes, the group's distribution network in Ocoro, the cartel's thriving entertainment industry in the Parque Nacional de Agua Verde, the coca collection industry in Tabacal, their propaganda operation in Pucara, El Chido's scheduled tour in Malca, and La Santera's Santa Muerte cult in Espiritu Santo.
Ghost Recon's raids ground the cartel's coca production and distribution to a halt, and, once they eliminated the buchones around a cartel capo, they launched targeted raids to take out the leaders of the cartel's production, influence, smuggling, and security wings. The first to fall was El Cardenal, captured in a raid on the Holy Malca Base.
The Americans overcame ideological differences with the communist Kataris 26 rebels to work together, utilizing the rebels' artillery, supply, vehicle, and personnel support during their operations. In order to weaken the cartel's hold on liberated zones, the Americans helped Kataris 26 broadcast propaganda messages and handed over captured supplies to the rebels.