Operation Leyenda was an American DEA operation in Mexico which occurred from April 1985 to April 1989. The objective of Operation Leyenda was to bring to justice the torturers and murderers of DEA agent Kiki Camarena and to dismantle the powerful Guadalajara Cartel of Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo. Camarena's murder led to the DEA changing tactics with regard to the Mexican theatre of the War on Drugs, adopting a gloves-off approach and initiating a four-year manhunt against the Guadalajara Cartel leadership and associates. The operation successfully concluded in 1989 with Felix Gallardo's capture and the dismantling of the Guadalajara Cartel, although the new cartels formed by this partition would become just as powerful and dangerous, ultimately leading to the start of the Mexican Drug War in 2006.
Background[]
Rise of Guadalajara[]
From 1975 to 1988, the Mexican government - aided by the American CIA and DEA - launched Operation Condor, a series of military operations which aimed to eliminate the drug trade in Mexico and end the trafficking of Mexican marijuana into the United States. However, during the early 1980s, Sinaloan state policeman Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo moved to Guadalajara, Jalisco and built up a powerful new drug trafficking organization, the Guadalajara Cartel, with aid from the corrupt Federal Security Directorate (DFS) under Director-General Salvador Osuna Nava and Commander Juan Jose Esparragoza Moreno.
Murder of Kiki Camarena[]
Camarena's kidnapping
By 1984, the Guadalajara Cartel had expanded into the cocaine industry in partnership with Colombian cartels, and it became increasingly violent as it took over Tijuana from Alberto Sicilia Falcon's organization and fought back against DEA efforts to weaken its drug business. Leading the DEA's fight was Agent Kiki Camarena, who disagreed with DEA Mexico operations chief Ed Heath's passive approach towards stemming the growth of the Guadalajara Cartel; after the November 1984 Rancho Bufalo raid destroyed 5,000 tons ($2.5 billion worth) of Guadalajara's marijuana, Guadalajara lieutenant Rafael Caro Quintero and the DFS worked together to kidnap Camarena, as Caro Quintero sought vengeance for the destruction of his crops, and the DFS sought to prevent Camarena from discovering the DFS' ties to the Guadalajara Cartel. On 7 February 1985, Camarena was kidnapped from his home, and he was tortured and interrogated for two days before being executed. His body was found by the DEA in March 1985 in Michoacan following the La Angostura raid, and Camarena's death provoked a media outcry in the USA. In response to this, the new DEA administrator John C. Lawn and Ed Heath decided to initiate "Operation Leyenda", a major crackdown on Guadalajara which had the goal of bringing to justice Camarena's murderers.
Operation[]
Immediate actions[]
Felix Gallardo meeting with Helmer Herrera, January 1986
In the months before the Leyenda task force was assembled, the DEA doubled its number of agents, embarking on a recruitment drive to prosecute the fight against drug trafficking. From mid-1985 to January 1986, drug shipment seizures were up over 40%, causing Felix Gallardo's plazas to lose money, and causing Tijuana plaza bosses Benjamin and Ramon Arellano Felix to demand that they, instead of the Sinaloa plaza, be given control of the lucrative drug transportation business through Tijuana. At his birthday party on 8 January 1986, Felix Gallardo spoke with Cali Cartel lieutenant Helmer Herrera and demanded that Cali repay its $200 million debt to Guadalajara, but Herrera reasoned with him that powder was easier to transport than money, and blamed his cartel's declining income on its culpability for Camarena's murder. He then said that Camarena's murder was bad for business, and that the consequences were Felix Gallardo's problem and not Cali's.
Humberto Alvarez Machain[]
DEA agent Walt Breslin - entering Mexico with a tourist visa to mask his identity - assembled a task force in Guadalajara, consisting of himself, Special Agent Kenny Moss, Agents Sal Orozco and Daryl Petski, and the former Mexican police officers Ossie Mejia, Amat Palacios, and Danilo Garza. This team of rogue agents first kidnapped the physician Humberto Alvarez Machain as he left his office, forcing him to confess to being the doctor who kept Camarena alive during the interrogation; he also revealed that the torturer was former DFS agent Sergio Verdin. Alvarez was then thrown in the trunk of a car and driven up to the border, where he was sent to other DEA agents waiting at a hole in the border fence; Alvarez was then taken to California to face trial.
Sergio Verdin[]
The shootout with Verdin's escorts
The DEA team then obtained Heath's permission to make a move on Verdin within 24 hours of Verdin's capture, and they decided to ambush Verdin and his PPK-equipped guards as they drove down a one-way street on their way out of the CISEN office. Garza used a cement truck to intersect with Verdin's path and block off Verdin's escort from following him, as Garza pretended that his cement truck broke down. However, the plan went south when those in the escort car forced Garza to help them push his truck, and, upon seeing a bread truck blocking his path, Verdin ordered his men to turn the car around. Before they could do so, Breslin and Orozco crashed into Verdin's car from the back, and they then exited the car with guns drawn. However, the escort car drove around the cement truck and arrived at the scene, alerted to trouble by the sounding of Verdin's horn, and a shootout began between the CISEN agents and the DEA team. They ultimately gunned down all of the CISEN agents and kidnapped Verdin, and they took a civilian captive; Garza advised that they kill him to prevent their cover from being blown, but Breslin spared him after taking his ID card and threatening to track him down if anything went wrong. They proceeded to torture Verdin into identifying Ruben Zuno Arce as the owner of the mansion at 881 Lope de Vega where Camarena had been tortured, giving them a new target.
Ruben Zuno Arce[]
Ruben Zuno Arce's capture
Zuno, the son-in-law of President Luis Echeverria and the nephew of Secretary of Defense Juan Arevalo Gardoqui, managed to obtain a force of Mexican Army soldiers to guard him at his Puerto Vallarta compound after hearing of Verdin's capture, but Ed Heath gave Breslin permission to find a way to capture him. Breslin and his team flew to Puerto Vallarta and made their surveillance of the mansion noticeable to Zuno's guards, and Zuno - who was high on cocaine and paranoid from hearing about the Americans from two call girls at a party that afternoon - decided to flee the country after seeing camera footage of the soldiers spying on him (and receiving a message from Felix Gallardo warning him that they knew about 881 Lope de Vega and his current address). Breslin bribed the pilot to divert the flight to Texas, and Breslin himself sat in the cockpit as Zuno was flown into the United States, where he was greeted by local law enforcement on the runway. Zuno and his bodyguards, in tears, were forced to drop their guns and surrender to the law, and Zuno ultimately revealed that his uncle and Felix Gallardo had knowledge of Camarena's kidnap and execution.
State Department interference[]
Matta-Ballesteros' arrest
However, Zuno refused to stand by his testimony in court, forcing the DEA to throw out his testimony and instead use him like a source; Breslin was then told to continue hunting down names from the testimony, but State Department official Ted Kaye told him that the government was shuttering the operation due to its negative impact on US-Mexico relations. Breslin protested, but Kaye warned him to disband his team and be happy that he still had a job for the time being. After Juan Matta-Ballesteros' arrest for arms trafficking - a major victory for the War on Drugs - Operation Leyenda was considered over, as public opinion had been satiated.
The Leyenda team being briefed by Guillermo Calderoni
However, the corrupt Mexican police commander Guillermo Calderoni decided to work with Breslin in continuing the fight, and he identified the new threats which had to be dealt with. Hector Luis Palma Salazar had taken over the Sinaloa plaza since leaving Juarez, Amado Carrillo Fuentes had been sent to manage Pablo Acosta Villarreal in Juarez, and the Sinaloa plaza was growing angry about the 10% tax levied on them by Felix for the drugs they transported through the Tijuana plaza's turf. The Sinaloans transported up to 400 kilograms of cocaine through that route, and, while Breslin's team vilified Calderoni for his corruption and caused him to leave, Breslin resolved to follow Heath's orders to wrap up the operation, but doing so with one last victory: taking down a Sinaloan shipment. They discovered a tunnel from the Muelles warehouse in Tijuana to San Ysidro on the American side of the border, and Calderoni persuaded them to divide and conquer the Guadalajara Cartel by leaking the tunnel's existence to the Arellano Felix crew, which would inevitably start a war between Tijuana and Sinaloa. They watched as Ramon Arellano Felix and his men arrived at the warehouse, extracted several workers from the tunnel, lobbed a grenade into the tunnel to cause its collapse, and as Ramon executed the captured workers one-by-one, execution-style, much to Breslin's regret.
Amado Carrillo Fuentes[]
The runway near Ciudad Juarez
Later, Heath informed Breslin that he had managed to keep his team in Mexico despite Kaye's opposition, and Breslin - with the help of Calderoni - identified their next target as Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the man who was building up a large air fleet to traffick even higher quantities of Colombian cocaine into Mexico. The team flew to Belmopan, Belize to attend a major auction at which the bankrupted airline Aero Tropical was liquidating and selling its entire fleet. There, they saw Amado purchasing all of the available planes, and they made plans to break into the planes at night and plant tracking devices in them. They then returned to Amado's base of Ciudad Juarez, where Daryl Petski announced that one of the flights was already taking off. They tracked it down to a runway near Juarez, and they divided into three-man surveillance teams to monitor it. They found that there were six fuel trucks at the airport, one for each of the six planes, and they deduced that Felix was aiming to transport six shipments at the same time due to his desperation; if he lost a shipment for his Colombian allies from the Cali Cartel, he would be murdered.
Pablo Acosta[]
Later, Juarez plaza boss Pablo Acosta Villarreal approached Breslin for a conversation through his girlfriend Mimi Webb Miller, who had talked Acosta into considering leaving his criminal lifestyle. Breslin offered immunity and other rewards to Acosta if he cooperated, and he agreed to contact Breslin soon. Ultimately, Acosta agreed to do an interview for the Chicago Sun-Times, revealing that Felix had betrayed his old friends such as Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo by making new friends in Colombia and Mexico City. This interview jeopardized Felix Gallardo's security, even as he worked with the PRI to rig the 1988 presidential election. It also made him multiple enemies: the Guadalajara Cartel, the Mexican government, and the American FBI.
The Santa Elena raid
On 24 April 1987, the FBI and Federales launched a joint operation to kill Acosta and weaken the Juarez plaza. In the Santa Elena raid, the FBI and Federales engaged in a helicopter assault on the village, killing dozens of gunmen and innocent civilians. They besieged Acosta's safehouse until nightfall, when Breslin convinced him to follow him to Texas to become an informant; however, Calderoni refused to let Acosta live, as he had already decided to kill Acosta in order to gain Felix's trust and get access to new intel. That night, as the police besieged Acosta's safehouse, Breslin rushed into the safehouse, bringing with him a printed letter from a federal attorney in Houston offering Acosta immunity. Once inside, he and Acosta shared drinks, and, when Acosta refused to become a "rat", Breslin told him that Mimi was pregnant, hoping to convince him to join him. Acosta agreed, but the FBI and Federales held Breslin and Acosta at gunpoint as Breslin used his body to shield Acosta. They gradually walked away from the gunmen, but Acosta - accepting his impending fate - apologized to Breslin, stole his gun, shoved him to the ground, and was then shot dead by the police in a blaze of glory. Breslin was devastated by Acosta's death, and he accused Calderoni of prioritizing his friends in Mexico City over his mission.
Mission failure[]
In 1988, the team was alerted that Amado's 70-ton cocaine shipment had arrived at the Chiapas airfield, and Breslin prepared his men to bust the shipment and cripple Felix's operation. However, they were ambushed shortly after locating the shipment, and, in the ensuing shootout, Walt's teammates Danilo Garza, Ossie Mejia, and Amat Palacios were killed, and Walt was then confronted by Guillermo Calderoni, who had arrived to divert the cartel members away from Breslin's path. Calderoni revealed that he had advance knowledge of the ambush, as he knew that Amado had discovered the transponders two days earlier, but that Breslin's keeping him out of the loop had resulted in his men's deaths. He then told Breslin that he should have been the man to die that night, but he let him live and told him to run away. Breslin, Petski, and Orozco were the only survivors, and they returned to America in disgrace and defeat.
Aftermath[]
Felix Gallardo's arrest
Breslin was reassigned to the DEA's Sacramento, California office as punishment for his failed operation, and DEA supervisor John Bell refused to fulfill any of the DEA's promises to the families of his dead teammates. The Sylmar raid of September 1989 led to the collapse of Guadalajara, as it created infighting which led to the splintering off of the Sinaloa Cartel, Juarez Cartel, and Tijuana Cartel at one of Felix's conferences. The Mexican government of Salinas, now seeking better relations with the United States, ultimately agreed to arrest Felix that same year, ending the four-year manhunt.