Rodrigo Carlos "El Sueño" Pérez Morales (1977-) was a Mexican drug lord and the founder of the Santa Blanca Cartel. A devotee of the cult of Santa Muerte, he was religiously inspired to relocate his cartel to Bolivia and transform the country into a narco-state dedicated to his patron saint. El Sueño's effective control over Bolivian politics and the American drug trade led to the United States launching Operation Kingslayer in 2019, and he was captured and later extradited to Mexico.
Biography[]
Rodrigo Carlos Pérez Morales was born in Mexico in 1977, and he left his village at the age of 11 with the ambition of becoming a king. At the age of 12, he became a sicario, and, a few years later, he had a vision of the Holy Land and of the cult figure Santa Muerte. Inspired by this vision, which led to the visionary sicario being nicknamed "El Sueño," he partnered with the beauty queen and drug smuggler Nidia Flores to build a criminal empire. In 2008, he relocated his cartel to Bolivia, where he formally refounded it as the Santa Blanca Cartel. El Sueño wrote a new bible for his followers telling the story of the Santa Blanca Cartel and indoctrinating Bolivian peasants with the death cult of Santa Muerte. He established his cartel as a major power player in Bolivia by intimidating or assassinating leaders of the cocalero (coca farmer) unions, and he built schools and churches and offered jobs to those who would follow him.
By 2017, El Sueño's cartel was in control of vast swathes of the Bolivian countryside. The government responded with a harsh crackdown on the Santa Blanca Cartel, creating the La Unidad military police unit to deal with the militarized gang's sicarios. In the ensuing Bolivian Drug War, the cartel assassinated politicians, military figures, and civilians, terrorizing the government into a ceasefire after thousands of deaths. The President of Bolivia ultimately offered to let Santa Blanca operate with impunity if it minimized its violence, effectively handing El Sueño control of the countryside. His drug empire was said to have made $2 billion a week, and he forged ties with corrupt politicians and even bought the loyalty of certain Unidad units and commanders. While indigenous peasants formed Kataris 26 to resist the cartel's takeover of the countryside, El Sueño was able to take over the inter-Americas drug trade, with his markets stretching as far north as America and Canada.
In response, the American Drug Enforcement Administration sent its agent Ricky Sandoval to infiltrate the Santa Blanca Cartel. Sandoval planned to lead a Kataris 26 ambush that would kill El Sueño, but he thwarted the plot, killed all the rebels, and had Sandoval tortured to death. Before Sandoval died, he arranged the bombing of the US embassy in La Paz as a false flag attack, persuading the United States to employ its military might to crush the cartel. The United States' DEA, CIA, and JSOC launched Operation Kingslayer to dismantle the Santa Blanca Cartel and capture El Sueño, and a four-man Ghost Recon team led by Anthony Perryman worked with Kataris 26 to take down El Sueño's lieutenants. Eventually, Pac Katari learned that El Sueño had been spotted in Bolivia and betrayed the Americans, intent on liberating the country by himself. However, the cartel overpowered and killed Katari, and El Sueño displayed Katari's head to the Ghosts when they caught up with him at his own mausoleum. CIA agent Karen Bowman initially attempted to kill El Sueño, only to learn from her superiors that he had been given full immunity by the Department of Justice in exchange for giving up other cartel heads. He was placed in a CIA Witness Security Program in Pinecrest, Florida, where he helped locate and capture various drug dealers and weapons smugglers. El Sueño was slated to be extradited to Mexico after he exhausted the list of targets, and Bowman predicted that he would form a new and stronger cartel in El Salvador and migrate to Peru.
Gallery[]
