Ruperta "Madre Coca" Faro (14 March 1967-2019) was a Bolivian drug trafficker who served as the co-head of the Santa Blanca Cartel's coca farming operation until her death in an American raid in 2019.
Biography[]
Ruperta Faro was born in Bolivia's Tabacal department, and she grew up working as a raspachin picking coca. She was shot twice and burned over the years, and she blistered her hands and stained them yellow while engaging in her backbreaking work. Her oldest son overdosed on cocaine, while her other two made it to America and opened a successful business there. As a means of avenging her son Pablo's death, she became a drug dealer herself. She came to be affiliated with the Santa Blanca Cartel after its move to Bolivia from Mexico in 2008, and she acquired the respect of the cartel and the fear of the farmers.
In 2019, during Operation Kingslayer, American special forces from the Ghost Recon unit worked with Kataris 26 and rebellious coca farmers to destabilize Faro's control over Tabacal. They protected the union leader Puma Chavez as he gave a speech spurring the farm workers to revolt against Madre Coca, and they also destroyed a stock of $10 million worth of coca and cut off the Killasisa Farm's supply of cocaine to the cartel. The final straw came when the Americans captured Faro's right-hand man Raul Salazar, and Faro agreed to supply information on Santa Blanca leader Rodrigo Carlos Pérez Morales in exchange for Salazar's release.
In the ensuing meeting at the Tabacal buchone house, Faro and a dozen sicarios ambushed the delegation of Kataris 26 rebels and American special forces, and Madre Coca wielded a PKM machine-gun in the ensuing shootout. Major Anthony Perryman shot her dead, ending the cartel's production operation in Tabacal.
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