With a dog and in a city that doesn’t even show up on Google Maps: This was the capture of the most wanted Mexican drug lord from the United States

The historian Mexican drug trafficker Rafael Caro Quintero, among the ten most wanted criminals in the United States, accused of the death of a DEA agent in 1985, was captured in Mexico during a spectacular operation in which the key to finding him in the undergrowth It was a dog of the San Huberto breed. who discovered it in a small town it’s not even on google maps.

Founder of the Guadalajara Cartel, Caro Quintero was one of the main bosses in the 1980s and one of the first to ship drugs on a large scale to the United States. To understand the extent of his power, he was the creator of the first criminal organization of drug trafficking in Mexico, he was the head of Chapo Guzmán, who gave him work as a hitman when he started the criminal activity.

The DEA had been following him for nine years, but only this Friday they managed to arrest him. It happened a few days after the meeting of the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, with his American counterpart, Joe Biden.

The operation took place in San Simón, a town located in Choix, Sinaloa, The territory is so far from other inhabited centers that There are no photos either or it is listed on Google Maps.. Official information is scarce: according to the Mexican Institute of Statistics and Geography, there are only 29 inhabitants in the region.

The only known images of the place were those published in the last few hours, when the United States Navy released the moment of Quintero’s arrest. is approx an inhospitable place immersed in the vegetation in the middle of the mountains.

But the key to this whole impressive operation was a San Huberto dog called “Mex”. A scented hound and excellent tracker who found the dangerous drug dealer hidden in the bushes. The images reveal him wearing a blue shirt, denim pants, a khaki jacket and what appears to be a scapular across his chest.

The “Narco de Narcos” was approached with a bottle of water while surrounded by Navy officers, who checked his belongings to see if he was armed, as shown in a video released by the police themselves.

On Saturday, the DEA said in a message posted on its website that its team deployed to Mexico has partnered with the Navy to stop drug trafficking. “Our amazing team worked in partnership with Mexican authorities to capture and arrest Rafael Caro Quintero,” DEA chief Anne Milgram said in a statement. “The arrest is the result of blood, sweat and tears“.

Perhaps what the statement was referring to was what happened shortly after the news of the arrest was announced, when a helicopter Black Hawk of the Navy with 15 soldiers who had participated in the operation collapsed on the coast of Sinaloa. Over there 14 members of the force died. The possible causes of the accident I’m still a mystery and an investigation has already been opened to clarify what happened.

Born on October 3, 1952 in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, the cradle of the great Mexican leaders, Caro Quintero amassed a great fortune and founded his cartel together with Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, aka “Don Neto”.

The boss was caught in 1985 for ordering the murder of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena whom he blamed. for a raid on a huge marijuana plantation in 1984. The following year, Camarena was kidnapped, tortured and killed in Guadalajara, presumably by order of Caro Quintero. His tortured body was found a month later.

For that crime he was arrested in Costa Rica months later and sentenced to 40 years in prison, which he served in a Mexican prison. but it was released in August 2013 for technical reasons. In August of the same year, the appeals court overturned the 40-year prison sentence for the murder of Camarena. The court argued that a state court should have heard the case, not a federal one, and ordered his immediate release of a maximum security prison.

Months later, the Mexican Supreme Court canceled the order that issued him, noting that Camarena was a US government agent and, therefore, his murder was a federal offense, so he had been properly prosecuted. But when the FBI ordered his capture it was too late: the dealer had already disappeared. In between, the man has already appeared on the Top 10 Most Wanted list, with a reward of $ 20 million for his capture.

Now, with his arrest, the US Department of Justice has welcomed the arrest and said it would ask for “his immediate extradition”.

DB