Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and Their Godfathers by Roberto Saviano Read Free Book Online Page A

Álvarez, El Chapo Guzmán admitted working for the Colombian Cali Cartel, then led by the Rodríguez Orejuela brothers—even though his real links were with Pablo Escobar’s Medellín Cartel in the same country. He also stated that he and Héctor El Güero Palma had been responsible for the shooting at Puerto Vallarta’s Christine Discotheque in November 1992, as well as the Iguala killings, “but I had nothing to do with the other things the press accuse me of.” It seems that the apprentice drug baron felt a moment’s reticence. Yes, he was a bit of a murderer, but not that bad. A little later this reticence would evaporate, like water on a stove.
    As the minutes passed, El Chapo’s confessions stepped up a gear.

El Chapo’s first payroll
    On board the plane, Guzmán revealed that he enjoyed protection from the Mexican government’s Attorney General’s Office (PGR) at the highest level. He confessed that about three years earlier, in 1990, during one of his visits to Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo in Mexico City’s Reclusorio Sur prison, he met a “gentleman” who was now working in the PGR. El Chapo said it was through this gentleman’s contacts that he obtained the false passport to enter Guatemala.
    When Guzmán got cozy with this gentleman, whose name was Federico Ponce Rojas, the latter was in charge of the Initial Inquiries department at the Mexico City Attorney General’s Office (PGJDF),which was headed at the time by Ignacio Morales Lechuga. Ponce was one of Morales’s most trusted assistants.
    “I gave Federico Ponce $1.5 million every couple of months, when there were cocaine or marijuana deliveries, for him to protect me,” declared Guzmán. At the Reclusorio Sur, according to El Chapo, Ponce also introduced him to the commander “Gómez” who would become his contact. In the report drawn up by General Álvarez, the drug trafficker didn’t say how long he continued to pay bribes to Federico Ponce, nor exactly what kind of “protection” was provided.
    Ignacio Morales was attorney general of the Federal District (or Mexico City) from 1988 to 1991. In May 1991, after the departure of Enrique Álvarez del Castillo, President Salinas appointed him attorney general of the Republic, a post he held until January 1993. When Morales moved to the PGR, Ponce moved with him.
    Carrillo Olea and Morales never got along. The former Mexico City attorney general has stated publicly that all drug control issues were dealt with directly between Carrillo and President Salinas—so he had very little to do with it. There is little doubt that Ponce’s rapid exit from the PGR (after a bloody and still unclear confrontation between police and army on a secret airstrip in 1991) did nothing to smooth the relationship between Carrillo and Morales.
    At the time when El Chapo Guzmán made his statement, Federico Ponce was no longer officially working for the PGR but for one of the country’s main banks, Banamex, privatized by Salinas in 1991. However, according to El Chapo, Ponce was not his only contact in the PGR.
    “I had dealings with the head of the Federal Judicial Police in Sonora. On one occasion I gave him $500,000 to let me grow a marijuana crop.” El Chapo also told Álvarez that he had paid for protection from federal police commander Guillermo Salazar Ramos, who was posted in Guadalajara at the end of the 1980s.
    El Chapo’s last significant revelation during the flight was that the first-ever state governor from the PAN, 3 Ernesto Ruffo Appel of Baja California, was living proof that a change in the party in power didn’t imply any change in the well-oiled machinery of complicity with thedrugs trade: “The Arellano Félix brothers get protection from the governor and the attorney general of Baja California state. One of the governor’s brothers is their partner in a business,” declared El Chapo indignantly at the end of his statement.
    It took him some time to realize that, with this fulsome