Mexico's Guadalajara cartel founder dies in hospital aged 80

MEXICO CITY/GUADALAJARA, Nov 15 - Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, founder of one of Mexico's first major drug cartels whose conviction for the 1985 killing of a US drug-enforcement agent made him one of the country's most notorious traffickers, died in hospital on Sunday at age 80.Local security authorities said Felix Gallardo was transferred to a private hospital in the western city of Guadalajara two days ago but suffered multiple organ failure and died around 2 p.m. on Sunday.Imprisoned since 1989, Felix Gallardo was an inmate in a maximum-security prison in western Jalisco state, though his lawyers repeatedly sought house arrest on the grounds of his deteriorating health.Rising to prominence in the 1970s, the former cartel kingpin was an architect of Mexico's modern drug-trafficking trade, igniting a series of turf wars that have led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and disappearances in ensuing decades.Born in 1946 in Culiacan, Sinaloa, a northwestern state that would later become synonymous with narco-trafficking, he worked as a police officer and bodyguard for a local governor then became a powerful criminal capo known as the "boss of bosses."Felix Gallardo and others set up the cartel in Guadalajara, the Jalisco state capital and a fast-growing economic powerhouse, becoming the first to move cocaine to the US on a massive scale and to forge an alliance with Colombian drug barons, including Pablo Escobar's Medellin cartel.His narcotics empire expanded in the 1970s and 1980s thanks to bribes that won protection from corrupt officials and innovations like using light aircraft to move drugs across the continent, supported by fellow kingpins like Rafael Caro Quintero.His legal battles stretched across decades.Arrested in 1989, Felix Gallardo was sentenced to 40 years in prison on drug-trafficking and weapons charges tied to the Guadalajara cartel.While already incarcerated, he faced a separate prosecution over the 1985 kidnapping and murder of US Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena and Mexican pilot Alfredo Zavala Avelar.Camarena's killing caused a diplomatic dispute with Washington, which pressed Mexico hard to arrest those involved.In 2017, a federal court found Felix Gallardo guilty in that case and imposed a further 37-year sentence. He denied responsibility for the killings.His rise and fall was portrayed on screen by Mexican actor Diego Luna in the 2018 hit Netflix series "Narcos: Mexico".Felix Gallardo suffered poor health in his final years, and was blind in one eye, practically deaf and unable to walk on his own by the time Spanish-language US network Telemundo interviewed him in prison in 2021. He maintained his innocence."Thirty-two years have passed... That's an eternity for a man who did not commit any crime," he said. REUTERS