[7][8] Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, a former federal police officer, started working for drug traffickers brokering corruption of state officials and his partners in the cartel, Rafael Caro Quintero and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo ("Don Neto"), who previously worked in the Avilés criminal organization, took control of the trafficking routes after Avilés was killed in a shootout with MFJP police officers.
With an end to solo American overflights as part of the eradication program, however, money and intimidation allowed farms to grow dramatically without coming to official notice.
[6] This was extremely profitable for them, with some estimating that the trafficking network, then operated by Felix Gallardo, Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, and Rafael Quintero was pulling in $5 billion annually.
[6] According to some writers, like Peter Dale Scott, the organization prospered largely because it enjoyed the protection of the Mexican DFS intelligence agency, under its chief Miguel Nazar Haro.
[citation needed] The Guadalajara Cartel however suffered a major blow in 1985 when the group's co-founder Rafael Caro Quintero was captured, and later convicted, for the torture and murder of American DEA agent Enrique Camarena.
[13][14] Camarena was an undercover field agent who the cartel suspected of giving information to the DEA which led to destruction of the organization's 2,500 acre marijuana crop known as Rancho Búfalo (English: "Buffalo Ranch") in the state of Chihuahua during November 1984.
[15] In retribution, Camarena and his pilot Alfredo Zavala Avelar were kidnapped in Guadalajara on February 7, 1985, in broad daylight by several DFS officers, taken to a residence owned by Quintero located at 881 Lope de Vega in the colonia of Jardines del Bosque, in the western section of the city,[16] brutally tortured, and murdered.
[23] Former Mexican Judicial Police chief Armando Pavón Reyes, after receiving a $300,000 bribe, reportedly allowed Caro Quintero to flee from the airport in Guadalajara, in a private jet, to seek refuge in Costa Rica.
[24] It was also alleged that Caro Quintero, in just eight days prior to Camarena's kidnapping had ordered the abduction, torture, and murder of writer John Clay Walker and dentistry student Albert Radelat on January 30, 1985.
[26] The murder of agent Camarena outraged the U.S. government and put pressure on Mexico to arrest all the major players involved in the incident, resulting in a four-year law enforcement manhunt that brought down several leaders of the Guadalajara Cartel.
[28] After the arrest of Rafael Caro Quintero and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo in April 1985 for the Camarena murder, Félix Gallardo kept a low profile and in 1987 he moved with his family to Guadalajara city.
Félix Gallardo convened the nation's top drug narcos at a house in the resort city of Acapulco where he designated the plazas (turfs) or territories.
Félix Gallardo still planned to oversee national operations, he had the contacts so he was still the top man, but he would no longer control all details of the business; he was arrested on April 8, 1989.
During the mid and late 1980s Amado accompanied Pablo Acosta, Marco DeHaro and Becky Garcia on many of their smuggling activities, including the "rescue" of a broken-down marijuana truck near Lomas de Arena.
[8] At present, these aforementioned cartels/factions, or remnants of them, are battling each other for control of trafficking routes, influence over the Mexican government, and in retaliation for past offenses and betrayals.