Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo (born January 8, 1946), commonly referred to by his aliases El Jefe de Jefes ('The Boss of Bosses') and El Padrino ('The Godfather'), is a convicted Mexican drug kingpin who was one of the founders of the Guadalajara Cartel, which controlled much of the drug trafficking in Mexico and the corridors along the Mexico–United States border in the 1980s.
Félix Gallardo was arrested in 1989 for ordering the murder of Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena.
Born on a ranch in Bellavista, on the outskirts of Culiacán, Sinaloa, Félix Gallardo graduated from high school and studied business in college.
[1] He worked as a family bodyguard for the governor of Sinaloa state Leopoldo Sánchez Celis, whose political connections helped Félix Gallardo to build his drug trafficking organization.
[5] This proved to be extremely profitable for them, with some estimating that the trafficking network, then operated by Félix Gallardo, Ernesto Carrillo and Rafael Quintero, was pulling in approximately $5 billion annually.
[2][8] Camarena was beginning to expose the connections among drug traffickers, Mexican law enforcement, and high-ranking government officials within the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), which Félix Gallardo considered to be a major threat to the Guadalajara cartel's operations throughout Mexico.
[2][8] They were taken to a residence located at 881 Lope de Vega in the colonia of Jardines del Bosque, in the western section of the city of Guadalajara, owned by Rafael Caro Quintero, where they were tortured and interrogated over a period of 30 hours.
[citation needed] Investigators identified Félix Gallardo and his two close associates, Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo and Rafael Caro Quintero, as the primary suspects in the kidnapping.
The continuous disputes and conflict among the leaders would breed political, social, and military chaos, and eventually lead to the Mexican Drug War.
[2][17] Félix Gallardo instructed his lawyer to convene the nation's top drug narcos in 1989 at a house in the resort of Acapulco where he designated the plazas or territories.
[18] Joaquín Guzmán Loera and Héctor Luis Palma Salazar were left the Pacific coast operations, with Ismael Zambada García joining them soon after and thus forming the Sinaloa Cartel,[18][19] which was not a party to the 1989 pact.
[24] On 18 December 2014, federal authorities approved his request to transfer to a medium-security prison in Guadalajara (State of Jalisco), due to his declining health.
The court stated that Félix Gallardo's defense did not provide them with sufficient evidence to prove that his health issues were putting his life at risk.