Rafael Caro Quintero was featured in the Netflix drama series. He played a role in the torture and murder of an anti-narcotics officer in the United States in 1985. Narcos in MexicoA joint law task force captured.
Quintero was a cofounder of the Guadalajara Cartel, considered one of the most powerful drug trafficking organizations in Mexico during the 1980s.
The Netflix series was about the beginning days of Mexican drug cartels. Multiple factions joined forces and turned a loosely organized group involving growers and dealers into an international business. Quintero was played on the series by Tenoch Huerta.
Kiki Camarena, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent, was tortured and killed by this violent group. Caro Quintero was among the victims.
Caro Quintero spent 28 years in prison Camarena’s murder, but was released in 2013 on a technicality by a Mexican judge, embarrassing the previous government. He then vanished and allegedly returned to drug trafficking as part of the Sinaloa Cartel, according to US officials. He was in the FBI’s Top 10 most wanted fugitives list and had a $20 million bounty on his head, a record for a drug trafficker.
“It is probably one of the most important captures of the last decade in terms of importance to the DEA,” said Mike Vigil, the DEA’s former chief of international operations.
The US government hailed Caro Quintero’s arrest and has requested his extradition. “This is huge,”Juan Gonzalez, White House Senior Latin America Advisor, said it on Twitter.
The Mexican Navy said Caro Quintero was caught in the municipality of Choix in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, one of Mexico’s drug-trafficking heartlands. According to the Navy, he was discovered in shrubland by Max, a female bloodhound who had been trained for military purposes.