Narcos Mexico Accuracy: How Much of Season 4 is True? | Heavy.com
Narcos: Mexico traces the rise and (the begin of) the fall of the Guadalajara cartel, shifting the "drug war" from Colombia to Mexico and the U.S.
border.
(Be forewarned that this article contains spoilers.).
The series is certainly popular, and the acting feels authentic.
However, what is the accuracy of Narcos: Mexico? Are the characters real? Are the narratives? The answer is that, generally, yes, the series stays true to the broader sketch of the Guadalajara cartel and the characters leading and interacting with it.
However, some scenes and dialogue are fictionalized and, at times, the series veers away from known facts.
There is a disclaimer at the beginning of the series warning that, while the season is "inspired by true events," some characters, scenes, businesses and so on have been fictionalized for dramatic purposes.
Here's what you need to know:.
Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo AKA Don Neto.
Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, known as Don Neto, is one of the series' most interesting and colorful characters.
An aging co-founder of the Guadalajara cartel, he's skeptical at first but proves to be a loyal comrade in arms to cartel chief Felix Gallardo.
Don Neto is real, and his true story closely tracks with the Netflix storyline.
In real life, Don Neto was sent to prison for decades as a result of DEA agent Kiki Camarena's death, but, in 2016, he was placed on house arrest in what Mexican News Daily described in 2016 as luxury digs.
He had already served 31 years of a 40-year sentence at that time, and, Fox News reports that, in 2017, he was granted early release by an appellate court in a ruling that the network said would apparently allow Don Neto to leave his house.
In Narcos: Mexico, Don Neto is played by actor Joaquin Cosio.
Don Neto's cartel roots run deep.
According to El Pais, he is the uncle "of the brothers Amado Carrillo Fuentes The Lord of the Skies and Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, leaders of the Juarez Cartel.".
In real life, Don Neto was already a leader in a Sinaloan organization of drug traffickers before he helped Gallardo unite various fractious groups into one unit.
According to the book, Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State? By George W.
Grayson, Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo was called "The Godfather" and "pioneered large-scale poppy production and trade" in Sinaloa.
He also mentored Rafael Caro Quintero, who is described in the book as a "shrewd and youthful entrepreneur who converted Mexican marijuana from second-rate weed to the choice of connoisseurs by perfecting a seedless variety of the plant (sinsemillas.)".
According to CC News, Don Neto was was captured in 1985 – four years before Gallardo – in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
The death of Camarena was planned at a Christmas Party in 1984 that Don Neto attended, the site reports.
"Don Neto confessed that he and Caro Quintero had made the decision to kidnap Camarena," journalist Anabel Hernández told BBC.
Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo.
According to BBC, Gallardo wasn't actually the first drug lord to bring cocaine from Colombia to the United States by way of Mexico.
That distinction belongs to "his mentor and former head of the Sinaloa band, Pedro Avilés," who was slain in the 1970s, the news site reports.
BBC reports that it's true that Gallardo – known as "El Padrino" – formed an alliance with Pablo Escobar in Colombia; "By the end of the 1980s, Félix Gallardo's alliance with Escobar handled 60% of the cocaine consumed in the United States via Mexico," the news site reports.
El Mundo reports that Gallardo was indeed a member of the Federal Judicial Police who was born in Sinaloa and later "was the escort of the children of the former governor of the state.
" He did, in fact, start trafficking marijuana (and also opium) before making his deal with Escobar.
He was captured in 1989.
Where is he today? He's 72-years-old, and he's serving a 37-year sentence in a Mexican maximum-security prison.
He's been in prison since 1989, when he was captured in his bathrobe in what is known as Operation Leyenda.
He had been sought since the death of Kiki Camarena, but he evaded authorities for five years.
By 2011, Gallardo's family told a Mexican court that his health was failing.
According to The Washington Post, the family members claimed Felix Gallardo has "cataracts, deafness, ulcers and a hernia." (You can read more about the real Kiki Camarena here.).
"For more than three years, without any justification, prison authorities have kept him segregated, isolated and without contact with other inmates, and have prevented him from participating in any physical, sports or educational activities," the drug lord's family wrote to the court, The Post reported.
How brutal was Felix Gallardo during his prime? According to The Post, "he is reputed to have punished a subordinate's alleged betrayal by killing the subordinate's children, cutting off the head of his wife, and sending the head to him in a box.
In March 1985, the DEA recovered the body of Kiki Camarena, 37.
According to El Pais, Camarena's "skull, jaw, nose and cheekbones were crushed with a tire iron.
As he lay dying, a cartel doctor was ordered to keep him alert by administering drugs.".
According to The Los Angeles Times, Camarena's murder "led to the fall of Gallardo and his close associates" and the fracturing of their cartel.
Amazingly, Gallardo was only recently re-sentenced in the death.
Gallardo was sentenced to 37 years in 2017 for the death of Camarena by a Mexican court (as well as for the murder of Alfredo Zavala, a Mexican pilot), according to The Times.
He's been in custody since 1989; however, a retrial had been ordered.
Zavala was helping Camarena in his "undercover operations," The LA Times reported.
He was originally sentenced to 40 years in prison in the Camarena death.
Key figures in the Camarena death had filed appeals of their sentences.
Gallardo was ordered to pay about $1.17 million in reparations, according to The Associated Press.
"We coordinated with the Mexican national police … and we started to do wire intercepts and we tracked him to a residence in Guadalajara — he never left Guadalajara, that was his power base," Mike Vigil, former chief of international operations for the DEA, told Business Insider, of the capture of Gallardo.
A 1989 New York Times article on Gallardo's arrest says that authorities also rounded up an entire city police force for questioning about ties to him.
It's true that Gallardo was close to a Mexican governor, Antonio Toledo Corro, according to The Times, and was photographed at a wedding with him.
According to the book U.S.
Border Security: A Reference Handbook, by Judith Ann Warner, Felix Gallardo started working as a family bodyguard for Mexican Governor Leopoldo Sanchez Celis.
Gallardo was able to use those connections to build his cartel.
Gallardo was a godfather to Celis's son, who was murdered and tortured by a rival cartel.
He was once a federal police agent and was born on a Sinaloan ranch.
He was also a supporter of the Contras, a point that some have used to allege led the U.S.
government to look the other way before the Camarena murder.
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