“Morogris” for Borderland Beat
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| Rafael Caro-Quintero (RCQ) once had a US$20 million bounty for his capture. This ws the highest reward the U.S. had offered for a Mexican criminal. |
Hermelinda Quintero (aged 94), the mother of Rafael Caro Quintero, founder of the Guadalajara Cartel wanted for the 1985 murder of US agent Enrique Camarena Salazar, passed away on Thursday due to natural causes in Jalisco. Her relatives chose to transport her body to the city of Culiacán, Sinaloa.
Hermelinda Quintero hails from the municipality of Badiraguato, Sinaloa. Following her marriage to Emilio Caro Payan, with whom she had eight children, including Rafael, they immersed themselves in agriculture and livestock. They resided at the foothills of the Sierra Madre, specifically in the region recognized as The Golden Triangle, renowned for its fertile opium poppy cultivation areas.
Subsequently, her children migrated to Guadalajara, Jalisco, including Rafael Caro Quintero, who co-founded the now-defunct Guadalajara Cartel alongside Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo (The Godfather) and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo (Don Neto).
Caro Quintero, commonly known as El Narco de Narcos (The Narco of Narcos), received news of his mother’s passing from within the Altiplano maximum security prison in the State of Mexico. He is currently awaiting potential extradition to the United States following his second arrest in 2022.
Archival sources reviewed by Borderland Beat reveal that Caro Quintero initiated the acquisition of properties in Guadalajara in December 1983, assigning many under his family’s name. The first house was purchased and registered under his sister Manuela, followed by another under his sister Rosa Evelia.
Caro Quintero registered a 5-hectare (approximately 12.35 acres) property near the Zapopan air base, valued at 4 million pesos at that time, in the name of his mother, Hermelinda. This transaction was officially documented by Notary Pedro Vargas Ávalos.
Similarly, an apartment building situated at Bernardo de Balbuena street in Zapopan was registered under her mother’s name. Its purchase in August 1984 amounted to 4.3 million pesos at that time. In 2018, Caro Quintero’s mother sold a property to University of Guadalajara (UdeG) as part of a campus expansion.
Background
Caro Quintero, the former leader of the Guadalajara Cartel, is wanted for the 1985 murder of US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Enrique Camarena Salazar.
In 2013, he was freed from a Mexican state jail on a legal technicality, but an arrest warrant was issued by federal authorities a few months after his release. He was re-apprehended in 2022.
Officials say he will likely be extradited to the US this year after exhausting most of his legal motions in Mexico. In the US, he is wanted for kidnapping and murder of a US federal officer, as well as drug trafficking, money laundering and for leading a continuous criminal enterprise.