Talk:Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo

Peter Dale Scott article

The article includes a claim that one-time DFS head Miguel Nazar Haro was a CIA asset, that the the Guadalajara Cartel "prospered largely, among other reasons, because it enjoyed the protection of the DFS" under Nazar, sourcing it to an article by Peter Dale Scott published on-line. An article such as this is an inadequate source for such broad claims. I checked the article for Scott's sources; he cites his own book, "Cocaine Politics", written with Jonathan Marshall and published by the University of California Press. The UC press is a reliable publisher, but the book does not support any of these claims, or at least not on the pages Scott lists. I am therefore deleting the claims derived from this article. Such claims require a real RS; a real RS give accurate citations. Rgr09 (talk) 21:59, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Unsourced claim in lead

The third paragraph of the lead in this article originally stated

Gallardo's drug trafficking network was protected by his many high-level government connections, especially those within the Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Gallardo was considered an asset by the CIA, due to the financial and material assistance he provided to the Contras in Nicaragua. Gallardo's cartel was linked to the Colombian cartels primarily through the Honduran drug trafficker Juan Matta-Ballesteros (also a CIA asset and Contra supporter). Gallardo, Matta, and Santiago Ocampo of the Cali Cartel together headed the largest cocaine ring in the world at that time, and had no competitors of comparable size.

There is only one source for this paragraph: the revised edition of Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall's book Cocaine Politics, p. 83-85. But none of this is supported by the text, which does not claim that Gallardo was considered an asset by the CIA. or that that Gallardo supplied "financial and material assistance", or that Matta-Ballesteros was an asset, or that Gallardo, Matta, and Ocampo headed the largest cocaine cartel in the world. I have therefore deleted the whole passage. Rgr09 (talk) 23:23, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Irrelevant paragraph: Matta-Ballasteros and SETCO

The article section titled "Collaboration with the CIA and DFS" originally had a paragraph dealing with Juan Matta-Ballesteros and SETCO, the air transport company which Matta controlled:

His [Gallardo's] cartel was also benefited by the CIA for having connections with the Honduran drug lord Juan Matta-Ballesteros, who, according to a 1983 U.S. Customs Investigative Report, was the head of the SETCO airline, a corporation that was used for smuggling narcotics into the United States and, according to the Kerry Committee report, was "the principal company used by the Contras in Honduras to transport supplies and personnel for the [FDN (one of the earliest Contra groups)], carrying at least a million rounds of ammunition, food, uniforms, and other military supplies [for the Contras] . . . from 1983 through 1985." For its services SETCO received funds from the Contra accounts established by Oliver North.

The idea seems to be that because Matta-Ballesteros was helping the CIA transport supplies to the Contras, as a courtesy to Matta, Gallardo also received special treatment from the CIA. There is no source given for this idea. There is no source given that claims Gallardo was involved with SETCO. This entire paragraph is therefore irrelevant to Gallardo and I have deleted it. Rgr09 (talk) 00:29, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

References

Section on Collaboration with the CIA and DFS

This section is now reduced to essentially one claim:

Gallardo provided a significant amount of funding, weapons, and other aid to the Contras in Nicaragua. His pilot, Werner Lotz stated that Gallardo once had him deliver $150,000 in cash to a Contra group, and Gallardo often boasted about smuggling arms to them. His activities were known to several U.S. federal agencies, including the CIA and DEA, but he was granted immunity due to his "charitable contributions to the Contras".

This comes from the Scott-Marshall book Cocaine Politics, but is presented in very unclear or distorted form. This passage refers to the 1988 trial of three men accused of assisting in the murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena. A defense motion claimed that the government covered up evidence that Felix-Gallardo participated in Camarena's murder in order to avoid disclosing that the Contras were funded by Gallardo with the tacit approval of the US government. The claim cited above is actually a paraphrase of this motion. The prosecution called the Contra-drug dealer claim "a fantasy" and denounced the motion as "one of the most outrageous that has been filed in a criminal proceeding in recent years." Scott and Marshall claim that the prosecution "did not dispute" Lotz's claim, but by no means accept the defense claims either.

Note that the information in the section does not involve the DFS at all. Certainly the claim has been made that the DFS was involved with drug trafficking, but this needs a source, and none has been given ever been given in this article. If I can find a useful one I will put it back in at some point, but it's not high on my list. A vast array of Mexican government agencies were corrupted by drug traffickers, and the DFS would just be one more on the list.

The claim that Felix-Gallardo collaborated with the CIA is not documented in Scott and Marshall; Lotz's claim is the closest they come to showing that Felix-Gallardo had any interest in any CIA project. They never mention Felix-Gallardo contacting any CIA officer or agent, they never mention Felix-Gallardo receiving any assistance or favorable treatement from the CIA, and they NEVER claim that Felix-Gallardo was a CIA asset. Based on all this, I don't see any justification for keeping the section at this point, and have therefore deleted it. If I'm missing something, please leave a note here. Note also that this is a BLP article, and claims and sourcing should observe the relevant rules. Rgr09 (talk) 00:08, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

References

External links modified (January 2018)

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Semi-protected edit request on 20 November 2018

"Official website" link is dead. 81.98.89.248 (talk) 22:20, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

 Removed, but in the future, please say exactly what change(s) you want to make. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 02:26, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

• Thanks for this. I consulted the source at [archive.org archive.org] and it seems like it wasn't a reliable source anyways. MX (✉ • ✎) 04:06, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 23 November 2018

Change: "He is serving a 37-year sentence in the maximum security prison known as Altiplano." to: "He is serving a 37-year sentence at a medium-security prison in Guadalajara (State of Jalisco)."

Evidence for the change is given lower down in this same article: "On 18 December 2014, federal authorities approved his request to transfer him to a medium-security prison in Guadalajara (State of Jalisco) due to his declining health conditions.[19]" Vpescado (talk) 19:17, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

• @Vpescado: Hi, good catch! Article's lead paragraph has been updated. Please let me know if you want to do any further changes/suggestions. We protected the article for 3 months because it was experiencing a lot of vandalism, but we don't want to scare away new editors like yourself from contributing. So thank you for this! Feel free to contribute here and in other unprotected pages! MX (✉ • ✎) 19:50, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

Conflicting sources for size of El Bufalo ranch

From https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/07/are-we-sure-mexicos-largest-marijuana-farm/352894/

"It's rather complicated. The Mexican army says the [recently seized / 2011] 300-acre plantation [is] four times the size of the previous record-holder, the "El Bufalo" ranch in northern Chihuahua state that authorities discovered in 1984, according to the AP (AFP, quoting the military, identifies the previous record-holder as an 158-acre farm in the state of Sinaloa uncovered in 2007.) Experts like Alberto Islas, however, are casting doubt on the military's claims, arguing that the Bufalo farm was much bigger than the Baja field. Mexican press reports claim El Bufalo was 1,344 acres and contained anywhere from 2,500 to 6,000 tons of marijuana worth somewhere between $3.2 billion and $8 billion in today's prices, The Journal notes. Islas tells the paper that the Mexican army could be exaggerating the size of yesterday's bust to boost morale as Mexican's violent drug war drags on. A Mexican official, meanwhile, explains that the Bufalo plantation was a series of 13 different fields and the Baja plantation was bigger than any individual Bufalo field. Ah, the difficulty in measuring marijuana plantations."

So that's the Mexican military implying that the weed farm was only 75 acres (low credibility) versus "Mexican press" saying it was 1,344 acres, versus this wiki article claiming 2,500. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2604:2000:F1CC:2200:4DBC:F995:D814:BC06 (talk) 07:48, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 26 November 2018

Similar to previous change of 23-Nov-2018: Change: "While incarcerated, he remained one of Mexico's major traffickers, maintaining his organization via mobile phone until he was transferred in the 1990s to the Altiplano maximum security prison,[4][13] where he is serving a 37-year sentence.[14][15]"

To: "While incarcerated, he remained one of Mexico's major traffickers, maintaining his organization via mobile phone until he was transferred in the 1990s to the Altiplano maximum security prison,[4][13] where he continued serving a 37-year sentence.[14][15]"

Notice the change of "where he is serving" to "where he continued serving" in light of his subsequent transfer.

Evidence for the change is given in the very next paragraph: "On 18 December 2014, federal authorities approved his request to transfer him to a medium-security prison in Guadalajara (State of Jalisco) due to his declining health conditions.[19]" Vpescado (talk) 00:23, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

• @Vpescado: Done. I changed it to "... where he served part of his 37-year sentence". Thank you for coming back again. MX (✉ • ✎) 14:57, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Son's age

Based on the following citations in the article:

...he was transferred in the 1990s to the Altiplano maximum security prison...

...he was transferred to a high-security prison in 1993...

In 2008, the investigative journalist Diego Enrique Osorno was able to contact Félix Gallardo through Félix Gallardo's 13-year-old son.

Looks like he was able to conceive his son while incarcerated in max/high security prison.

I wasn't able to verify this - can anyone provide clues?

Zeratul021 (talk) 16:49, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

section on connections to colombian cartels

The second paragraph in this section on the Guadalajara Cartel's connection to the Columbian cartels was copied to the article on Guadalajara Cartel, where I have unknowingly been working on this poorly sourced passage. I have now revised to paragraph to give the actual source for its claims: all of it derives from one page in the book Whiteout by Cockburn and St-Clair. Rgr09 (talk) 07:19, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Camarena's role in Guadalajara

The article originally stated:

An undercover agent from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Kiki Camarena, managed to infiltrate deep into the drug trafficking organization and get close to Félix Gallardo. In 1984, acting on information from Camarena, 450 Mexican soldiers, backed by helicopters, destroyed a 1,000 hectare (≈2,500 acre) marijuana plantation known as "Rancho Búfalo" in Chihuahua, Mexico, known to be protected by Mexican DFS intelligence agents, as part of "Operation Godfather".

Much of this is contradicted by Elaine Shannon's book Desperados. Camarena was not an undercover agent. In fact, writes Shannon, it was illegal for DEA agents abroad to do undercover work. Apparently Camarena broke this rule at one point in reconnoitering a drug plantation, but he was in no sense a regular undercover agent and I have not found a single source that states Camarena 'got close to Gallardo'. In addition, while describing a plantation raid that Camarena worked on in Zacatecas state, Shannon specifically denies that Camarena was involved with the Rancho Bufalo raid. I have changed some of this section, giving citations to Shannon. All of this contradicts several articles dealing with Camarena's murder, which should all be revised in light of this problem in sourcing. Rgr09 (talk) 05:01, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion:

• Miguel Angel Felix in 2021.jpg

You can see the reason for deletion at the file description page linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 11:50, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Felix was granted house arrest. Will be moved Tuesday due to declining health

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/mexican-drug-lord-who-was-jailed-for-killing-u-s-agent-granted-house-arrest/ar-AA11JTIM?rc=1&ocid=winp1taskbar&cvid=dc54eea942414315d77d5c9cdf387e06 47.205.249.237 (talk) 02:03, 13 September 2022 (UTC)