For years, the secret U.S. task force was devoted to finding a single man. The team took the initials of the target himself: “The RCQ Task Force,” for Rafael Caro Quintero. Twelve operations to nab him failed before he was captured last week.
MEXICO CITY — For years, the secret U.S. task force was devoted to finding a single man. They tracked his whereabouts in the jungles of northwestern Mexico. Over and over again they planned aerial raids meant to pluck him from the tent where he slept.The team took the initials of the target himself: “The RCQ Task Force,” for Rafael Caro Quintero.
U.S. officials say they had long ago identified where Caro Quintero was living in rural Sinaloa, just a few miles from a Mexican military base in a village he ran like a fiefdom. He moved around via motorcycle and ATV, guarded by security teams that rotated every week. The DEA had converted some of Caro Quintero’s relatives into informants, said one former senior U.S. official, and even knew which dirt roads he took to visit his girlfriends.operation was planned and executed entirely by Mexico.
His men “control everything. They have informants, guards, people in the mountains watching for drones. They are very careful,” said a former senior Mexican security official, who participated in several failed operations to detain Caro Quintero.U.S. military officials have estimated that between 30 and 35 percent of Mexico is ungoverned territory, where criminal organizations operate with impunity.
The task force’s first leader was an agent who had previously been based in Guadalajara and had worked at the same desk where Camarena once sat.Apprehending Caro Quintero became his full-time job. But the trafficker had been out of the game for 28 years. Caro Quintero himself was gone. The agents would later learn that he frequently fled into the hills of Sinaloa, where helicopters couldn’t land, to avoid the raids. What Mexican troops and U.S. officials discovered in his village was not the lifestyle typical of a man whose wealth is estimated in the tens of millions of dollars.Even though the operation was unsuccessful, U.S. agents believed they had sent a message to Caro Quintero.“But I didn’t think it was going to take nine years.
One DEA agent recalled attending an equestrian event at the Guadalajara Jockey Club. He looked to his right, and there was Héctor Caro Quintero Elenes, Rafael’s son. Héctor was one of Mexico’s most successful equestrian athletes. “I’m being persecuted,” he told Hernández. “Strong operations from all sorts of governments. I ask myself: until when? Why?”or Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman before his arrest, Rafael Caro Quintero was not as powerful as he had once been. The reason he was the most wanted fugitive in Mexico was not because of his relevance to the drug trade, but because of his role in Camarena’s murder.So how did authorities eventually nab Caro Quintero? It depends on who you ask.
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