Juan José Esparragoza Moreno

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Juan José Esparragoza Moreno was born on the 3rd of February 1949 in Huixiopa, in Badiraguato, Sinaloa, Mexico. United States government databases list a different birthday, the 2nd of March 1949. That mismatch is the first small sign of how hard he is to pin down.

  Almost nobody used his full name. He was El Azul, which is Spanish for The Blue One. The nickname comes from his complexion, and he is said to be "so dark that his skin appears to be blue".

  El Azul became a co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel and worked alongside the far more famous El Chapo. This documentary asks how a man from Sinaloa came to sit among the founders of a trafficking empire. It asks how he moved between rival organizations, and what the United States did to his family's fortune. And it asks why a reward still hangs over his name, years after reports that he had died.

  213132201

• 2. Badge to Cartel

  ›

  In the 1970s, Esparragoza Moreno joined the Dirección Federal de Seguridad, known as the DFS, a Mexican federal police agency that no longer exists. Inside it he befriended police commanders who were involved in organized crime.

  Operation Condor, a Mexican antidrug program of the 1970s, was meant to stop drugs flowing from Mexico to the United States. Instead, many traffickers from Sinaloa regrouped in Guadalajara, in the state of Jalisco, and carried on. From that regrouping came the Guadalajara Cartel. By the late 1970s and through the 1980s, it controlled nearly all narcotics trafficking in Mexico.

  Its original founders included Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, called El Padrino, Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, called Don Neto, and Rafael Caro Quintero, called Rafa. Esparragoza Moreno stood among them, alongside other Sinaloan kingpins.

  The cartel began with marijuana and opium poppies bound for the United States. Cocaine came later. Through most of the 1970s and early 1980s, Colombian cartels moved most American-bound cocaine through Florida and the Caribbean Sea. By the mid-1980s, tougher law enforcement there pushed the Colombian kingpins to shift their operations into Mexico.

  The Guadalajara leaders saw an opening. They supplied cocaine to the Colombian groups across the U.S.-Mexico border, but they refused to act as simple smugglers. They took a share of the profits for themselves, often as high as 50 percent. The cartel moved multi-ton cocaine shipments into the United States every month, and its leaders reportedly amassed a fortune.

  The DFS gave the cartel a level of protection. Several DFS members took part directly in murder and drug trafficking on the cartel's behalf. Meanwhile, the cartel's growing influence had pushed the Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA, to begin covert operations inside Mexico.

  810226269

• 3. Rancho Búfalo and Camarena

  ›

  Enrique Camarena Salazar, a DEA special agent, was sent to the agency's Guadalajara office and began working undercover to infiltrate the cartel. During his posting he uncovered what seemed to be a never-ending field of marijuana.

  In November 1984, Camarena directed Mexican authorities to a 220 acre marijuana plantation in Chihuahua called Rancho Búfalo, or Buffalo Ranch. The cartel owned it. Mexican soldiers who arrived there destroyed tons of marijuana valued at over US$8 billion. The raid was a major financial blow, and the cartel's leaders vowed to retaliate against whoever had sent the soldiers.

  On the 7th of February 1985, in broad daylight, several DFS police officers kidnapped Camarena as he left the U.S. Consulate in Guadalajara. A few hours later, his pilot Alfredo Zavala Avelar was also abducted. Zavala had flown operations for the DEA alongside Camarena.

  Camarena was taken to a house at 881 Lope de Vega in Guadalajara. His captors wanted to know what he knew about law enforcement operations aimed at the cartel. They also wanted to know what the DEA held on Mexican politicians involved in drug trafficking.

  The session lasted more than 30 hours. Camarena's skull, jaw, nose, cheekbones, windpipe and ribs were broken. The kidnappers brought in a doctor to give him drugs that kept him conscious, and they recorded parts of the interrogation on audio. The final blow was apparently struck with a piece of rebar or a similar piece of metal, which crushed his skull.

  About a month later, the bodies of Camarena and Zavala were taken to the neighboring state of Michoacán and dumped in a roadside ditch. They were discovered on the 5th of March 1985.

  The murder outraged the U.S. government and pressed Mexico to arrest every major player involved. The result was a four-year manhunt. Caro Quintero fled to Costa Rica and was arrested there on the 4th of April 1985. Three days later, Mexican police seized Fonseca Carrillo in Jalisco.

  1413161112

• 4. Prison and the Split

  ›

  In March 1986, Mexican authorities arrested Esparragoza Moreno in Mexico City. The arrest was made under the direction of the DFS police commander Florentino Ventura. On the 11th of March 1986, he was imprisoned at the Reclusorio Sur penitentiary. The charges were drug trafficking and his alleged part in the murder of Camarena.

  Esparragoza Moreno did not admit to the charges and said he was innocent. A federal judge sentenced him to seven years and two months anyway. On the 9th of July 1990, he was moved to another prison in Mexico City. In March 1992, he was transferred to the Federal Social Readaptation Center No. 1, known simply as La Palma, in Almoloya de Juárez, State of Mexico. A year later, in 1993, he completed his sentence and walked free.

  While he sat in prison, the organization he helped found came apart. In April 1989, Félix Gallardo was arrested at his home in Guadalajara. Hoping to keep the Mexican drug trade running while he was behind bars, Félix Gallardo called a crime summit in Acapulco, in the state of Guerrero.

  The drug lords at that meeting agreed to dismantle the Guadalajara Cartel and divide its territories. Each received a region from which to traffic drugs into the United States. Each could also tax smugglers who wanted to move merchandise across his turf.

  The Arellano Félix brothers and other traffickers formed the Tijuana Cartel, which held the Tijuana corridor and parts of Baja California. In Chihuahua, a group controlled by the Carrillo Fuentes family formed the Juárez Cartel. The remaining faction kept Sinaloa and the Pacific Coast. It became the Sinaloa Cartel under Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, Héctor "El Güero" Palma and Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán.

  323182269

• 5. Juárez Years

  ›

  In 1993, Esparragoza Moreno joined the Juárez Cartel under its leader Amado Carrillo Fuentes, known as El Señor de los Cielos. Carrillo Fuentes was a top drug baron in Mexico.

  Under his leadership, the cartel used sophisticated technology, including large aircraft, to smuggle marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine from Mexico into the United States. It had an important business relationship with the Cali Cartel in Colombia. It also owned a number of storage places along the U.S.-Mexico border, where merchandise was hidden before it was smuggled.

  The money involved was enormous. During the 1990s, the cartel reportedly spent between US$20 and US$30 million financing each of its smuggling networks. It generated millions more every week from drug proceeds.

  Inside the United States, the cartel recruited gang members to move its drugs across cities including Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Houston, Denver, Phoenix and New York City.

  Its connection to Mexico's justice system was reportedly well established. It is believed that José de Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo, a former Mexican Army general, protected the cartel until he was jailed for drug trafficking offenses in 1997.

  3026282269

• 6. The Negotiator

  ›

  Within the Juárez Cartel, Esparragoza Moreno started as operational chief and later became second-in-command, just behind Carrillo Fuentes. He was also a business partner of Juan José Quintero Payán, called Don Juanjo, an imprisoned drug lord who was one of the cartel's founders.

  His value lay in talk more than force. He forged alliances with Peruvian and Colombian drug suppliers. He arbitrated disputes inside the cartel, and he was credited with organizing a peace agreement with the Gulf Cartel in northern Mexico.

  After his time in the Juárez Cartel, he traditionally held leadership positions as a number-two figure. He preferred a low profile, which helped him avoid the arrests and killings that top kingpins usually meet.

  In 1997, Carrillo Fuentes decided to undergo plastic surgery and relocate outside Mexico, hoping to evade Mexican and U.S. law enforcement. The surgery at the Santa Mónica Hospital in Mexico City lasted eight hours. Afterward he reportedly died of a heart attack. The cause was said to be either an overdose of the tranquilizer Dormicum or a defect in a respirator.

  The empty seat set off a power struggle, as cartel leaders and rival crime groups scrambled to take over. The natural successor was his brother Vicente Carrillo Fuentes. Vicente appointed his brother Rodolfo, his nephew Vicente Carrillo Leyva and others to his faction. Esparragoza Moreno and others in the cartel disagreed with his imposition as leader.

  In the first decade of the century, Esparragoza was linked to the leadership of The Federation. That alliance joined the Sinaloa, Juárez and Sonora cartels, the last also known as the Caro-Quintero Organization.

  3132293621

• 7. Sanctions and Bounties

  ›

  On the 24th of June 2012, the United States Department of the Treasury placed economic sanctions on nine entities and ten individuals linked to Esparragoza Moreno. The United States froze the assets of his family members, which included several gas stations, a shopping center, a housing company and other businesses. Treasury blacklisted the ten individuals and barred U.S. companies from doing business with them.

  Six of the ten were family members: two wives and four of his children. One wife owned a property directly under his name. The other was sanctioned for owning seven gas stations on his behalf.

  The Treasury called him a "godfather of Mexican narcotics" who had used illicit money to build a network in legitimate business. Mexican investigators voiced frustration with such announcements. They said U.S. officials did not provide the evidence needed to prosecute the drug lords and their associates in Mexican courts.

  In December 2014, Treasury blacklisted Alejandra Araujo Uriarte, his mother-in-law, for allegedly concealing assets owned by Esparragoza Moreno. Authorities believed that after his relatives were sanctioned, his wife began laundering money through her bank accounts.

  The U.S. Department of State offers a US$5 million bounty for him under its Narcotics Rewards Program. In Mexico, he is on the list of the country's 37 most-wanted drug lords, and the Mexican government offers a $2 million reward. His wanted-poster description lists aliases beyond El Azul, among them Juan José Esparragoza Martínez, Juan Robles, Arturo Beltrán and El Huarache. The American tip line even spells his nickname in its number: 1-866-EL-AZUL-5.

  4541424737

• 8. The Disputed Death

  ›

  On the 7th of June 2014, Esparragoza Moreno reportedly died of a heart attack at the age of 65. It apparently followed a car accident he had suffered fifteen days earlier. According to unconfirmed reports, a spinal injury from the wreck confined him to bed, and the heart attack struck when he tried to get up.

  Sources disagree on where. Some say Mexico City, while others suggest Guadalajara. His remains were reportedly cremated and sent to Culiacán, Sinaloa, by family members and friends.

  Mexican officials pushed back. The Procuraduría General de la República, known as the PGR, and the Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional, known as CISEN, led an investigation along with the DEA. The PGR chief Jesús Murillo Karam said the government lacked enough evidence to confirm the rumors. The mayor of Badiraguato, Mario Valenzuela, and Sinaloa's governor, Mario López Valdez, said the rumors were false.

  On the 11th of June 2014, CISEN, the PGR and the Policía Ministerial said they held intelligence reports that he may have died at a hospital in Culiacán. That would mean neither Guadalajara nor Mexico City. According to these unconfirmed reports, he was registered under a fake name. His body was reportedly taken from the hospital and cremated the next day, before authorities could confirm anything. Investigations in Mexico City, Jalisco, Nuevo León and Sinaloa found nothing that confirmed or denied the rumors.

  In August 2014, his son José Juan Esparragoza Jiménez was arrested on charges of trafficking methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana. During his police interrogation, he said his father was dead.

  Still, the wanted poster for El Azul has not been removed from U.S. government reward lists, including the FBI list. That suggests he may still be treated as a possible living fugitive, and it is believed he may have undergone plastic surgery.

  In the series Narcos: Mexico, Fermín Martínez plays El Azul. The series falsely shows him killed by the Tijuana cartel in the 1990s. He is believed to have died in 2014, though that has never been officially confirmed.

  485642554