Héctor Luis Palma Salazar

Héctor Luis Palma Salazar

Jesús Héctor Luis Palma Salazar , also known as El Güero ( the blonde ), is a former Mexican drug trafficker and a leader of the Sinaloa cartel , which is now also known as the Guzmán Loera Organization and the Pacific Cartel .

Early years

Héctor Luis Palma Salazar was born in the municipality of Noria de Abajo in the city of Mocorito ( Sinaloa ); however, the date of his birth is not clear. Some say he was born in the mid-1950s, according to others in the 1960s. He spent his childhood in poor circumstances and he only completed primary school.

Criminal career

He began his criminal career as a car thief and eventually worked for Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo under the umbrella of the Guadalajara cartel . Initially he served him as a killer and later smuggled drugs through Sonora for him .

He later made the acquaintance of the now infamous El Chapo and became his partner. It was Salazar who introduced him to Félix Gallardo in the early 1980s and thus helped him achieve his breakthrough. Guzmán first worked as a chauffeur for Félix Gallardo before he made him responsible for the logistics, where Guzmán coordinated drug transports from Colombia to Mexico by land, air and sea. Palma, on the other hand, ensured that the deliveries were made to consumers in the USA.

In 1988, Palma Salazar's wife and two children were killed in revenge for an alleged theft of a shipment of cocaine belonging to Félix Gallardo. His wife Guadalupe Leija was murdered and dismembered in San Francisco ; her head, wrapped in a box, was sent to Salazar. Fifteen days later, his children Nataly and Héctor, four and five years old, suffered the same fate. According to a report by the Venezuelan police, the minors were thrown from a height of 150 meters from a bridge in the city of San Cristóbal , Táchira state . In both cases, the perpetrator of the crime was identified by police as Rafael Clavel Moreno, of Venezuelan descent, who was linked to the Tijuana cartel and allegedly used to infiltrate Palma's family. This seduced Palma's wife and convinced her to withdraw $ 7 million from one of Palma's bank accounts. Clavel Moreno is said to have been hired by Félix Gallardo, by the Tijuana bosses Benjamín and Ramón Arellano Félix .

After Gallardo was arrested on April 8, 1989 in Guadalajara, disputes broke out among the organization's padróns. Since each of the remaining drug bosses wanted to secure increased influence, the Federación created by Gallardo finally broke up and several small groups emerged, some of which still exist today: the Gulf Cartel , Tijuana Cartel, Juárez Cartel , Sinaloa Cartel ; the latter was founded and directed by El Chapo Guzmán, Ismael Zambada García and Palma Salazar. Palma Salazar ran the San Luis Río Colorado area .

In retaliation for the murders in his family, Palma Salazar had Clavel Morenos murdered three children, four relatives of Gallardo and his lawyer and mother-in-law in late 1992.

Palma became famous in 1993 for its alleged involvement in the murder of Cardinal Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo at Guadalajara Airport . This murder occurred in the middle of the war that Palma and El Chapo were waging with the Arellano Félix brothers of the Tijuana cartel.

Arrest and conviction

Nine arrest warrants have already been issued against El Güero; he was one of the most wanted men by the Mexican and American authorities. On June 23, 1995, Palma Salazar traveled aboard a Learjet after a wedding in Ciudad Obregón (Sonora); the jet crashed, Palma Salazar survived. When he was recovering, after escaping from the scene of the accident, he wore a police uniform; the officers of the Mexican Army who had captured him are said to have identified him by the pistol he carried: a weapon adorned with a palm tree and emerald stones on a gold handle. Palma was charged by a US court with only transporting 50 kilos of cocaine and, after acknowledging his guilt, was sentenced to 16 years in prison, which he served until June 2016.

On June 23, 2003, he was listed by the United States Department of the Treasury as a person involved in drug smuggling under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act . This bans US citizens and companies from doing business with him and has frozen virtually all of his assets in the US.

In June 2016 he was extradited to Mexico, where he was charged with double homicide in 1995 in Nayarit and detained in the maximum security prison of El Altiplano in central Mexico; the same prison from which his former ally El Chapo Guzmán fled.

Cultural reception

• Portrayed in the film character Heriberto "El Güero" Palma by Juan Carlos Olivas in the television series El Chapo .
• In the Netflix series Narcos: Mexico he was played by Gorka Lasaosa .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ BBC - La violenta vida de “El Güero” Palma, el narcotraficante liberado en EE.UU. por buena conducta
2. ↑ 20 minutes - The «little one» with great power
3. ↑ Proceso - “El Güero” Palma, historia de una carrera criminal
4. ↑ Borderland Beat - Sinaloa Cartel
5. ^ La Jornada - Con El Güero Palma se rompió la regla de que la familia era intocable entre narcos
6. ↑ United States Department of the Treasury - DESIGNATIONS PURSUANT TO THE FOREIGN NARCOTICS KINGPIN DESIGNATION ACT
7. ↑ United States Department of the Treasury - An overview of the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act
8. ↑ Univision - "El Güero" Palma está preso nuevamente en México, ahora por el asesinato de dos personas cometido in 1995