Tony Tormenta. Antonio Ezekiel Cardinus Guillen, known as Tony Tormenta, had taken over leadership of the Gulf Cartel after his brother Oiel was arrested. But at the same time, Losas, once the cartel's armed wing, had broken away and turned into its deadliest enemy.
Tony commanded his own private army called Los Scorpionis, a squad made up of ex police officers trained in heavy weapons and brutal tactics. So brutal that he caught the attention of the Mexican Marines. For months, they tracked him across Tamalapus, nearly catching him several times.
But each time he escaped, protected by convoys of gunmen and armored vehicles. By late 2010, however, the government made his capture a top priority, and Madamoros, his home city and stronghold, became the main battlefield. On the morning of November 5th, 2010, more than 660 Marines backed by helicopters and armored vehicles, surrounded downtown Madamoros.
Roadblocks went up, cell service was cut, and power went out in parts of the city. For hours, residents hid in fear as gunmen fought openly in the streets. Gulf cartel Sakarios hijacked buses to block military convoys, snipers fired from rooftops, and over 300 grenades exploded during the clashes.
By the afternoon, the Marines had located Tony in a downtown building. Helicopters fired from above, and the military pushed through. As they got in, they eliminated Tony and several of his bodyguards.
Across Tamalipus and beyond, new roadblocks, grenade attacks, and shootouts erupted as news of his death spread. Loses celebrated hanging banners mocking the Gulf cartel and inviting Tony's men to switch sides. El Mexico.
By 1989, Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, also known as Elxico, was one of the most feared leaders of the Medin Cartel. But by then, he had gone to war with almost everyone. The Colombian government, the DEA, the Cali cartel, FARC guerrillas, and even old allies in the Emerald Trade.
His empire was falling apart, and his enemies had started working together to bring him down. The final hunt began when a police informant secretly working for the Cali cartel revealed his location. The police traced him to Cartagana, but he slipped away by boat to T to his son Freddy and several others.
Unfortunately for him, one of them was the same informant still passing information to the authorities. On December 15th, 1989, two military helicopters carrying elite police units launched the attack. And at first, Gacha and his men tried to hide by dressing as farm workers.
But when helicopters circled overhead, they ran to a red truck and attempted to escape. A running gunfight followed across the countryside until near a group of trees, some of his bodyguards and his son Freddy exchanged fire with police and were killed. Gotcha, with one bodyguard left, kept fleeing in the truck until they abandoned it and tried to escape on foot through a banana plantation.
Cornered and wounded, Gacha fired at a helicopter with a German submachine gun. His shots gave away his position and the police answered with bursts of machine gun fire from above. A bullet struck him in the leg, bringing him down.
And moments later, another hit him in the face, killing him. Two days later, on December 17th, thousands of people gathered in his hometown of Pacho for his funeral. Estimates put the crowd as high as 15,000.
Pacho Herrera. In 1996, Helmer Herrera, one of the four leaders of the Cali cartel known as Pacho, surrendered to Colombian authorities after the other Cali bosses had been arrested. Unlike the Rodriguez Ora brothers, he operated more in the shadows, rarely appearing in public and almost never being mentioned by name.
But this didn't prevent him from having enemies, even while in prison. Herrera and the whole Cali cartel had long been in conflict with the Norte Deva cartel, a powerful offshoot of Cali. And rumors spread that Herrera had betrayed their leader, Orlando Hanau, by giving information to the DEA.
On November 6th, 1998, during a football match inside the prison, Raphael Anel Urbe Serna entered the field. Urab was not a stranger. He had been close to Herrera for years and even worked as an adviser.
Herrera reportedly stopped the game and went to greet him. They hugged and at that moment, Urabay suddenly pulled out a gun and shot Herrera seven times in the head. Other inmates caught him and guards took him away.
But Herrera died soon after in the hospital. Urabay later claimed Herrera had threatened his family after he failed to kill an emerald tycoon on Herrera's orders, but investigators doubted this. Many believed Urabay was acting under orders from the Norte delva cartel themselves.
Aruro Beltran Leva. Marcos Aruro Beltran Leva, once called Elfees, or the boss of bosses by his gunmen, had risen inside the Sinaloa cartel with his brothers by running security and drug routes for El Chapo. But after his brother Alfredo was arrested in 2008, the Beltran Leva clan blamed El Chapo for betraying them.
They broke away, formed their own cartel, and allied with Losas, which were enemies of El Chapo, turning Mexico into a battlefield between former partners. Arturo led with brutality, filling the country with assassins, bribing officials, and spreading terror. So by late 2009, the Mexican government had made him one of its top targets.
On December 11th, Arturo threw a lavish Christmas party at a mansion in Quavaka. But Mexican Navy special forces raided the house, sparking a firefight that killed three of his men and a neighbor. Arturo escaped, but 5 days later, intelligence led the Navy to another luxury apartment where Arturo was hiding.
This time, they came with a crazy amount of force. Around 200 Marines, backed by tanks and helicopters, surrounded the building. A 90-minute gun battle followed.
Arturo's men hurled grenades to hold them off, but Marines repelled from helicopters and stormed the building. When it was over, Arturo and three of his men were dead. The aftermath was bloody.
Days later, gunmen assassinated family members of Melkisede Anglo Cordova, the marine killed in the raid, murdering his mother and relatives after his funeral. Then a banner left at a kindergarten warned of more reprisals. Elsenor de los.
On July 4th, 1997, Amato Kario Fuentes, known as Elsenor de los, or Lord of the Skies for the huge fleet of jets he used to move cocaine entered a private hospital in Mexico City to change his face. And you'll soon understand why. By then, he was the most powerful drug lord in Mexico, head of the Wararez cartel, and worth an estimated $25 billion.
But pressure against him was growing. Both US and Mexican authorities were closing in, and ordinary Mexicans had started protesting the politicians that allowed traffickers like him to operate. Curillo, while on the run, believed surgery could buy him time.
At Santa Monica Hospital, he underwent major plastic surgery on his face along with lipos suction to change his appearance, but the operation didn't go as expected. Whether from a bad reaction to medication or a broken respirator, complications set in and in the early hours of July 5th, Amato Curo Fuentes was dead. The most powerful drug trafficker in Mexico had not died in a gun battle or an ambush, but on an operating table.
Rumors spread quickly with many insisting Curillo had faked his death to escape justice. The government was forced to publicly display his body to silence the speculation. Months later, the two surgeons who had performed the operation were found murdered.
The Huarez cartel fell into chaos almost immediately and a bloody fight for control of what Curillo had left behind started. Ramon Arilano Felix being one of the leaders of the Tijuana cartel and being known as the cartel's enforcer, Raman had built a reputation as one of the most ruthless traffickers in Mexico, he personally ordered massacres, including the 1998 slaughter of 19 members of the Castro Ramirez family. Brutal acts like this made him stand out, which is why by the late 1990s, Raman was high on Mexico's most wanted lists.
In 1997, he was added to the FBI's 10 most wanted fugitives, charged with importing cocaine and marijuana into the United States. Later, under the Kingpin Act, his US assets were frozen and American citizens were banned from doing business with him. Still, Raman continued to operate in Mexico.
But on February 10th, 2002, while he was driving in Mazatlan, a Mexican police officer, Angel Antonio Arias Torres, pulled him over for a traffic violation. What seemed like a routine stop exploded into violence. Raman pulled a gun and shot the officer twice in the chest, mortally wounding him.
Even as he collapsed, Arias Torres managed to fire back, hitting Raman in the head and killing him instantly. Both men died in the exchange. Some accounts, however, say that the stop was not an accident.
According to these stories, Wain Guzman, known as El Chapo, set up the ambush to remove one of his most dangerous rivals. If that's true, he succeeded since Rammon's death marked the beginning of the end for the Tijuana cartel. Just weeks later, his brother Benjamin was arrested and within a few years, most of the Ariano Felix brothers were either captured or dead.
Francisco Rafael Ariano Felix. On October 18th, 2013, Francisco Raphael, the oldest of the brothers who once controlled the Tijuana cartel, was celebrating his 64th birthday in Los Cabos, and around 80 to 100 guests, including politicians, businessmen, athletes, and other VIPs went to the party. By then, he had been out of cartel leadership for years after getting arrested in 1993 and released in 2008.
Just after 8:00 p. m. , a man dressed as a clown walked in, and he blended in long enough to get close.
When he was only three feet away, he pulled out a pistol and shot Francisco Raphael in the head and chest. As he fell to the floor, the gunman fired more shots before escaping through a back door to a black SUV waiting outside. Guests panicked, running for cover under tables or fleeing into the night.
The motive was never fully clear. Authorities suggested it may have been revenge over old debts or rivalries, possibly tied to the Sinaloa cartel or the Beltron Leva cartel. Some believed he had angered El Chapo by tipping off authorities about his presence in Los Cabos the year before.
What made the case even more mysterious was that security at the party was unusually low and many guests left before police could question them, leaving little evidence. Elasa Harry Lasano was a former soldier who defected from the Mexican army and helped create Losettas, the armed wing of the Gulf cartel that later broke away and became one of the most violent criminal groups in the country. As we mentioned in Tony Torment's section, by the late 2000s, he was one of Mexico's most wanted men.
So much so that the US government offered a $5 million reward for him, while Mexico added another $2 million. His end came on October 7th, 2012 when acting on a civilian tip about armed men at a baseball game, Mexican Marines moved in. Lasano and a bodyguard opened fire from a white van, starting a shootout that killed both of them and one Marine.
Fingerprint tests confirmed the dead man was Leano, making him the most powerful cartel boss killed since Mexico's drug war began in 2006. But the story didn't end there. His body was taken to a funeral home in Sabinas Kuahila.
And before officials could make the news public, a convoy of masked gunmen stormed the building, overpowered staff, and stole Lasano's corpse. That's because in the Zetas' paramilitary culture, no man was to be left behind. His body has never been recovered.
Lasano's death cleared the way for Miguel Trevvinho to become the uncontested leader of Losas, though he was captured less than a year later in 2013. This created an opening for rivals like El Chapo and the Sinaloa cartel, who could now more easily expand into Zeta's territory. Grisel Blanco, Grisel Blanco Restreo, known as the godmother of cocaine, was one of the most central figures in the violent Miami drug wars of the 1970s and 1980s.
From an early age, she was involved in crime. Stories claim that as a child, she kidnapped and even killed. And by her teenage years, she was already committing theft and fraud before moving into drug trafficking.
At its peak, her empire was said to bring in $80 million a month. But Blanco was remembered more for her violence. She ordered hundreds of killings, including public massacres, and she was credited with popularizing motorcycle drive by shootings that became a cartel trademark.
Not even her family was safe as she allegedly ordered the murder of her first husband, personally shot her second husband, Alberto Bravo, during an argument and had her third husband killed after a custody dispute over their son, Michael Corleiona Blanco, whom she had named after the character from The Godfather. In 1985, she was arrested in California by the DEA and released early in 2004 for health reasons and deported back to Colombia. In her later years, she was said to have turned to religion and lived as a born-again Christian.
But on September 3rd, 2012 at the age of 69 while she was leaving a butcher shop in Medí, a man on a motorcycle shot her twice in the head. She was basically killed in the same style of assassination she had once popularized in Miami, Elche. On January 11th, 1996, Elche, whose real name was Joseé Santa Cruz Londono, had escaped from the Lapicota prison in Bogotaa.
He was one of the founding leaders of the Cali cartel and unlike the Medí cartel under Pablo Escobar which fought openly with bombings and assassinations, Cali used a quieter approach with corruption and bribery. This seemed to work since at its peak the cartel supplied up to 80% of the cocaine in the world. But after Escobar's death in 1993, all eyes turned to Cali.
This was made worse by the bloody war with the Norte Deva cartel that we previously mentioned. Its leaders together with paramilitary commander Carlos Castano and corrupt police colonel Danilo Gonzalez agreed that Chepe had to die. They arranged an ambush disguised as a police checkpoint and Elche was shot dead on the spot.
Nacho Ignasio Coronel Variel also known as Nacho Coronel or the king of crystal for his domination of methamphetamine production and trafficking was one of the most wanted men by the US and Mexican government by the early 2000s. He rose to power in the 1980s with the Huarees cartel under Amado Curo Fuentes, but after his death, he helped strengthen the Sinaloa cartel alongside El Chapo. His niece Emma Coronel Ispuro later became widely known as the wife of El Chapo.
But he's mostly known for his 2010 retaliation when after his young son Alejandro was kidnapped and murdered by gunmen linked to Losas, he sent more than 100 men to kill 14 people only days later. On July 29th, 2010, Mexican soldiers tracked him to a luxury home in Zapon. When troops stormed the property, he resisted.
In the firefight, he killed one soldier and wounded another before being fatally shot in the head. Inside the house, soldiers seized jewelry, luxury watches, rifles, grenades, three vehicles, and about $7 million in cash. Pablo Escobar.
It was the afternoon of December 2nd, 1993, and Pablo Escobar was hiding in a modest house in a Medeline neighborhood. For more than a year, he had been on the run after escaping from his private prison, Lacatad, where he had lived in comfort and continued his criminal operations even while locked up. The Colombian government, with support from the United States, had been hunting him non-stop, and his rivals in the Cali cartel also wanted him dead.
His actions brought even more attention towards him, like when he bombed Avianka Flight 203 in an attempt to kill a presidential candidate, Cesar Gveria, but instead killed more than 100 innocent people. Colombian special forces using US technology that tracked a phone call he made to his family found him in Medí. As police closed in, Escobar tried to escape across the rooftops with his bodyguard, but a gunfight broke out.
Bullets hit him in the torso and legs, but the shot that finished it struck his head. Some believe the police fired it, while others think Escobar shot himself. His death marked the fall of the Medí cartel, and more than 25,000 people attended his funeral.
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