translated from Spanish: Who is Osiel Cardenas Guillén

He has several nicknames: “El Loco”, “El Patrón”, “El Mata Amigos”. Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, who was the dangerous leader of the Gulf Cartel, is also in a U.S. prison like El Chapo Guzmán, who is Osiel Cárdenas Guillén?

The kingpin was born in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, on May 18, 1967 into a very humble family. At the age of 14 he went to live at his sister Lilia’s house and began working as an assistant mechanic, waiter and then in a maquiladora factory. He had just finished high school and at 19 he fell in love and married his co-worker Celia Salinas.Se went to live together in one of the mechanical workshops where he worked but that is where his fate changed as he began to smuggle cocaine.

Osiel Cárdenas Guillén in his youth.

In 1989 he was arrested in Matamoros for murder, abuse of trust and damage to someone else’s property but was released on bail that same night. In 1992, at the age of 24, he was arrested in Brownsville, Texas when he was found two kilos of cocaine, and in 1993 he was sentenced to 63 months in prison. On January 2, 1994, he returned to Mexico in an inmate exchange between the Mexican and U.S. authorities, eventually obtaining his pre-release on April 13, 1995, when he then consolidated his contacts in Colombia.In 1998, he murdered his friend and leader of the Gulf Cartel, Salvador Gómez Herrera, to stay in charge of the organization. That’s why he earned the aliases of “El Loco”, “El Mata Amigos”, “El Padrino”, “El Patrón” and “El Viejón” After the assassination of Chava Gómez, and leader of the Gulf Cartel in 1998, Osiel Cárdenas came into contact with Los Zetas, who would operate as sicarios of the cartel.

The Secretary of National Defense presented in March 2009, a criminal cell under the direct line of the organization of “Osiel cardenas Guillen”, confiscating 11 million pesos and arsenal for exclusive use of the army.  Photo: Quartercuro

In four years he managed to revive the cartel to become one of the most wanted men by the PGR in Mexico and the American agencies, who offer a $2 million reward, after he threatened to kill a member of the U.S. Customs And in November 1999 it did the same with a DEA agent and an FBI agent. More and more operators wanted to be in alliance with him, especially the Colombians who sent him numerous shipments of cocaine, which were transferred from Veracruz, to Nuevo Laredo and Matamoros by land. On March 14, 2003, elements of the Mexican Army and the PGR capture Osiel Cárdenas in Matamoros, Tamaulipas.On March 21, he was issued in prison for crimes of organized crime and damage to health, in various modalities. From then on he remained in the maximum security penalty of La Palma (now Altiplano), located in Almoloya (State of Mexico), from where he continued to serve as head of the cartel. Prisoner in the US
On March 7, 2005, the Mexican government granted the United States the extradition of Osiel Cárdenas.Finally extradited on January 19, 2007 to the United States, where it faced 19 charges in a Houston court.

In 2010, during his trial, he pleaded guilty to one drug-trafficking charge, one for money laundering and three for extortion of U.S. federal agents, in return he was dropped by another twelve counts of drug trafficking. He was given a 25-year prison sentence and a $50 million fine. The Gulf Cartel operates in the states of Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, Veracruz, Tabasco, San Luis Potosí, Campeche, Yucatán, Quintana Roo, Zacatecas, Aguascalientes, Jalisco and Distrito Federal.



Original source in Spanish