The Wives Of The Narcos Who Betrayed El Chapo Speak

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The Wives Of The Narcos Who Betrayed El Chapo Speak
The Wives Of The Narcos Who Betrayed El Chapo Speak

Video: The Wives Of The Narcos Who Betrayed El Chapo Speak

Video: The Wives Of The Narcos Who Betrayed El Chapo Speak
Video: Wives of El Chapo Smugglers Reveal Secrets of the Mexican Drug Cartel 2024, March
Anonim

In the Brooklyn federal courtroom where he will be tried starting tomorrow, Joaquín el Chapo Guzmán will meet old friends whom he has not seen in a long time.

Former collaborators, partners, and lieutenants of the Mexican capo have now become prosecution witnesses against the most powerful drug trafficker in Mexico, capable of mobilizing armies of hitmen, bribing the highest authorities, and deploying aircraft and narco-submarine fleets to transport their commodity.

Among the most anticipated witnesses in the chamber of federal judge Brian M. Cogan are two Mexican American twins, Pedro and Margarito Flores, who for years were responsible for bringing Guzmán's shipments to the United States and distributing them through the networks they had created in a dozen cities.

After deciding to collaborate with the authorities in 2008 and record their conversations with their partners, they turned themselves in and remain in the custody of the authorities under the protected witness program. They have not been seen since their appearance before a judge in 2015 in which they were sentenced to 14 years in prison.

The women of the drug trafficker

Their wives, Mía and Olivia Flores, also had to assume new identities once their husbands surrendered and start a new life with their children somewhere in the United States. Both, who narrate their experience in the book Cartel Wives (Grand Central Publishing), spoke with People en Español about their experience in the world of drug trafficking in Mexico and their current clandestine life, in which they have become accustomed to living with fear.

An unsubstantiated fear: The twins' father, Margarito Flores Sr., ignored the warnings and returned to Mexico the year after their children turned themselves in to the feds. No more was heard of him: his car was found abandoned in the Sinaloa desert with a warning note to the brothers, according to press reports of the time.

As precautionary measures, the Flores' wives attended the interview escorted by armed guards, they did not allow themselves to take flowers and they hid behind long wigs and enormous sunglasses to tell their story.

“We had a very luxurious life, our husbands were probably the first Americans to work with El Chapo Guzmán, so they were at the highest level. They worked with him, someone who had narco-submarines, a fleet of [planes], tunnels with trains, trucks,”said Olivia, who was born in 1975 in Pilsen, a mostly Mexican neighborhood in Chicago.

"Obviously we benefit from that lifestyle, luxury, living in mansions … we had a house on the beach near where the Kardashians go on vacation in Punta Mitra, in Puerto Vallarta. [That reality] was our daily life,”he added.

Image
Image

Olivia y Mía came from homes with a police dad and a strict mother who sent them to private schools despite the economic hardships, which did not prevent them from falling into bad company sooner or later and later meeting the Flores brothers, whom they Authorities considered him to be one of the biggest drug traffickers in Chicago, from where they had to flee in 2003 and jump into Mexico pursued by the United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), according to the book and press reports.

Debts are settled with silver or blood

There, according to the authorities and their wives, they put their logistical skills and experience at the disposal of the Beltrán-Leyva brothers' organization and the Sinaloa cartel headed by El Chapo, whom they knew very well and who they often visited. in his hidden palapa high up in the Sierra Madre.

“When my husband met him, he was very intimidated by his presence alone. Not because of what he did, but because of the power [that emanated], because of the army [that he has]. Going to see him was something out of the movies,”said Olivia, who met the kingpin through her husband's descriptions of his travels, which included dangerous light aircraft flights and off-road tours of winding mountain routes.

“He is a short man, stocky, but with a lot of self-confidence, who ordered to kill without batting an eye. Something that was normal for him. He always kept his composure, he added.

They settled in Guadalajara, where they assure that they lived in an upper class neighborhood where, according to them, it was difficult to distinguish the lawyers or the doctor from the drug trafficker. The presence of organized crime was evident and accepted as something ordinary.

“When we were traveling with our husbands to Culiacán [Sinaloa], you were in a restaurant and you saw 50 guys arriving in pick-up trucks with Ak-47s [rifles] hanging from their shoulders, backpacks with grenades and walky-talkies. I saw it and thought: but what is that? The families who were there eating [did not flinch] seemed normal to them, "he said.

In the book, they describe a life of extreme luxury, where they ate with Versace tableware, had servants, and cabinets burst with Cartier bags. The million dollar businesses were closed with a handshake and the only financial concern was what to do with so much cash. Of course, the penalty for taking a wrong step could be death.

“If you don't do what El Chapo wants, kill your whole family. There were times when I said to my husband, 'Why can't you just quit, leave, no need to go on with this?' My husband used to tell me: 'This is like an open tap, the water doesn't stop coming out,'”Olivia recalled. “If you don't do what they tell you, they kill you. If you do not make them earn money, if you are not useful to them, you are disposable. You cannot retire, you cannot leave, even if you have no debts, although you do not owe them anything, it does not matter. This is how they get rich”.

Mia highlighted that they soon realized the reality in which they had landed, which on one occasion included being kidnapped at gunpoint. “From the first minute we entered that world, we assumed the greatest risk of our lives. All our moments of happiness were overshadowed by the bad. It was one thing after another: kidnappings, extortion. You could never live happy. But you adapt, you become immune”.

Lovely people

The latent threat of the use of violence does not mean that some of the capos they met had their charm, far from the neighborhood ruffians they had met in Chicago. “They are very charismatic, very sure of themselves. They don't look like the common narco that you see here in the United States, that you identify them a mile away for their jewelry, their diamonds, all the bling bling, says Olivia.

“It is not the same there: they are well dressed, almost like actors, and behave in a polite manner. As I said, when we lived in Mexico in a wealthy neighborhood, it was [a house] for a lawyer, another for a doctor, they were all the same, they looked the same, from the way they spoke. They were educated, you couldn't tell them apart, "he stressed.

Joaquin
Joaquin

The drop that filled the glass

To the natural tension of the business, in which the failure of a shipment meant accumulating a million dollar debt with the cartel, was added the increasing pressure from the US federal authorities who were behind their trail, to the point that Mexican policemen were down for a hair they did not once hand them over to their northern colleagues.

But what ultimately decided to abandon them was the outbreak of the bloody war between the Guzmán and the Beltrán-Leyva. The Flores twins had never resorted to violence to run their businesses and disliked so much blood, their wives stressed.

"So on the one hand Arturo [ Beltrán-Leyva] told them that he did not want them to continue working for El Chapo and to tell them where El Chapo was, and the same on the other side. El Chapo told them: they cannot work with my enemies,”lamented Olivia, who like Mia had children by then. "Our husbands realized that they couldn't go on."

The next step was to contact the US authorities, reach an agreement with the federal prosecutor's office and start collaborating as informants, recording conversations and collecting compromising information for long months, in which they feared at every moment that the powerful bosses would discover their betrayal. with its sophisticated spy equipment.

Until one Sunday, suddenly, the feds told them they had to turn themselves in the same day. The twins boarded a US government plane at the Guadalajara airport, and the rest of the family - including an almost newborn baby - shot out to cross the border into Nuevo Laredo.

That's where his new life began, full of lies, falsehoods and a lot of discretion. “Sometimes you don't know what reality you live in. Here you see us well dressed, made up, with wigs and sunglasses. But that is not who we are. We are moms, soccer mums, we go to the PTA, we wear yoga tights, we work to support ourselves,”said Olivia.

“We cannot speak to our neighbors, they do not know who we are and the only person who knows what happened is Mine. We cannot establish relationships with people, connect, because we fear that we will not remember the lies we tell, he added.

To that must be added the fear, which never disappears for a long time that has passed since their flight, and the possibility of having to collect four things and flee if there is the slightest suspicion that they have been located. “Although our husbands were sentenced to 14 years, the reality is that the sentence is for life. You will always live in fear, they will always be looking for you, you will always look behind your back, for fear that there is someone who wants to kill you”.

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