In 1990, in the lobby of a Mexico City hotel, a meeting took place between two major drug traffickers. One was a newcomer on the scene, Chapo Guzman, brash and wearing a pistol. The other was a heavy-weight Colombian cocaine supplier, Juan Carlos Ramirez Abadia, aka Chupeta.
The two men cut a deal. Chupeta would his coke to Chapo's secret airstrips in Mexico, and Chapo would then smuggle it across the border to Los Angeles. The terms of deal: Chupeta would keep 60% on the other side of the border. Chapo would keep 40% as payment for the crossing.
This was more than Chupeta was used to paying. Typically, he allowed his Mexican smuggling partners to keep only 37%, he said. But Chapo made him a convincing pitch.
"He said, 'I'm a lot faster,'" Chupeta recalled. "'Try me and you'll see.'"
"He said, 'I'm a lot faster,'" Chupeta recalled. "'Try me and you'll see.'"
Thus began a nearly 20 year partnership in which as much 400,000 kilos of Chupeta's coke was smuggled into the US by Chapo and his crew. After the first shipment, Chupeta was pleased. Chapo got 4000 k's from Los Mochis to LA in about a week. Other Mexican smugglers took a month.
"It was super quick," Chupeta said. "It was the first time a Mexican trafficker delivered the cocaine to me that quickly."
Chupeta was an astonishing specimen. Before his arrest, he had 3 or 4 surgeries to alter his appearance. He now looks like something from an old Dick Tracy comic: huge forehead, shovel-blade cheekbones, a chin like a fist.
He testified in a parka and a pair of winter gloves due to some unidentified medical condition. He could not mention cocaine without referring to it proudly as "my cocaine."
He was intense & detail-oriented, saying he debriefed his pilots after every flight they took and personally visited his coke labs inspecting them for quality control. He was almost arrogant on the stand, often stopping after an answer to square his shoulders and purse his lips.
He was also a prodigious killer, admitting to having ordered the deaths of at least 150 people. And he was rich. The Colombians seized $1 billion from him after his arrest in Brazil in 2007 (in the company of his bodybuilder lover.) His nickname means, yes, Sucker or Lollipop.
Chupeta's account today offered a fascinating glimpse into Chapo's skills. Not only was Chapo's covert airstrip well-lighted and easy to land at, not only did his people quickly refuel the planes for their return flight to Colombia--they also fed Chupeta's pilots.
And...the Mexican federal police were on hand, Chupeta said--not just protecting the 3 a.m. transaction, but actually helping to unload the coke from the planes.
