Mexico: drug lord Félix Gallardo urgently transferred to hospital

One of Mexico's most powerful drug traffickers, Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, nicknamed "the boss of bosses", was taken from prison on Friday for emergency treatment in a hospital, authorities said. Aged 80 and incarcerated since 1989, he was transferred from Puente Grande prison, in the suburbs of Guadalajara (west), to a private hospital in the same city, said the Jalisco State Security Secretariat. Félix Gallardo, who is serving two sentences totaling 77 years in prison, presented “low oxygenation, altered state of consciousness and disorientation,” said a press release.

At the end of the 1970s, the drug trafficker was one of the founders of the Guadalajara cartel, considered the first major criminal organization in the country and which established the basis for the modus operandi of today's gangs. According to the site specializing in drug trafficking Insight Crime, Félix Gallardo was a key element in alliances with Colombian drug traffickers. This cartel was responsible for the February 1985 kidnapping, torture, and murder of undercover United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agent Enrique Camarena Salazar.

Washington put pressure on Mexico to capture those responsible. Rafael Caro Quintero, the other leader of the Guadalajara cartel, was arrested in 1985. He is currently detained in the United States, accused of murder and drug trafficking.

Captured in 1989

Félix Gallardo was captured in 1989 and sentenced to 37 years in prison for the agent's murder, and is serving another 40 years for drug trafficking. In recent years, his health has deteriorated significantly due to around twenty pathologies, including hypertension, diabetes and deafness.

A judge recommended he be placed under house arrest, but technical problems with the electronic monitoring device prevented his transfer.

Two other powerful drug traffickers, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán and Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, sentenced to life imprisonment in the United States, were part of the Guadalajara Cartel and, after its disappearance, founded the Sinaloa Cartel.