The Mystery Behind The 'Kiki Camarena' Interrogation Tapes
This is the story of those tapes: the CIA, a DEA supervisor named Walter White, an earthquake and an unknown ranch in Veracruz.
Exactly 39 years ago DEA agent Enrique ‘Kiki’ Camarena was abducted along with his pilot and collaborator Alfonso Zavala. The over 30 hours of Camarena’s torture were taped by his captors. This is the story of those tapes: the CIA, a DEA supervisor named Walter White, an earthquake and an unknown ranch in Veracruz.
This is the work of many years of following Camarena’s story and the CIA. In 2013 I was the first one to uncover the CIA involvement in his killing through a series of interviews with former DEA agents, a CIA pilot and several Mexican former policemen.
Today, more than 10 years after I wrote that story, I dug deep into over 200 pages of testimonials, secret memorandums and transcripts from the time. I hope this gives you a new perspective into today’s convoluted relationship between Mexico, the US, the agencies and the drug cartels.
Best,
Luis Chaparro
Ciudad Juárez, MÉXICO
Feb. 2024
Lope de Vega 881
A few minutes before 2:00 pm Camarena had just left his handgun inside a drawer at his desk. The DEA had assigned an official weapon for him, although he could never carry it outside the U.S. Consulate. He was joyous and excited to see his wife Geneva, known as ‘Mika’. After a series of incidents and ups and downs at his posting they both were now ready to leave Mexico for San Diego in less than a month. Camarena was thinking of that while walking to a restaurant where they would celebrate the end of Mexico. He never made it.
He had walked only a block when he was taken. His captors followed him until this point, far enough from the Consulate. They put him inside a Volkswagen sedan and took him to a luxurious house property of Ernesto Fonseca not far from where he was first grabbed.
There, a group of men tied him from the hands and feet. Camarena was also blindfolded. He was taken to a first place before being taken to the place where he would come to die. Before the torture began, a man identified only as “Comandante” began asking questions about Camarena’s work in Mexico. He told him they won’t harm him. The first thing they wanted was to try and convince Camarena to work with them, to become an informant for them.
As Camarena refused to work for them even after offering twice his official salary and protection, they grabbed him and took him to the one-story house in Guadalajara located at Lope de Vega 881.
After a few hours, while ‘Mika’ was finishing dinner alone at the restaurant where she was supposed to meet her husband, Camarena and his collaborator, Mexican pilot Alfredo Zavala were put together. Zavala had also been kidnapped the same day. The captors confronted both with questions, and after perceiving inconsistencies, they took them again to separate rooms.
Camarena’s captors wanted to know too many things. At times it seems like they wanted different things. At some point they wanted to know how much the DEA had on every member of the Guadalajara organization: Ernesto Fonseca, Rafael Caro Quintero and Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo; at some other it seemed like they wanted information on Mexican officials.
In any case, they made sure to record the entire torture session with the purpose to take the tapes to someone else.
The Tierra Libre Brothers
The Tierra Libre brothers were a family of farmers originally from Ocotlán, Jalisco, a small rural town about 50 miles from Guadalajara. Out of the nine brothers, four, Antonio, Javier, Ricardo and Manuel had been the target of several criminal investigations for at least a decade before 1985.