Juan José Esparragoza Moreno

Juan José Esparragoza Moreno was born in Huixiopa, Badiraguato, Sinaloa, Mexico on 3 February 1949.

He has an alternative date of birth on 2 March 1949 listed on the United States government databases.

Originally a member of the Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS) police agency, he founded the Guadalajara Cartel in the 1970s along with other drug kingpins in Mexico.

In the 1970s, he joined the Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS), a now-extinct Mexican federal police agency, where he befriended police commanders involved in organized crime.

Esparragoza Moreno's nickname, "El Azul" (English: "The Blue One"), derives from his complexion.

He is said to be "so dark that his skin appears to be blue".

After the implementation of Operation Condor (Spanish: Operación Cóndor), a Mexican antidrug program carried out in the 1970s to stop the flow of drugs from Mexico to the United States, many drug traffickers from the state of Sinaloa regrouped in Guadalajara, Jalisco to continue their operations.

The regrouping led to the formation of the Guadalajara Cartel, a drug trafficking organization that eventually managed to control nearly all the narcotics trafficking operations in Mexico throughout the late 1970s and 1980s.

Among their original founders were Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo (alias "El Padrino"), Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo (alias "Don Neto"), Rafael Caro Quintero (alias "Rafa"), Esparragoza Moreno, and other Sinaloan drug kingpins.

Throughout most of the 1970s and early 1980s, most of the cocaine that was smuggled to the United States was trafficked by the Colombian drug cartels through Florida and the Caribbean Sea.

Following its disintegration in the late 1980s, he went on to lead the Juárez Cartel and eventually settled in the Sinaloa Cartel.

He worked alongside Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán and Ismael Zambada García, once considered world's most-wanted, powerful and rich drug lords.

However, with increased law enforcement measures in these areas by the mid-1980s, the Colombian drug kingpins shifted their operations to Mexico.

The Guadalajara Cartel took advantage of this opportunity and began supplying cocaine for the Colombian groups through the U.S-Mexico border.

But instead of simply acting as smugglers, the cartel leaders decided to take a share of the cocaine profits for themselves (the shares were often as high as 50%).

Under their leadership, the Guadalajara Cartel initially oversaw the production and distribution of marijuana and opium poppies to the United States; by the 1980s, the cartel began to expand its operations and include cocaine in its repertoire.

The Guadalajara Cartel managed to traffic cocaine to the U.S. in multi-ton shipments each month, and their leaders reportedly amassed a fortune.

At the same time, the cartel enjoyed a level of protection through the DFS police agency; several of its members were involved in organized crime directly by actively participating in murder and drug trafficking on the cartel's behalf.

With the growing influence of the Guadalajara Cartel, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) started to conduct covert operations in Mexico.

One of its special agents, Enrique Camarena Salazar, was sent to the DEA offices in Guadalajara and started to work undercover by infiltrating the Guadalajara Cartel.

During his tenure in Guadalajara, Camarena uncovered what seemed to be a never ending field of marijuana.

In November 1984, Camarena directed Mexican authorities to a 220 acre marijuana plantation in Chihuahua known as Rancho Búfalo (English: "Buffalo Ranch"), which was owned by the Guadalajara Cartel.

Upon their arrival, the Mexican soldiers destroyed tons in marijuana valuing in over US$8 billion.

The raid resulted in a major financial blow for the Guadalajara Cartel, and its leaders vowed to retaliate against those responsible for directing the Mexican government to the location.

In broad daylight on 7 February 1985, several DFS police officers kidnapped Camarena as he left the U.S. Consulate in Guadalajara.

A few hours after the incident, his pilot Alfredo Zavala Avelar, who had conducted operations for the DEA alongside Camarena, was abducted.

Camarena was taken to a home at 881 Lope de Vega in Guadalajara, where he was tortured to gain information regarding his knowledge of law enforcement operations directed against the Guadalajara Cartel; as well as any information that the DEA may have on Mexican politicians involved in drug trafficking.

Over the course of the 30 plus hour torture session, Camarena's skull, jaw, nose, cheekbones, windpipe, and ribs were broken; the kidnappers brought in a doctor to administer drugs to the agent to keep him conscious throughout the whole session.

The kidnappers made audio recordings of some parts of Camarena's interrogation.

The final blow was apparently done when the torturers crushed his skull with a piece of rebar or other similar piece of metal.

About a month later, Camarena and Zavala's corpses were taken to the neighboring state of Michoacán and dumped in a roadside ditch to be discovered on 5 March 1985.

The murder of Camarena outraged the U.S. government and put pressure on Mexico to arrest all the major players involved in the incident, resulting in a four-year law enforcement manhunt that brought down several leaders of the Guadalajara Cartel.

Caro Quintero was arrested in Costa Rica on 4 April 1985 after fleeing Mexico; on 7 April 1985, Fonseca Carrillo was nabbed by the Mexican police in Jalisco; in March 1986, authorities arrested Esparragoza Moreno in Mexico City under the direction of the DFS police commander Florentino Ventura.

He was imprisoned at the Reclusorio Sur penitentiary in Mexico City on 11 March 1986 for drug trafficking charges and for his alleged participation in the murder of Camarena.

Esparragoza Moreno did not admit to the charges against him and said that he was innocent.

A federal judge, however, sentenced him to seven years and two months behind bars.

While Esparragoza Moreno was in prison, Félix Gallardo was arrested at his home in Guadalajara in April 1989.

On 9 July 1990, he was transferred to another prison in Mexico City, and in March 1992 he was moved to the Federal Social Readaptation Center No. 1 (known simply as "La Palma") in Almoloya de Juárez, State of Mexico.

A year later, Esparragoza Moreno fulfilled his sentence and was released from prison.

Juan José Esparragoza Moreno (February 3, 1949 - June 2014), commonly referred to by his alias El Azul (English: "The Blue One"), was a Mexican drug lord and member of the Sinaloa Cartel, Guadalajara Cartel and Juárez Cartel, three large and powerful criminal organizations.