Kiki Camarena

Enrique "Kiki" Camarena Salazar (July 26, 1947 – February 9, 1985) was an American intelligence officer for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Enrique Camarena was born on July 26, 1947, in the border city of Mexicali, Mexico.

The family—three brothers and three sisters—immigrated to Calexico, California when Camarena was a child.

Camarena's parents divorced when he was young and the family endured considerable poverty after their move.

Mexican heroin and marijuana production became a concern to U.S. drug enforcement by the 1960s, but the first major American joint actions with the Mexican government did not begin until the 1970s.

His oldest brother Eduardo joined the Marines and was killed while serving in Vietnam in 1965.

His other brother Ernesto had a troubled police record, including drug problems.

Despite the family's difficulties, Camarena graduated from Calexico High School in 1966.

After graduating from high school, Camarena joined the Marines.

Following his discharge in 1970, he returned to Calexico and joined the police department.

From regular police work, he moved on to undercover narcotics work as a Special Agent on the Imperial County Narcotic Task Force (ICNTF).

When the French heroin connection was shut down in the early 1970s, Mexico took its place as an important source of American heroin.

Mexican marijuana production boomed in the early 1970s as well, and was later a major component of the Guadalajara cartel's production and trafficking.

At this point Mexico was not yet a major transshipment point for cocaine, which is produced primarily in the Andean countries of Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia.

In response to strong American pressure, and to domestic law enforcement concerns, Mexico began eradication programs of opium and marijuana plantations, with large infusions of U.S. assistance.

The first programs were on a smaller scale and used mostly manual eradication, such as "Operation Cooperation" in 1970.

As plantation sizes grew, the eradication efforts also grew.

After the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was established in 1973, it quickly instituted a hiring program for Spanish-speaking agents.

Both Camarena and his sister Myrna joined the agency in 1973, Myrna as a secretary and Enrique as a special agent in the DEA's Calexico resident office.

In 1975, Mexican president Luis Echeverría approved Operation Trizo, which used aerial surveillance and spraying of herbicides and defoliants from a fleet of dozens of planes and helicopters.

The spraying programs required extensive American involvement, both for funding and operations.

DEA pilots performed important operational roles; in addition to training Mexican pilots, they helped spot fields for spraying and verified that spraying runs had destroyed targeted fields.

As part of the program, DEA was allowed to freely fly in Mexican airspace.

These flights produced positive results, reducing acreage planted and eventually a reduction in Mexican heroin quality and quantity.

In 1977, Camarena transferred to the agency's field office in Fresno, where he worked undercover on smuggling activities in the San Joaquin Valley.

Author Elaine Shannon describes Camarena as "a natural in the theater of the street", able to "slip effortlessly into a Puerto Rican accent or toss off Mexican gutter slang—whatever the role demanded."

Colleagues described him as driven, even by the standards of job-focused DEA agents.

In 1980, a colleague and close friend who had moved from Fresno to the DEA resident office in Guadalajara suggested that Camarena also apply for an assignment at the office, where a position was open.

Foreign assignments were important for job advancement in the DEA and the Guadalajara office was seeing a surge in work, foreshadowing the explosion in drug trafficking of the 1980s.

By this time, Camarena was married and had three sons.

Guadalajara's spring-like weather and the city's American school and favorable exchange rate convinced Camarena and his family that the move would be good for the family as well.

American anti-narcotic efforts in Mexico long predate the Camarena case.

In February 1985 Camarena was kidnapped by drug traffickers hired by Mexican politicians in Guadalajara, Mexico.

He was interrogated under torture and murdered.

Three leaders of the Guadalajara drug cartel were eventually convicted in Mexico for Camarena's murder.

The U.S. investigation into Camarena's murder led to ten more trials in Los Angeles for other Mexican nationals involved in the crime.

The case continues to trouble U.S.–Mexican relations, most recently when Rafael Caro Quintero, one of the three convicted traffickers, was released from a Mexican prison in 2013.

Caro Quintero again was captured by Mexican forces in July 2022.

Several journalists, historians, former DEA and CIA agents, and Mexican police officers, contend that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was complicit in Camarena's death, because Camarena discovered CIA involvement in Cold War-era narcotics trafficking.

The CIA has denied the allegations.