Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, the architect of modern Mexican drug trafficking, the “boss of bosses” who transformed the global cocaine trade, died Sunday aged 80, officials said.
The notorious drug kingpin died in a hospital where he had been transferred from prison two days earlier.
“After remaining under observation with a guarded prognosis, he died on Nov. 15 at the medical facility” after “he suffered multiple organ failure,” according to a statement from the security ministry of the state of Jalisco, where he was being held.
One of the founders of the Guadalajara cartel, from which the Sinaloa cartel would later emerge, Felix Gallardo had been incarcerated since 1989.
He was a key player in establishing ties to Colombian drug traffickers and was convicted for the 1985 murder of an undercover agent working for the Drug Enforcement Agency, Enrique “Kiki” Camarena Salazar, which outraged the United States.
