“Of all the drug lords I had business relationships with, [El Chapo] was probably the most difficult one,” Margarito Flores tells me. Over years, Flores and his twin, Pedro, distributed 60 tonnes of cocaine, as well as heroin and crystal meth, around America on behalf of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán’s notorious Sinaloa Cartel. But in 2008, the twins turned on the Mexican kingpin, helping to put him behind bars.
Known as J, short for Junior, Flores is 42, but looks younger, with thick cropped hair and wide alert eyes. He’s driven and talkative, disarming with an easy manner and a lively mind that jumps from details of his trafficking logistics to the books he read in prison. He knows both the world of Chicago’s Little Village, where he was born, and small-town Zacatecas, Mexico, where his father hails from. He speaks with a Chicago-Latino accent.
Though he doesn’t have an aggressive demure and was never convicted of violence, Flores was key to networks that have pumped narcotics into America and drowned Mexico in blood. Mexican drug traffickers wouldn’t have made their vast fortunes without US associates to move their product north of the river. “Chapo or Mayo or Arturo couldn’t do what we did in the United States,” Flores says. Indeed, the twins made more bank from their hometown of Chicago than many of the drug lords south of the border.
Flores didn’t exactly choose this world — he was born into it. When his mother was pregnant with him in 1981, his father was incarcerated for being caught with 11 kilos of black tar heroin. He and Pedro grew up with an older brother who became a shot caller for the Latin Kings, a fearsome street gang, as well as a major drug dealer. “I didn’t have your regular childhood,” he tells me. “My brothers were in the most violent, biggest organisation which was the Latin Kings… I am basically being raised in that kind of culture.”
When his father finally came out of prison, he was furious. He was an old-school narco from Zacatecas and forbade the twins from what he saw as the crude, tattooed life of gang bangers. “He despised gang members, believe it or not. It’s this weird contradiction. Because he was in prison with them. He didn’t understand their reasoning.”
His father’s idea of education, meanwhile, was taking the twins down to Mexico to buy marijuana and drive it back to Chicago. On their first trip, aged seven, they helped stash weed in the gas tank. Over the following years, they learned how to find marijuana plantations in the mountains and negotiate with sellers. “My father made sure he introduced us to everyone and that we treated everyone with respect.”
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SubscribeExcellent essay. Very enjoyable read.
What’s an “aggressive demure”? Seems contradictory.
¿Eso si que es? good piece if you’re “othering” La Raza but equally a good laugh if it’s con fé (with faith or “in good faith”) Its a bit like Covid/SARS Cov19 really, 60% c**k up and 40% conspiracy. The 40% being opportunists, politicians, narcos, and, of course, los perioquistas (conquistadores with laptops or pens – journalists who drink the blood of the drug war innocents and lionize the dealers and their yankee cop/govt bros.) The focus on individual players/soldiers/victims kind of misses the point. No one can deny that getting f**ked up with coke & meth with heroin as desert is an awesome high BUT we’ve got to count the cost to users & families . Plus the half-wit crooks sucked into the game? Are the highs enough to justify the harms? – only for the user/addicts and their politician/cop overlords. The 60% the rest of us, continue to lose out as these dickheads play us for $s. Until the majority asserts itself and medicalises the druggies ( treatment orders, break the familia – barrio cycle) and their narco-politico-journo masters (life w/o parole or “shot resisting arrest”) then we are stuck with these pajeros – a kind of 21st C clergy.
That 40% is a big bucks sub niche that thrives off fear and spectacle
“ In early 2005, an associate of El Chapo kidnapped Pedro and held him for over two weeks, almost starving him to death.”
I have personally done 20 day water only fasts, without any risk to health. If he was almost starved after 15 days, he must have been anorexic before he started.