One of Mexico’s most powerful former drug traffickers, Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, known as “the Chief of Chiefs,” was removed from prison to receive emergency medical care in a hospital, authorities said.
© Lusa
14/11/2026
by
Lusa
Um of Mexico’s most powerful former drug traffickers, Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, known as “the chief of chiefs,” was removed from prison to receive emergency medical care in a hospital, authorities said.
At the age of 80 and incarcerated since 1989, Gallardo was transferred from the prison of Puente Grande, on the outskirts of Guadalajara (west), to a private hospital in the same city, detailed on Friday the Jalisco State Security Secretariat.
Gallardo, who serves two sentences that total 77 years in prison, had “low oxygenation, altered state of consciousness and disorientation”, reports a statement.
In the late 1970s, the drug dealer was one of the founders of the former Guadalajara Cartel, considered the country's first major criminal organization and established the basis for the current factions' operating model.
According to Insight Crime, a drug trafficking site, Gallardo was a key player in alliances with Colombian drug traffickers.
The cartel was responsible for the kidnapping, torture and murder in February 1985 of a covert agent from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, Enrique Camarena Salazar. Washington then pressured Mexico to capture those responsible.
Rafael Caro Quintero, the other head of the Guadalajara Cartel, was arrested in 1985. He is currently under arrest in the United States, charged with murder and drug trafficking.
Gallardo was captured in 1989 and sentenced to 37 years in prison for the officer's murder, and served another 40-year sentence for drug trafficking.
In recent years, inmate health has deteriorated markedly due to about 20 pathologies, including hypertension, diabetes and deafness.
A judge recommended the transfer of Gallardo to house arrest, but technical problems related to the electronic monitoring device prevented the implementation of the measure.
Two other powerful traffickers, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán and Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, sentenced to life in the United States, was part of the Guadalajara Cartel and, after his disappearance, founded the Sinaloa Cartel.