The fate of Enrique ("Kiki") Camarena Salazar still infuriates his colleagues in the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. At 37, Camarena was an aggressive and resourceful U.S. drug agent, deftly juggling a network of contacts in his native Mexico and setting the stage for major busts. Three years ago, the muscular ex-Marine was kidnaped near the U.S. consulate in Guadalajara, savagely beaten and interrogated by nearly 50 inquisitors. A Mexican pilot employed by Camarena was kidnaped and beaten as well. A month later the bodies of the two men were discovered by the side of the road near a ranch some 65 miles away, bound, gagged and stuffed into plastic bags.
Camarena's horrible death deeply strained relations between Washington and Mexico City. Though Mexican officials eventually arrested more than 60 people in connection with the case, no one has ever been convicted of the murder. Last week the U.S. moved to advance the probe as a federal grand jury in Los Angeles handed up indictments against nine defendants. (The U.S. claims jurisdiction because the murder of an American official anywhere in the world is a crime under federal law.)
Among the nine were Drug Barons Rafael Caro Quintero, 35, and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, 56, reputed leaders of Mexico's largest marijuana smuggling family and the principal targets of Camarena's investigations. Also charged, in what has become a familiar pattern of complicity between drug operators and those charged with stamping out their trade, were three former Mexican police officials. "In what we do for a living we depend on the integrity of our law enforcement counterparts," said DEA Chief John Lawn. "In the case of Kiki Camarena, that mutual trust failed."
The indictments came at a time when the U.S. campaign against the Latin drug trade is being sorely tested. Four of the region's countries -- Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Bolivia -- are on the U.S. Government's list of seven "big producer" states targeted for maximum surveillance (the other three: Pakistan, Burma, Thailand). Latin America produces all the cocaine and nearly all the marijuana consumed in the U.S., dominating the illicit $130 billion-a- year market.
Washington's drug war received a stunning setback two weeks ago when Colombian Billionaire Jorge Ochoa Vasquez, 38, a reputed drug baron, strolled out of Bogota's La Picota prison armed with a writ for his release signed by a Colombian judge. Ochoa's ruthlessness is legendary; after the coke magnate was arrested in 1984 in Spain at the DEA'S request, threats made against the lives of Americans residing in Bogota became so widespread that U.S. embassy children were evacuated. Extradited to Colombia in 1986 on a bull-smuggling charge, Ochoa was improperly released in August and eluded authorities until last November, when highway patrolmen stopped him at a routine roadblock in southern Colombia. Washington, elated, immediately sought his extradition. Thus when Ochoa slipped away two weeks ago, a State Department spokesman resorted to distinctly undiplomatic language, describing Ochoa's release as "disgusting."