The Guadalajara Cartel was the first major Mexican drug trafficking organization, formed around 1978 by Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, Rafael Caro Quintero, and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo. Based in Guadalajara, Jalisco, it controlled most drug trafficking routes in Mexico during the late 1970s and 1980s, smuggling opium, marijuana, and cocaine into the United States. The cartel was dismantled in 1989 following the arrests of its leaders.
CRIMENET has extracted 44 linkages for this organization, including 28 cooperative ties across 10 organizations, 7 conflicts across 1 organization, 9 other connections and footprints in 2 countries.
Among the first of the Mexican drug trafficking groups to work with the Colombian cocaine mafias
in order to ship cocaine and marijuana to the United States.