Narcos: Mexico's Rafa Caro Quintero – Real Life & True Story
Warning: the following contains SPOILERS for Narcos: Mexico.
Narcos: Mexico’s Rafael “Rafa” Caro Quintero, played by actor Tenoch Huerta Mejia, was one of the founders of the now-dissolved Guadalajara Cartel, also known as La Federacion – but where is Rafa Caro Quintero now? Though it's unlikely that Narcos: Mexico season 4 will get the green light after the series ended in season 3, viewers continue to wonder what happened to the narcotraficos who inspired the series. Back in Narcos: Mexico season 1, Rafa was the right-hand man to Diego Luna’s Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, also known as “El Jefe de Jefes” (The Boss of Bosses). Although Rafa wasn’t the first person to develop high-THC sinsemilla or seedless marijuana in the early ‘80s, he was the first to cultivate and transport it on a grand scale. At the time, similar varieties of marijuana were also being developed in Mexico and the U.S., cultivated across small and remote plantations which yielded low quantities of varying quality, resulting in an unpredictable market.
After Gallardo gave Rafa the means to plant his marijuana on a 1,000-hectare field in the deserts of Chihuahua, La Federacion’s extensive transshipment network was able to ship enough marijuana up north to stabilize the price and availability of high-quality marijuana across the entire U.S. Combined with La Federacion’s shipments of Colombian cocaine to the U.S., it’s estimated that Rafa and his associates were making $5 billion annually, which was more than enough to bring the U.S. Drug War to Mexican shores. When the DEA busted Rafa’s field, they seized and destroyed over 10,000 tons of sinsemilla marijuana, with an estimated value of $160 million – the largest drug bust at the time. The bust was
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