In Death, a Generous Rancher Emerges as 'Crazy Pig,' the Drug Lord : Trafficking: Somehow, he avoided detection and arrest for years until he was mysteriously gunned down in Guadalajara. (2024)

COQUIMATLAN, Mexico—

Before he was shot to death at a Guadalajara intersection last month, Manuel Salcido Uzeta was one of Mexico’s most-wanted drug lords. El Cochiloco, or “Crazy Pig,” as he was called for his violent rages, had been hunted by Mexican and American officials, as well as by the international police agency Interpol.

Apparently they didn’t look very hard.

For the last six years, Salcido, 44, had lived at least part of each week on a willow-shaded ranch in Colima state where, as wealthy engineer Pedro Orozco Garcia, he often played host to the governor, the state police chief, the mayor and other luminaries.

Orozco the rancher rode his palomino in the annual Independence Day parade, bought uniforms for a municipal volleyball team and lent his heavy machinery to pave a rural road.

Salcido the drug lord, meanwhile, moved comfortably around Guadalajara during the week without guns or bodyguards and apparently continued to run loads of South American cocaine through Mexico to the United States.

Since his death, federal agents have captured two shipments of cocaine totaling more than 7 tons and 5 tons of marijuana in the port of Manzanillo that are believed to have been his.

“Everyone in Colima said Orozco was a narco ,” recalled Hector Sanchez de la Madrid, editor of El Diario de Colima. “It was strange that this man arrived with so much money and began do-good public works. Why didn’t the governor ask questions before going to his ranch? How is it possible that the attorney general’s office didn’t know who this was?”

One wonders if they wanted to know.

The Bush Administration has praised President Carlos Salinas de Gortari for his efforts in fighting cocaine trafficking through Mexico. The government has captured 122 tons of cocaine in the last three years and jailed Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, another of the country’s top traffickers and the reputed mastermind of the 1985 murder of U.S. drug agent Enrique S. Camarena. But Mexico still serves as a bridge for an estimated 70% of the cocaine that enters the United States, and Salcido’s double life offers clues as to how. Whether through blindness, willful ignorance or corruption, officials allowed Salcido to remain free.

The drug lord made a weekly trip from Coquimatlan to Guadalajara and back by road, driving his wife and four children right past the attorney general’s district office in Colima. The office walls are papered with Interpol posters of international terrorists. But there is no photograph of El Cochiloco on display.

As Orozco, Salcido paid for everything from the overhaul of his trucks to the rental of 120 acres in cash. But no one ever inquired about the large amounts of money.

Born poor in rural Sinaloa, Salcido grew up to become a member of the Guadalajara cartel--a desperado elite that ran marijuana, cocaine and heroine trafficking in Mexico for a generation. His stronghold was the Pacific Coast region around Mazatlan.

He was jailed briefly in Sinaloa in the mid-1970s but escaped, apparently taking his criminal records with him. Federal officials admit they cannot find his file.

U.S. and Mexican drug officials considered Salcido a sad*stic murderer, but the poor villagers in Sinaloa told another story. He became godfather to numerous children, and his generosity is celebrated in a local ballad.

“He may have been the last of the Robin Hoods,” admitted a U.S. official.

During the 1970s and early ‘80s, Guadalajara was Mexico’s drug capital, a haven for the cartel leaders until they abducted U.S. drug agent Camarena in February, 1985.

Camarena was tortured to death, and his mutilated body was discovered several weeks later in the neighboring state of Michoacan. The murder provoked a massive manhunt for cartel leaders and forced them out of the city for a time.

U.S. drug officials believe Salcido visited the house in Guadalajara where Camarena was being tortured. They wanted to question him about the murder, but they never got a chance. Time and again they claimed to be closing in on him, but he always slipped away.

According to residents of Coquimatlan, the man known as Pedro Orozco Garcia moved to this picturesque town of cobblestone streets and orange trees shortly after the Camarena killing. A tall, robust man with a mustache and glasses, Orozco built his ranch outside Coquimatlan, about six miles southwest of Colima city.

The 900-acre Rancho Jayamita was a sight to behold, with 1,200 head of cattle and a stable of thoroughbred horses. Orozco built a lake and lined it with rose bushes, ficus and willow trees.

Orozco was known as a family man, a trait the ranch would seem to confirm. He had built a playground with a merry-go-round and slides. A miniature zoo housed deer, monkeys, llamas and a flock of brilliant peaco*cks.

His five-bedroom ranch house was simple, with overhead fans and heavy wooden rocking chairs on the front porch. The only hint that this might be the home of a man who had to watch his back was in his second-story bedroom, with its panoramic view of the ranch and a stairway so narrow that only one person could enter at a time.

He treated his 25 workers well, paying better wages than anybody else in town. And like Salcido in Sinaloa, Orozco the engineer was a benefactor. He paid for medical care for those in need and gave away fine bulls and other gifts to neighbors.

Orozco told friends in Coquimatlan that he owned construction companies and auto dealerships in Guadalajara, 130 miles to the north.

Coquimatlan Mayor German Espinoza Villalobos met Orozco in the spring of 1989, shortly after taking office.

“I thought he was an extraordinary person, very nice,” Espinoza said. “Later, we became friends. I pursued the relationship. As far as I’m concerned, it was a clean and open friendship. It’s incredible to me that we’re talking about the same person (as Salcido). For me, he’s still Pedro Orozco.”

Espinoza said he sought Orozco’s assistance in paving a road. At the ribbon-cutting last year, he introduced Orozco to then-Gov. Elias Zamora Verduzco.

According to residents and officials, Zamora attended several luncheons at Rancho Jayamita, as did his state judicial police chief, Jose Luis Barragan.

Local journalists said Orozco gave the governor’s son an Arabian horse and other gifts. A senior police official said the governor has been questioned but not about any presents from Orozco.

Zamora moved to Guadalajara this month after his six-year term ended. He could not be reached for comment. Like the mayor, however, he has said publicly that he never dreamed Orozco was anything other than the benevolent engineer he pretended to be.

Neighbor Isabel Martinez often cooked for Orozco. She catered many of his luncheons, and her husband, Marcelino Morentin, was a frequent guest.

“Marcelino was never invited when the governor was there. Those were very confidential,” Martinez said.

She and her husband leased 120 acres to Orozco for five years for nearly $85,000 in cash, but Martinez insists she never wondered about him or his money.

“We opened the doors of our house to him, and he opened his to us. He sent my son a bicycle for his birthday. I loved him a lot. He was like my father.”

But businessman Alberto Ruiz said he had had doubts about Orozco.

“I didn’t like him. I was jealous of his horses,” Ruiz admitted. “One imagined something was not good. A man who pays his taxes pays for things with a check.”

Salcido was shot down at noon Oct. 9 at a busy intersection in Guadalajara. At least eight gunmen firing high-powered automatic weapons riddled his face and body with bullets.

They killed his sidekick and sometime-driver but spared his 20-year-old daughter, Monica Maricela Garate Urena.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Federico Ponce Rojas blamed the killings on dissidents in Salcido’s gang who were possibly vying for his territory. Other police sources suggest the murders might have been the work of an army or judicial police unit.

As to why Salcido was able to avoid arrest for so long, Ponce Rojas, who is overseeing investigations into Salcido’s official connections, said the statute of limitations had run out on the 1970s drug-trafficking, murder and kidnaping charges against him in Sinaloa.

But a Colima reporter had what might be a better explanation.

“He knew how to do it,” the reporter said. “He knew how to win everyone over.”