Miguel Felix Gallardo on a sweet ass bike, during his heyday.It was a bright and sunny Sunday Morning in May 1953.
I dreamt with a pretty girl from my class named Elsi.
On Monday morning, I wrote her a little something in my school notebook.
After morning chores, which consisted of feeding and giving water to the livestock, I put a saddle on a dark horse. I put on the best rein I had and I headed off to school.
I remember Elsi lived 2 kilometers away, In the village of Bacurimi to be exact.
The morning was beautiful. I saw her coming and she walked past me. She smiled at me. An arrow to the heart I will never forget...
I sped up on my horse and got to school. Later that day I saw her again and once again she smiled.
Because I was so shy, I never gave her the note I wrote for her. I know for a fact we were both in love for a while...
The timid boy was Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo. He would grow up to be a notorious drug baron and godfather of the Guadalajara Cartel. Mentor to many of the future kingpins who would hold a chokehold on Mexico with a rule of bullets and blood.
Born in 1946 in Bellavista, Sinaloa, Felix Gallardo grew to be a Sinaloa State Judicial Policeman in his late teens. He would later be bodyguard to the Sinaloa state governor and befriend many of those in power, both state and federal.
Using his business saavy he created an alleged criminal empire, teaming up with infamous capos like Rafael Caro Quintero and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo. His business would extend from the US to Colombia, to various countries in Europe.
Due to his alleged participation in the kidnapping, torture and murder of a DEA agent in Guadalajara in 1985, Felix Gallardo would be arrested and imprisoned in 1989.
In a 2010 interview he disclosed some of his past and deep secrets to journalists at Altiplano Penitentiary in Mexico City.
Among those secrets in the old timey capo's head; Elsi's smile and the note he never got to give her.
57 years later, the memory is fresh.
