Synopsis
IN THIS EXPLOSIVE TELL-ALL, highly decorated DEA special agent Hector Berrellez reveals his lifelong career in law enforcement, including his leading role in one of the most pivotal investigations in the history of federal law enforcement: Operation Leyenda.
Launched by the DEA after the gruesome 1985 abduction, torture and murder of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena by Mexican drug cartels, Leyenda was meant to find those responsible. But when Berrellez took over the investigation in 1989, what he uncovered was a tangled web of treachery and deceit.
During his gravity-defying ascension through local and federal law enforcement, Berrellez was awarded the prestigious U.S. Attorney’s Award for Heroism, earned the Medal of Valor from the Federal Bar Association, and was honored with multiple commendations by federal law enforcement’s top administrators. But long before that, he was born and raised in the barrio of South Tucson, Arizona, the son of a bricklayer and a woman who learned fortune-telling from the gypsies. Chronically bullied at school as a kid, his father forced him to learn how to fight, a skill that would come in handy in the years to come. While studying Business Administration at the University of Arizona, Berrellez enrolled in the draft and was trained as a combat field medic during the Vietnam War. Following an honorable discharge, he became a Tucson police officer and was quickly tapped to work undercover as a narc for the drug unit. His success busting a Mexican drug dealer trafficking cocaine got the attention of the DEA, where he put his considerable skills to use nabbing even larger drug dealers in Los Angeles amidst the backdrop of the American War on Drugs. After ten successful years at the DEA, he was assigned to Guadalajara, Mexico, the cradle of drug kingpins and ground zero for what would be the biggest turf war in the history of the illegal drug trade. He was determined to root out the cartels guilty of Camarena’s murder, but nothing could have prepared him for life as a narc in Mexico, where he experienced unspeakable evil and corruption. It was this experience, and his unparalleled skill as a narc, that drove DEA leadership to put him in charge of the investigation into Camarena’s death.
The horrific murder of Camarena was the match that ignited the tinderbox of the War on Drugs, and even now, over 30 years later, the case pulses in international political quarters as well as in the hearts of citizens across the Americas. So much so, in fact, that the case and its key players remain the subject of folk songs and has been adapted into modern-day pop culture through the globally successful Netflix series Narcos: Mexico. But what has so far remained unknown about the tragic event are Berrellez’s stunning discoveries.