Pedro Avilés Pérez, also known as "El León de la Sierra" (English: " The Mountain Lion"), was a Mexican drug lord in the state of Sinaloa beginning in the late 1960s. He is considered to be the first generation of major Mexican drug smugglers of marijuana. He was also the first known drug lord to use an aircraft to smuggle drugs to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. In the Netflix series '' Narcos: Mexico'', Avilés was portrayed by actor Antonio Lopez Torres.

Biography

Second-generation Sinaloan traffickers such as Rafael Caro Quintero and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo would claim they learned all they knew about drug trafficking while serving in the Avilés organization. Killed in a shootout with the Federal Police in September 1978, some people believe Avilés was set up by Fonseca Carrillo, the cartel's treasurer. Caro Quintero, Aviles' foreman in Chihuahua, began acquiring marijuana and

poppy A poppy is a flowering plant in the subfamily Papaveroideae of the family Papaveraceae. Poppies are herbaceous plants, often grown for their colourful flowers. One species of poppy, '' Papaver somniferum'', is the source of the narcotic drug o ...

plantations. Corruption of state officials was brokered by

Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo (born January 8, 1946), commonly referred to by his aliases ''El Jefe de Jefes'' ("The Boss of Bosses") and ''El Padrino'' ("The Godfather"), is a convicted Mexican drug lord Kingpin. He was one of the founders of th ...

, an emerging capo who had spent time in Sinaloa working as a Sinaloan State Police trooper and serving as bodyguard to Leopoldo Sánchez Celis, governor of Sinaloa.

References

Guadalajara Cartel traffickers Sinaloa Cartel traffickers 1978 deaths 1938 births Mexican cannabis traffickers {{crime-bio-stub