MAFIOSOS from Mexico

Top 3

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Mexican Mafiosos of all time. This list of famous Mexican Mafiosos is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

1. Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo (1946 - )

With an HPI of 66.52, Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo is the most famous Mexican Mafioso.  His biography has been translated into 23 different languages on wikipedia.

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 kingpin who was one of the founders of the Guadalajara Cartel, which controlled much of the drug trafficking in Mexico and the corridors along the Mexico–United States border in the 1980s. Félix Gallardo was arrested in 1989 for ordering the murder of Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena. He was serving his 40-year sentence at the Altiplano maximum-security prison but was transferred to a medium-security facility in 2014 due to his declining health.

2. Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán (1957 - )

With an HPI of 65.04, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán is the 2nd most famous Mexican Mafioso.  His biography has been translated into 48 different languages.

Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera (Spanish: [xoaˈkin aɾtʃiˈβaldo ɣusˈman loˈeɾa]; born 4 April 1957), commonly known as "El Chapo" (pronounced [el ˈtʃapo]) and "JGL", is a Mexican former drug lord and a former leader within the Sinaloa Cartel, an international crime syndicate. He is considered to have been one of the most powerful drug traffickers in the world. Guzmán was born in Sinaloa and raised in a poor farming family. He endured much physical abuse at the hands of his father, through whom he also entered the drug trade, helping him grow marijuana for local dealers during his early adulthood. Guzmán began working with Héctor Luis Palma Salazar by the late 1970s, one of the nation's rising drug lords. He helped Salazar map routes to move drugs through Sinaloa and into the United States. He later supervised logistics for Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, one of the nation's leading kingpins in the mid 1980s, but Guzmán founded his own cartel in 1988 after Félix's arrest. Guzmán oversaw operations whereby mass cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana, and heroin were produced, smuggled into, and distributed throughout the United States and Europe, the world's largest users. He achieved this by pioneering the use of distribution cells and long-range tunnels near borders, which enabled him to export more drugs to the United States than any other trafficker in history. Guzmán's leadership of the cartel also brought immense wealth and power; Forbes ranked him as one of the most powerful people in the world between 2009 and 2013, while the Drug Enforcement Administration estimated that he matched the influence and wealth of Pablo Escobar. Guzmán was first captured in 1993 in Guatemala and then was extradited and sentenced to 20 years in prison in Mexico for murder and drug trafficking. He bribed multiple prison guards and escaped from a federal maximum-security prison in 2001. His status as a fugitive resulted in an $8.8 million combined reward from Mexico and the U.S. for information leading to his capture, and he was arrested in Mexico in 2014. He escaped prior to formal sentencing in 2015, through a tunnel dug by associates into his jail cell. Mexican authorities recaptured him following a shoot-out in January 2016, and extradited him to the U.S. a year later. In 2019, he was found guilty of a number of criminal charges related to his leadership of the Sinaloa Cartel, was sentenced to life imprisonment, and incarcerated in ADX Florence, Colorado, United States.

3. Amado Carrillo Fuentes (1956 - 1997)

With an HPI of 60.00, Amado Carrillo Fuentes is the 3rd most famous Mexican Mafioso.  His biography has been translated into 18 different languages.

Amado Carrillo Fuentes (; December 17, 1956 – July 7, 1997) was a Mexican drug lord. He seized control of the Juárez Cartel after assassinating his boss Rafael Aguilar Guajardo. Amado Carrillo became known as "El Señor de Los Cielos" ("The Lord of the Skies"), because of the large fleet of jets he used to transport drugs. He was also known for laundering money via Colombia, to finance this fleet. He died in July 1997, in a Mexican hospital, after undergoing extensive plastic surgery to change his appearance. In his final days, Carrillo was being tracked by Mexican and U.S. authorities. Amado Carrillo Fuentes was assessed to be worth around $25 billion (about $40 billion by the present appraisals) at the time of death.