The Underworld Podcast - The Cartel Puppetmaster: Juan Matta Ballestero

Episode Date: November 4, 2025

Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros began life as a pickpocket in his hometown of Tegucigalpa, before heading out on the perilous border roads of Latin America as an emerald smuggler. Soon he was making friends in high places, scoring deals on consignments of cocaine - and connecting coca producers in the Andes with up-and-coming narcos in Mexico. All the while, Matta forged ties with the elites and corrupt soldiers who’d run Honduras for a century, capturing the small state and ensuring its future as a coup-happy transshipment point for years to come. But when Matta took part in the narco world’s most notorious murder, in 1985, his world came crashing down. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Not today's sweatpants. Somebody's wearing jeans that fit. Wow! No photos, please. I'm just a regular dad. Who happens to have a stylist? I really look my best when someone else makes the decisions. Hey, we can all see you two-way mirrors. Just share your size, style, and budget,

and your stylist sends personalized looks right to your door. Stitchfix. Get started today at stitchfix.com. I want to hug you. I'm going to hug you. I'm coming. I'm coming in my It's 1970 at Dallas Airport, Washington, D.C. And Juan Ramon Mata Bayesteros, a slim 25-year-old Honduran, is arriving on a flight from Bogota, Colombia, carrying a little more than Hawaiian shirts and toiletries. Mata, a smooth-talking former pickpocket from Tagusi Galpa,

Honduras's ramshackle capital city, has tried for almost his entire adult life to live in the United States. Each time he's overstayed his visa, been booted out, then returned under a different alias. Can't knock a guy for trying. After all, as Bobby Kennedy said, only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly. You can knock a guy, however, for carrying with him a suitcase stuffed to the brim with bricks of high-grade Colombian blow. 24.5 kilos in total, hardly small-time stuff. You see, Matter is far from a pickpocket these days.

His social circles are politicians, military generals, business magnates, and narco kingpins. He's built a rep in the Latin American underworld, smuggling drugs and emeralds across some of the most dangerous borders on earth. Now Matter reckons it's time to show his friends in organised crime what he's really made of and sneak into the biggest consumer market around. But Matta's plan is over it almost as quickly as you can say narco-trafficante, and definitely before I can say it. Border agents pull him aside, peer into his suitcase and throw him in a cell. Somebody else must have placed the cocaine there, matter pleads.

25 kilos is a hell of an oversight. Officers arrest matter, and they charge him with drug importation. Incredibly, somebody in the judiciary believes matters pleads, because he dodges the drug rat. Authorities convict him instead on the lesser charge of visa fraud and dispatch him to serve a five-year term at Egling Air Force Base prison in the Florida Panhandle. It looks like the end for Matt's criminal career, just years after it began. But he's cannier than that.

Barely a year into his sentence, he bribes prison officials, escapes and flees to Mexico. Matta keeps getting arrested there too, but each time the Federales grab him, he wriggles free once more. Mostly, because he's already friends with narco royalty. Through Cuban capo Alberto Sicilia Falcon, Matta meets Miguel Felix Gallardo, a Cinelloin who's building what will soon become the Guadalajara cartel. He also ticks trips to Colombia, hooking up with the men leading a small but growing criminal enterprise out of Medellin. Matter is the binding agent,

the glue that bonds the cocaine producers of Colombia with distributors in Mexico all through his tiny home country. Matter's closest colleague in Taguisi Galpa is a husband and wife, Emerald and Drug Smuggling Duo, Mario and Mary Ferrari. They're members of a Honduran elite

that has, for decades, turn the country into corrupt U.S. client and a lynch pin of organized crime. The trio worked great. Mata, the jet setter, matchmaking in Colombia and Mexico, and the Ferraris, bribing and sweet-talking Honduran,

political and military leaders. Airports, border crossings, harbors. They've got access to the lot. But the thing about Narcos, they're about as loyal as Judas Ascariat, or that shifty little guy who sold out the Spartans in 300. Some say Mario Ferrari cheats matter out of a cocaine,

payday. Others say sexually assaults Mata's wife. Whatever the reason is something matter can't, won't forgive. And in 1977, just a few years after his Florida escape, Juan Mata Bayastiros will carry out an act of vengeance that will transform him from a silver-tongued underworld fixer into a brutal, merciless killer. One the DEA will call a Class 1 violator. one with property on free continents and billions buried in accounts worldwide, a criminal who will control up to a third of America's cocaine imports, who is plotting to take over his entire home nation. A criminal friends and foes will soon know simply as El Negro, the black one.

This is the underworld podcast. Hello and welcome to the weekly organized crime podcast that turns over the stone of society and talks about all the creepy crawlies written about underneath it. I am Sean Williams. I am back in New Zealand after a long trip on the road in Japan. Absolute scourcher here. And I am joined by the brilliant, the unrivaled Danny Golden, New York City, home of big buildings, but some of the tiniest egos in world media, funnily enough. We are both card carrying reporters. We've investigated gangs of Brooklyn to Bangkok, and we speak about it each week for money. How are things going over there?

Is it good news for those of you who comment about hating baseball chat? I guess the season's almost over now, but bad news to those of you who hate chat in general because it's the ashes in a month. I don't know what that means, and I also hate living in New York. But what are the ashes? I mean, just tell me, dude. It's England versus Australia, test match cricket. I am going to go to the Melbourne cricket ground in around a month after this comes out.

And I'm going to be sat with 105,000 people watching eight hours of cricket, which is, it's good. It's good, Danny. Now, do you, when people watch cricket, do you drink beer for eight hours or watch? Is that why people like it because you can just drink for eight hours? As opposed to most sports games that are like four hours. Okay. Correct. Yeah.

Okay. You don't have to watch the game. You can drink steadily for a whole day. And that's why people enjoy it. Makes sense. Especially in Australia. Yeah. Thanks for listening, guys, to that and other more relevant chat.

If you want more shows, interviews, Stash House Roundups, notes, and reading this, you can, of course, sign up to our Patreon for just a few marks a month. Patreon.com slash anewort podcast or you can sign up on Spotify or on iTunes to get those bonus episodes like straight into your timeline, whatever it is. We're not like having to finagle it, you know? Yeah, into your postbox. Yeah, we get it, guys. Like, you don't like banter.

All right. It's no foreplay with you guys. It's straight down to the heavy stuff. So let's all pull down our podcast trousers, get down to it. Some people do, first of all, weird. First of all, second, some people do like the banter. I think most, a lot of others just complain that it's not like a 55-minute episode just like the cold open, which is like, would be a 55-minute movie script. We can't do that every week, guys.

It's not possible. So, you know, learn to like the rest of it. Yeah, just be like the people who do like the banter and don't post comments because I think there's a confirmation bias here. Anyway, yes, Honduras, population, just under 11 million. It's sandwiched on the Atlantic coast between Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua, one of the so-called bridge nations on the Latin American drug trafficking route, going back around a century and run by a succession of corrupt narco presidentes, and often the scene of some pretty spectacular drug-related violence.

In fact, I dug up so many stories researching this episode that it's going to be split into two parts. Today's show will chart the rise and kind of fall of Juan Varamoun, Matta Ballesteros, one of the biggest but least spoken about narcos in history, and I really do mean that. Like, it's nuts. And then episode two is going to get into Honduran crime post-Mata, warring cartels, coups, corruptions, and scandals. All of that is very much ongoing today. It's the Honduran narco epic.

Everyone has been demanding, Danny. It's a Teguzy Galpah Tussum. You know, I'm re-watching narcos right now, and Mata's actually, He plays a, not a central role, but he's in it. And I always, yeah, I always wanted to go to Honduras and report there, you know, during when I was doing all the El Salvador, MS-13 stuff in El Salvador, uh, the gangs in El Salvador really hide things a lot better. You know, they're not out in the open.

Like, by the time I got there, like, 2015, they weren't, like, showing their face tattoos to all the time. You have to really work for that. We're in Honduras, which had similar problems with MS-13 and 18th Street. They would just be, like, posted up in a neighborhood with, like, A.K. slung around their neck, like 15-year-olds. So better visuals, you know? Yeah, yeah, sales of concealer going through the roof in El Salvador, but not in Honduras.

They do not give an S. If you download and listen to this show to learn about how the cocaine trade works, guys, you are not going to be disappointed. Honduras might be small, but it's crazy significant and is packed with characters. And to understand how it's like this, we have to actually go way, way back, all the way back, in fact, to 1821 when Honduras wins its in the Pins, from Spain, and the country falls almost immediately into political chaos, military rule, mountains and mountains of debt. And to alleviate this debt, the country turns right away to

foreign investors, who it all but just allows to take the place over, throwing cash at controlling stakes in Honduras's mineral wealth, which at the time is gold, silver, copper, zinc, and bananas. By the end of the 19th century, Honduran elites, many of whom have emigrated from turmoil in other parts of the world. So as European Jews, Armenians, for example, they're working hand in hand with British, French and American oligarchs to construct Honduran roads, railways, factories and agricultural projects. And over time, this turns the country into something of a feudal state. You've got the foreign millionaires and their allies in the local elite. In the early 1900s, bananas overtake mining as Honduras's

key export, and in 1905, American writer O. Henry actually coins the term banana republic based on his experiences on the vastly unequal banana fields of rural Honduras. His phrase, writes an economist editorial about the writer, Henry, neatly conjures up the image of a tropical agrarian country, but its real meaning is sharper. It refers to the fruit companies from the United States that came to exert extraordinary influence over the politics of Honduras, and its neighbors. By the end of the 19th century, Americans had grown sick of trying to grow fruit in their own chili country. It was sweeter and cheaper by far to import it instead from the warmer climes of Central America, where bananas and other fruit grow quickly. So none of these

American mega-grosses is as powerful as Samuel Zamurray, a New Orleans businessman, originally from Kishina al-Besarabia, which is modern-day Moldova, who is the head of the Kuomel Fruit Company. Zemurie, A.K.mory, A. Sam the Banana Man, controls not only the banana fields, but the shipping routes out of the region, and he bankrolls a 1911 coup that provides the blueprint for a lot of how the US is going to handle Central America. It's extension of the Monroe Doctuary in the OAS or organization of American states,

but you can probably head to a Kenburn documentary for more on that, guys. Zamurray sells Kuomel to the far larger and far better known United Fruit Company in 1929, and he steps away from banana life to him. But just two years later, he makes a comeback. United Fruits has taken a nosedive in the Great Depression. So Sam, the banana man, is brought back as president. I mean, why would you not with a name like that? And he gets to work slashing costs, yeah, buying up massive tracks of land.

And by 1935, United Fruits has acquired almost 3.5 million acres of land across Central America. That is almost the entire size of El Salvador, and it's making around 300 million per year in today's money. Zamurray consolidates his power by allying with an authoritarian dictatorship, which lasts until 1948. And all of this serves to calcify and entrench the influence of Honduras's small circle of land-owned elites, almost all of whom live in the capital, to Goosey Galper. This is similar to what's going on across the region, especially as the Cold War. kicks into gear in Washington, is fretting over Marxist and land reform movements bubbling across Latin America. But in Honduras, the situation is a little more stark because of that

oligarchy elite nexus that's been going on for over 100 years. Political leaders can be bought with ease, and they will squash any threat of leftism to suit their patrons in the states. So Honduras is effectively a US client state. It's reliant not just on exports, but those specifically controlled by foreigners. Right, so Mexico City-based reporter called Rachel Cedar, quote, The root of Honduran exception was the country's insertion into the world market and the development of its domestic political apparatus. Wow, this is such like smooth writing, Rachel, under the ages,

not of a natural agro-exporting oligarchy, but of U.S. monopoly capital. You keep including these quotes. I think people really like them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I really love academic, academics. It's great. The commenters, they go crazy for it, dude. They just want more and more.

There's nothing they need. We'll just put a bunch of it up on Patreon, and you guys can pay us $50 a month for that. Zemari is going to be most infamous for his role instigating in 1954 Guatemalan coup, convincing the CIA that his president was to make the country a Soviet satellite. He dies in 1961, having changed Central America forever.

But this, Sam's, of Murray's world is the world into which Juan Ramon Matta Bayoucesteros is born in 1945 in the neighbourhood of Soto to Gusey Galpa. Details of Matta's early life are sketchy, but in the man's own words, he's born the second of four kids to an absent or maybe even dead father and a mother who scrapes by selling fruit, vegetables and candy at a local hawkers market. Soto is known as a hub of marijuana production, but Matter gets his criminal starting pickpocketing and then small-time theft. And then, as a teenager, Matter turns his sights on drugs. Here is an early acquaintance of his talking to inside crime. Quote, I remember we used to call him the pusher man because that was

when that song was a hit. If anyone knows how to find the Honduran song, Pusherman, let me know. It was a hymn for a live people. It's not the Honduran song Pusherman, it's the Curtis Mayfield song. my god it is the Curtis Mayfield song. Did you really do not, Dale, do not edit this out, leave this, you thought there was like a Honduran song called Pusher Man. Pusherman, yeah. Yo, I don't even, wow, wow, yeah. Yeah, I used to love Kurtzmaf, no, it's just me trying to get back. Yeah, clearly, I don't know if you, dude. Yeah. Oh, okay, this guy says, it was a hymn for a lot of people in the neighborhood and apparently all over the world who were dealing marijuana and everyone knew that matter was the best. He lived in a house next to the cemetery and everyone knew he was in the

game. There would be lines of poor people who'd be there asking for money, for gifts, everything. I mean, I think it would have been a great time to be a drug dealer when that song came out because it's incredible, like your anthem, you know? And then even like Eminem had like not like a remix, but he did the chorus in one of his songs in like the 90s. And that was actually pretty, pretty amazing. Both good eras probably to be a drug dealer. Yeah. Yeah, good ears to be a drug dealer. You got theme music, but good theme music, not like, prompt. Yeah, good thing music that I entirely forgot. Anyway, by his early 20s, matter has switched up from weed to emeralds,

with nearby Columbia accounting for almost the entire planet's supply of the precious stones. He moves out to Columbia himself, and he makes great money smuggling emeralds across the Colombian border. And this is no mean feat, right? Emerald mining is notoriously corrupt and crime-ridden industry, co-opted by Leifference. and right-ring rebels like the FARC, and by local drug traffickers. And there's border guards, too, who are liable to shoot first and ask questions later.

But matter excels. He's got the gift of the gab, and he realizes early on that it's far less hassle to pay folks off than to kill them. You know, you don't hear a lot about emerald smuggling these days. It's a very niche industry, good margins, I assume, but organized criminals should be getting into that. It just sounds a lot more fun and classy

than the stuff that we see a lot of these days. Yeah, this episode isn't going to get much class out of it. But yeah, emeralds, they're quite nice, right? Are they emeralds? They're like green-greeny kind of color. I believe so. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

I'm not usually swimming in facts of precious stones. Anyway, throughout this time, matter is getting into the US on a variety of aliases, getting deported, and then just trying again. And then in 1970, he gets a bunch of cocaine and he's nabbed at Dallas Airport in D.C., which is the story from today's cold open. Bata somehow wriggles off the drugs charge, which is insane. I don't know how he does that. But he's sent to Florida for five years, and then a year in he escapes, and he finds his way down to Mexico. And it is there that his criminal life really kicks off. He meets Miguel Felix Gallardo, a plucky Sinaloan on his way to becoming one of the most powerful criminals on earth.

Danny has done some fantastic shows on him, other leading Mexican druglers in the past. Just, I guess, search their names in the show bar and you'll find a ton of them. Yeah, Garo is the man who creates the first sort of Mexican super cartel, the Guadalajara cartel. Well, not really the Gulf is involved. And then sort of eventually breaks it apart and kind of creates the modern day cartel system with Sinolawa and Juarez and Tijuana. I actually have an episode on Tijuana coming up probably in a couple weeks. But yeah, yeah, very the guy who basically revolutionized the game.

in Mexico. Yeah. One of many. Yeah. And so he's a good guy to know, obviously, and matter. He kind of flits then across Latin America. He connects narcos in the producing country of Colombia with the Mexicans who can get it through the region and off into the United States. So he essentially becomes like a broker, right? But he just networks his way into this and just starts meeting with these high level folks. Like he's that, he just knows how to do it. Yeah. Yeah. He's kind of, he's got the gift. And it's because he's kind of like from Honduras as well, right? Because it's got its captured state and this kind of pliable public officials and elites. So it becomes this key transshipment point, whether via land, sea, or air. But matter isn't just a matchmaker alone.

He runs his own cocaine refinery in Colombia, perhaps alongside the Marxist FARC. He continues ferrying emeralds and even moonlights as a Sicario or hitman for monsters in Mexico. Medellín, including Carlos Leda and Pablo Escobar, very early Escobar at this point, especially after 1973, right? Because that's when the Chilean coup that kills Salvadori, Andy, shuts down roots through that nation, making Medellin way more important. Here is the book, Bribes, Bullets, and Intimidation by Julie Bunk and Michael Fowler, which I used a bunch for information for this show.

Quote, Matters Criminal Background led him to, toward not only a thorough understanding of the different facets of the drug business, but a wide circle of influential acquaintances deeply involved in it. In particular, Mata reportedly served as a key connection between an early Mexican cocaine kingpin, Cuban Alberto Sicilia Falcon, and coca suppliers in the Andes. Mata also introduced Mexican traffickers to top Medellín boss, Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, thus helping to broker one of the initial arrangements by which Colombians paid Mexican smugglers to transport cocaine across the U.S. border. Another of Matter's key skills is a preternatural ability to slip away from justice.

In 1973, shortly after its foundation, the DEA designs a sting operation against Matter, but it fails. The following year, Mexican officials jail matter on a charge of selling 10 kilos of cocaine. He manages to cut his sentence down to under two years, and by the time he emerges in 1975, he's been accused of ordering the deaths of two of his inmates. Back on Main Street, matter forges even closer ties with Gallardo, who is bringing together Rafael Cardo Quintero, Ernesto Fonseca Carrijo, and others into what will soon become the Guadalajara Cartel. These guys have well-established distribution networks across Mexico and the United States.

States. Matter, meanwhile, has access to massive amounts of Andean cocaine ready for market. It is a match made in heaven, like a young me in a leather harness, or Danny and a pair of purse-old shades. Which I've just to kind of crack bed again on my own behalf there. Bonjour, compadre. It's the Priceline negotiator. How do I negotiate so many great travel deals? My greatest gadget. The Price Line app. It's got hotel deals, flight deals, rental car deals, All of those deals in a bundle. Deals. Game Day deals.

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At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. As the main bridge between North and South America, matter is growing wildly rich. His income is stretching into the tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars, and he's investing it wisely, not in just flashy suits and nice homes, but on Honduras's fleet of corrupt leaders and oligarchs, the same folks who are making money hand over fist during the salad days of United Fruits. United Fruits, by the way, became Jakita.

It's currently based in Switzerland, which is cool. Not really into my hands these days. You know, I got to tell you, I'm more of a Kiwi guy right now and frozen blueberries, but be nice to have a normal podcast. We could just talk about our fruit preferences for 50 minutes, but, you know, this is the life we chose. We can't do that on the Patreon. But also, the people out here would get very annoyed that you call them Kiwis.

They're Kiwi fruit. Damn it. Yeah, I don't give a shit. Get over it. Anyway. As I mentioned at the top of the show, Matt's main powers in Teguze Galper. are Mario and Mary Ferrari, auto dealers, emerald and drug smugglers, and members of the country's elite through Mary's uncle, who just so happens to be a former Honduran president.

Mata and Mario Ferrari go way back. They smuggled emeralds together in their youth, and they own a nightclub together. They're also closely in bed with Honduras' military, which is the key to their success, right? Mata and the Ferraris need access to Honduras' ports, roads, border bureaucracy, the military, they want money. The partnership is, writes inside crime, a symbiotic relationship at the most basic operational level. But, as we got into a bit in the cold open, this partnership sours. Some reports say that Ferrari had matter cut out of a million dollar cocaine deal.

Others say Ferrari sexually assaults Matt's wife. Whatever the truth, around mid-1977, Mata divorces his wife. and then hatches a plan to dispose of the Ferraris alongside members of Honduras's military intelligence. He also pays corrupt officials at the National Department of Investigations, which is the Honduran FBI, to quote fix his criminal record, hiring them to deliver literal piles of documents from police archives, including taped witness testimony. This paves the way for matter to getting even closer with Honduras's security apparatus.

And Matta develops a particularly close relationship with Polycarpo Pasca Garcia, a podgy, Mustachio Military General who's planning to seize Honduras from its existing military hunter. A mess, yes. But this is Matta's big push. He's making his move. And things, of course, are about to get bloody. On December 3, 1977, the Ferraris are snatched into Goosey Galpa and then driven to remote jungle airstrip and flown to Colombia.

There they are tired and tortured, everything overseen personally by Mata. But he doesn't want the Ferraris to die in Colombia. He orders his men to fly them back to Degucigalpa so they could be murdered on home soil. Six months later, in 1978, the wife of one of Matta Sicarios reaches out to cops. The Ferraris are dead, she tells him. Soon after, searchers find the couple's broken. bodies in a well near the capital. And reports emerge of military cooperation in the crime, as well as the complicity of Honduran

security forces in Matta's growing drug smuggling operation. Around this time, media also report that matter owns large swaths of Honduran real estate alongside Pasca Garcia, the mendacious military general. A local Interpol chief even comes out, and he says that Pasca Garcia has buried evidence of the Ferrari murders, claiming they had died at the hands of quote. quote, many stars within Honduras' military and intelligence sectors. But this doesn't spell arrest for Mata or Pasca Garcia. Quite the opposite.

In fact, the Interpol guy is soon arrested for slander and thrown into solitary confinement with no access to his lawyer. This is all straying very quickly into narco state territory, and it comes at an incredibly precarious time for Honduras' ruling military junta. The country is wedged between civil conflicts in El Salvador and Nicaragua, where Marxist rebels backed by Cuba and the Soviet Union are fighting CIA back to authoritarian's and they're quarterbacking their own violent paramilitaries. Refugees from both wars are spilling into Honduras, which is causing enough headaches alone.

But there's an impossible political equation too. On one hand, given Honduras' history under United Fruits, there is huge public sympathy for the left which the country's leaders don't want to inflame. But neither can Honduras have fought to piss off the Americans, who are still in bed with Teguisi Galper's elites and have intelligence operatives all over the place. And equally, though, by trying to play both sides, they are playing right into the hands of organised crime,

which can exploit the inaction and chaos to increase its grip on the state and ramp up corruption and the threat of cartel violence. And the murders of Mario and Mary Ferrari are a massive red flag to the Hunter. Wait, so I thought the junta was in bed with Mata, like a red flag for the junta or of the junta? Like, I'm a little confused. It's kind of both, right?

So the hunter is getting money from organized crime and Mata and the Ferraris. But there's increasing concern that the violence that is taken over other countries is starting to come to Honduras. And so this like hugely, this massive profile double killing is like, uh-oh, I think we've got a real problem on our hands now. So it kind of shows everything, right? It shows how Matta is in bed with the state, how untouchable he clearly feels he is. And the leaders know the bloodshed is soon going to be spilling into the homes of regular Honduras, tearing the country the bits. And they've got, you know, these kind of peasant revolutionary movements flaring up all over the region. they don't want anything there.

But they can't really do anything. Mata, for one, is living most of the time over the Atlantic in Spain. And not a single person has been charged with the Ferrari deaths. And worse for the Hunter, when leftist students and unions right and support of it, rivals claim this shows they've lost control of the nation altogether. So they're kind of being assailed from all sides, right? They can't win. Matter's work so in Bedlam has come to fruition.

and he doesn't let it slip. He backs Pasca Garcia, his friend in the military, financing him and two other generals, who, in August 1978, sweep the hunter in a bloodless coup d'etat. And the elites, well, they don't like students or unions, so they fall into line. This, it goes without saying, is great news for matter. Not only as he hitched his wagon to the most powerful up-and-coming narco kingpins in Mexico

and Colombia, but he's now pulling the strings of power in Honduras. And the quantities of cocaine matter is shipping skyrockets. Colombian authorities bust over a ton of matter cocaine, and they accuse him of operating two refineries in Colombia. Later in 1978, they discover 800 kilos on a matter-owned property north of Bogota. And in 1979, sources tell US agents that matter is about to make a multi-million dollar delivery into the state himself. He is sourcing, refining, and distributing products,

not to mention stewarding stuff on behalf of the Guadalajara and Medellín cartels. So this is like super early days, right? Like 1979, it's literally right when Guadalajara was founded. And I think really early days for Escobar, too, he's like in his, what, late 20, mid-20s? 20s, yeah, yeah. This is like when everything is just kind of springing up, which is why I kind of wonder why Matta isn't spoken about more. on this stuff. I know like he's kind of plays his small rowing narcos, but it's not big and no one

really talks about him. He's a broker, you know, so he's not like the grower or the dealer sort of thing. So I guess, well, I guess the Mexicans play broker roles too, but also like he, I mean, if it's 79, Guala Harrah's focus is weed then, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's also doing marijuana. Like, he's not just cocaine. Yeah. Okay. Okay. That makes sense. But he's like, he's refining this stuff. He's like finding it. He's finding it. He's sending away. Like, he's doing the whole thing. Matter wastes no time cementing his power back home in Honduras either. He partners with the Chief of Military Intelligence who the CIA believes is directly involved in drug shipments. Anybody who speaks out is quickly silenced. When a Honduran lieutenant says

publicly the quote, the chief of the armed forces has recordings and documents of officials who are linked to the drug trade and who have received money from the mafiosos. His superiors throw him in solitary confinement. And when they release him, the lieutenant chooses perhaps wisely to keep his mouth shut. All this is occurring at a time when cartels are seeking alternative

routes for gear to the Caribbean, where the DEA is having considerable success and where political turmoil is making some routes more precarious. So they turn to matter. And like always, he's got all the answers. Here's bribes, bullets and intimidation again. Quote,

In supervising the transit of many thousands of kilos of cocaine from Mexico into Arizona and Southern California, Mata, drawing on his knack for devising smuggling schemes, was said to have thoroughly modernised the drug trade through Mexico. As a native Honduran, Mata was credited with special expertise in trafficking through Central America, knowledge that proved vital importance in the early 1980s, as Colombian kingpins came to favor pathways through Central America over the their prior Caribbean routes. In 1980, General Pasca Garcia froze a bit of a spanner in the works by promising to hand Honduras back to civilian rule. In 1981, the people voted a new president, centrist Roberto Suaso Cordova. He and other leaders draw up a constitution which pledges

a republic, a democratic government based on the American system. No more military rule, no more coups. Power to the people, in theory. Honduras also qualifies for its first ever FIFA World Cup. Things are looking up. Only things aren't quite so simple. The country's elite don't just disappear, and they hold the lion's share of Honduras's wealth. And as the civil wars rage on in El Salvador and Nicaragua,

the Reagan White House puts even more pressure on Honduras to help it fight Latin American communism. Honduras, says the U.S. military spokesman, is the key stone to our policy down there. Suasol Greenlights U.S. troop maneuvers on Honduran soil, the building of U.S. bases and even the training of right-wing Salvador and militias. Honduras also provides space and material support to the contras, the right-wing rebels, fighting to take Nicaragua from its left-wing government. Part of this includes the hiring of Honduran civilian aircraft to run supply missions for contra groups across the region. The largest of these is a 1981-founded airline called Setco,

Servicios egyptivos touristicos commander. Can you guess who runs it? Yes, Mata. SETCO's principal role until this point has been to run cocaine and marijuana salties into Mexico for Mata and his cartel allies. Product might arrive in Honduras via sea, ripped from large so-called motherships onto small Honduran shrimp fishing vessels, that's hard to say, before heading off via SETCO. could simply be flown in. It's not really dissimilar to how the thing works today.

But SETCO also has contracts delivering guns, ammo, uniforms and soldiers for a leading contra group operating a Honduran soil called the Fuerre DEMC, using bank accounts opened by the CIA. Yes, we're skirting into Iran-Contra territory, but don't worry, not for long, because we have done a bunch of other shows that go deep into that, from Cuba to El Salvador. There's tons, you can type it into the search bar. Anyway, starting in 1983, the CIA and US State Department contract SECCO to run thousands more flights for the FDN, which means, of course, a lot more money in Matter's pockets, but also the opportunity to smuggle tons more drugs under the cover of Contra Supply

Missions, which Matter does, and it unleashes a new wave of drugs into the U.S. United States. The Americans, they know this. One of SETCO's pilots, for example, a guy named Frank Moss, has been under investigation by the DEA for drug trafficking since 1979. He even opens his own airline in 1985. And a Costa Rican pilot for the Guadalajara cartel testifies that Mata and the Mexicans are moving blow on the CIA's dime, having himself received 150 grand for contra flights. In 1984, Mata brokers a deal between the Medellín and Guadalajara cartels. The Mexicans will charge the Colombians between one and $2,000 per kilo of cocaine transport into the US, with, of course, the Honduran taking a cut.

This works so well that, within a couple years, up to 90% of US cocaine will come from Mexico, making its narcos incredibly wealthy. At one point, Mata even manages to bring together members of Colombia's war in Medellin and Cali cartels to broker a ceasefire. I mean, despite his nationality, Mexican media often refer to Mata as the quote boss of bosses of Mexico's cocaine industry. And some US authorities now reckon he's supplying up to a third of all the blow consumed in the United States. This, unsurprisingly, makes Mata an incredibly rich man. DeA agents soon estimate that he and Fiatz Gallardo of grossing more than five million bucks per week.

At one point, the agency reports that Mata has played Bolivian and lover Latin American authorities a $50 million bribe to help ship his stuff through the region. And he buys interest in tobacco, coffee, spices, dairy and meat industries. Matter implies 5,000 Honduras, and he piles money into crafting this image of a kindly, benevolent businessman. Investing in community projects and briefing media, about how he'd risen from poverty and was being hounded by US imperialists and Honduran elites jealous of its success, all the while profiting directly from them.

He buys medicine for the sick and even offers to donate 25 grand during a live telephone, winning him even more kudos from regular Honduras. He's plain spoken, and it's said that Matta enjoys eating in the kitchen with his cooks rather than at the dining table. And at one point, echoing Pablo Escobar and Bolivia's Roberto Suarez Gomez, Mata even offers to pay off his home nation's entire public debt. You know, you sound very critical, Sean. I'd like to see you provide 5,000 jobs. How many would you say we're providing now? Not even one each, right? Well, ourselves, Dale. And that's it. Dale, uh-huh.

There's probably some, maybe someone at glass box. I don't know, man. I feel like 4.2 is somewhere, yeah, maybe 5.2. All right, all right. Well, yeah, that's pretty sad, isn't it? Anyway, and all of this stuff is just what Mata is doing in Honduras. He owns property worth $10 million in Colombia and a huge filler outside Madrid, Spain. Mata even takes over prominent import-export businesses in Spain's northwestern Galicia region, which is just above Portugal,

and he rakes in even more cash in pulling luxury vehicles and Colombian tobacco. You know, Spain kind of goes under the radar, but it's sort of like operated. It was like Dubai before Dubai in terms of crime bosses could go there and just be unbothered.

You know, I think it still has a little bit of that, maybe not as much, but it definitely was that for decades. Yeah, it's more like the British guys, right? The kind of like Scottish gangsters are now hanging out in bars on the Costa del crime. Yeah, shooting each other up.

Yeah, yeah. But Spain, yeah, a bit of a dark horse. It's not a coincidence that matters rise coincides with Honduras' descent into grand-scale narco violence. And the state, corrupt at his core, is growing ever more brittle. In 1984, an arms and drug trafficker named Gerard Lachinian, an elite of Armenian heritage, He pays an assassin over 300 grand plus a kilo of cocaine to murder President Suaso. Lachinian, whose Latin American arms dealing has earned in the title, The Ambassador of Death, I guess, something, variation on merchant of death, which is like 20,000 people,

hopes that Swaso's demise will prompt a period of civil unrest during which Lachinian can install his own military cronies, much as matter had done in 1978. Lachinian will finance the hit via a 350-kilow cocaine shipment from Colombia to a remote follow-to-landing strip. It all sounds like the perfect plan. But unfortunately, for Lachinian, his prospective Sicario is an FBI agent. The plot falls apart and Lachinian is sent to the U.S. to face trial. Remember his name for part two, though, because we're not quite done with Signeur Gerard just yet. How do the payment negotiations work for someone?

like that. And when they're like, all right, $300,000, and we'll, we'll throw in a kilo on top of it, just for fun. You know, have a good time. Like, is that, like, what? I think I read that he also offered the guy a helicopter. So you can have the whole thing. You can just pile your money and your coke onto a helicopter, shoot the president and fly away. It's pretty good deal, actually. Because like, one kilo of coke, you're not getting that. You're like, you're not going to make the hundred grand and then just go sell one kilo of coke. You know what I'm saying? Like, you're doing that. You're having a good time. No, I don't know. I'm not an expert, mate. You need to tell me.

The thing that really confuses me is, like, the story from the cold open where he's got a suitcase with 25 kilos of Coke. How did he think he was going to get that? Yeah, I know. I got a $100 excess baggage charge because I tried to get a eight-kilo bag into Vietnam, which is very, very annoying. It was full of clothes, by the way. It's not cocaine.

That would be on point, but not. actually the truth. Anyway, authority is a drawing closer to matter as well. In 1981, US cops had busted a stash house in a Los Angeles suburb of Van Nuys. Is it called Van Nuys? Van Nuys? I think I tell you said it, yeah. Yeah. They discover almost 1.4 tons of cocaine worth $73 million. So he's really stepped up in that decade. Of which matter is alleged to own a third. Seven guys are arrested at this address and they soon snitch. to officers of the incredible power of their boss, El Negro. A ledger found at the stash house also happens to include the address of a home owned by

Matter's second wife. Agents close in on matter and the Guadalajara cartel, and the kingpins soon realized they're under investigation from an unnamed DA agent. Bus continue chipping away at their profits, and when Mexican soldiers torture 2,500-acre marijuana plantation in Chihuahua in late 1984, For, Guadalajara cartel leaders decide they need to smoke this agent out. By that December, they have a name. Enrique Kiki Camarena, a 37-year-old from Mexicali, Baja California. That's the infamous billion-dollar weed field spearheaded by, I think, Miguel Aurel,

and Rafael Caracantero, that when it goes up and smoke, it's a huge deal. Yeah, this is, I mean, this is maybe the biggest story of all. and I'm sure most of our listeners will know what happens next, right? So on February 7, 1985, Camarena is leaving the DEA's Guadalajara office. I feel like that's quite a dangerous thing to walk out of the DEA office in Guadalajara at all. I probably would take the back exit, when corrupt Mexican officials snatch him in broad daylight. Later in the day, they also kidnapped Alfredo Zavala Abelar, a pilot who'd run missions with Camerina. Both men are shackled and delivered to a home in the centre of the city

wherever the next 30 hours they're tortured and then killed. A few weeks later, on March 5th, Camarina and Abelar's bodies are discovered wrapped in plastic in a small town in Michoacan. Camarina's death is one of the biggest moments in cartel law. It prompts the widest homicide investigation in DEA history and it completely changes the face of US engagement in the war on drugs. In recent years, rumors have emerged that CIA operative took part in the killing

that the agency wanted Camarena's dead for uncovering info related to the Contras and drug trafficking. I mean, most reputable sources have poo-pooed that. I don't really buy it either. I don't buy it either. No. No, it sounded like bullshit when it came out. Especially when the whole thing, right, like the Iran-Contra thing,

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Shop the full collection on Amazon or visit curad.com to learn more. Matter though, he is involved in the death all the way. He's seen checking out of a Guadalajara hotel on February 12, 5 days after Camarena and Avala's abductions. US agents use a phone intercept to locate matter in Mexico City, but Federales fail to respond to the information in time, and he slips out of the country. When DEA agents finally discover the address where Camerina and Abelah had been brutally tortured and killed, they find strands of hair consistent with matters in a bedroom and guesthouse. Here ensues one of the most extraordinary manhunts in criminal history. US officials are, by this point, working with counterparts in Spain and Colombia to get their man.

And soon after Matta flees Mexico, they track him down in Spain. But he's tipped off again, and he heads back across the Atlantic. Later in the year, feds find Matta again in Cartagena, Colombia. This time, they managed to arrest him, and he's flown to a prison in Bogota. DEA agents then interrogate MATTA. He denies killing Kavana, but he admits to having some knowledge. What knowledge, they ask him? I can't tell you that, he says.

I'd be killed if I do. Matter figures his time is running out before the DEA is back at him. He reckons he can make it to Honduras. His connections there will keep him safe. After all, he's thought to have personally ordered the deaths of 13 people by this point, and he's a free man. So the Medellin cartel plots an escape from Bogota, smuggling in contraband for him to break loose. But at the last moment, the prison warden orders a surprise inspection of matters matters cell, and the scheme is ruined. In revenge, the cartel dispatches a motorcycle Sicario who shoot the warden while his car is stuck in Bogotar traffic.

A diplomatic cat mouse begins. The US is requesting matters extradition. Columbia is dragging its feet, all while. Matta and his friends in Guadalajara plot yet another escape. In November 1985, a great month, best month. Colombia refuses America's extradition request, deciding instead to prosecute matter themselves for operating at cocaine lab. Soon after, the cartel bribes a total of 18 prison officials and guards, a combined two million US dollars to look the other way for a second escape. And then on March 18, 1986, Mata shaves off his beard, puts on a prison guard uniform,

and walks straight through not one, not two, but seven security gates without being stopped. Associates then whisk him to a private airport outside Bogota and fly Mata to Guatemala. Two weeks later, he slips into Honduras and, alongside his lawyer, turns himself into authorities in Teguisi Galpa on outstanding charges related to the Ferrari murders. Honduran lawmakers deny Matabelle while he's awaiting trial, but he bribes them, $500 a pop to head back to his villa. Each time he does, hundreds of poor Honduran's queue up outside, and Matta stands at his door giving them handouts,

pruning his image of the benighted business magnate being hounded by the feds. In August 1986, the court finds matter, shock horror, not guilty of Mario and Mary Ferrari's deaths, convicting six of his underlings instead. Matter returns to regular life, this time managing his cocaine business from Teguze Galper, renewing his connections to Honduran politicians and military figures, and just generally cocooning himself within the country's power structure.

US officials reckon he's worth around $2 billion by this point, as influential as Gallardo or Pablo Escobar. Wow, I mean, he really is under their radar for that level of money and power. Damn. Yeah, maybe people just didn't care about Hondura. I don't really get it. But incredibly, while people in the US are figuring out ways of bringing into justice, the CIA is still using Mata's airline, SETCO, to supply the Contras,

with the full knowledge that Mata is using the flights to get cocaine and marijuana across the border. A State Department ledger, in fact, shows that it pays almost. a quarter of a million dollars to SETCO between January and August of 1986. This is long, long after Matt's suspected involvement in Camarena and Avalar's slayings. U.S. political turmoil, meanwhile, has been brewing over the connection between the Contra's drug smuggling since 1985. And in early 1986, the State Department had admitted that, quote, evidence of a limited number of incidents in which known drug traffickers tried to establish connections with Nicaraguan resistance groups. By April 1986, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has begun conducting

hearings on contra-involvement in marijuana and cocaine smuggling, concluding that matter is a major figure and involved in the murder of Kiki Camarena. A member of the Medellin cocaine cartel, Juan Matar Bastiros, has set up shop in Honduras, says a New York congressman. Already, he is extending his corrupting influence in that society. He is attempting to buy off officials in the Honduran government. Bayasteros is a tough and savvy drug trafficker. I hope that Mr. Bayasteros has not already succeeded in building a drug trafficking network in Honduras with the cooperation of some of these corrupt military officials. I mean, yeah, the horse is well and truly bolted, mate. This all puts the White House in a bit of a bind. On one hand,

Honduras has become such a key ally in the fight against communism that is known as the quote, SS Honduras. And going after matter could potentially destabilise the Honduras which is packed full of Mata's cronies. But drug-related violence on American streets is becoming chronic, not to mention the horrors of the emerging crack epidemic. And with all this cartel information spilling out in the congressional hearings, including matters involvement in the killing of one of the DEA's own men, officials finally realize they just cannot keep working with this guy in any way. And so, at dawn on April 5, 1988, when Matta is out for a jog near his Tegucigalpa home, four US Marshals aided by Honda and Special Forces, grab him, tie his hands, throw a black hood

over his head and chuck him into the back of a US operational vehicle. Agents then beat Matta and allegedly attacking with a cattle prod before bundling him into a plane bound for the Dominican Republic. From there he's flown to the United States to face charges related to drug trafficking and the murder of Kiki Kamarena. While all this is happening,

members of Honduras's Cobra Commando team enter Matas home. They find three pistols, three shotguns and AK-47, large stashes of ammo and a kilo of coke, which is only what Danny takes on his weekends upstate, but it is enough to, they'll matter on a bunch of other charges if the Americans failed to prosecute him.

I think this is like a good bit for me that I have a lot of guns and cocaine, whereas your bit is that you wear leather at weird parties in Berlin basements and do heavy fetish stuff. And I think that works for both of us. Yeah, it's so pathological now that I'm making jokes about myself wearing leather harnesses. I've conditioned you, dude. I'll discuss that with my therapist later on at this work. Anyway, such is Mattas popularity back home that thousands of locals allegedly encouraged by the military, Matters friends, they stormed the US consulate, burning down one of its annexes. Five die in this carnage, with US officials claiming that Honduran counterparts had taken two hours to answer their phone calls.

And the violence doesn't end there. One evening in January 1989, Mattis' defense attorney is walking from his car to his home in Tegucisi. Galper. A man calls out his name, and the attorney turns around. Suddenly a group of men run at him, firing a hail of bullets from Uzi's submachine guns. Nobody knows who the killers are, but most suspect Matta has ordered the hit, either because he suspects the attorney had double-crossed him, or because he'd failed to see Mattas extradition coming. This theory has lent a little bit more credibility by the fact that Gallardo and Quintero's chief attorney had also been killed a few months previous. U.S. authorities charged Mata with seven counts, including racketeering,

drug trafficking, and the murder of Kiki-Kamarina. Before he goes to trial, U.S. Marshals discovered that Mattas associates have congocted yet another plan to spring him from custody, paying three men $5 million to attack the fan, transporting him to court on motorcycles with automatic weapons. The gunman would disable matters van, blow off its side, door, kill all the deputies inside, and free their man. But Intel leaks to the marshals, and they have matter taken to trial instead in a helicopter. This guy is incorrigible. He is, and he probably would know the word incorrigible, too.

He's pretty darkly impressive, this guy. I cannot believe there is not more about him. I actually, like, searched his name. You were a crush for podcar. I mean, I do like another guy called Bastog. Does he wear like a suit? Is he a handsome man? He said to be,

well, okay, so look at a picture of him now and you will not see a handsome man. Well, yeah, I mean, he's been in prison for 40 years.

Yeah, yeah. So to give him his dues and he definitely deserves his juice. I think perhaps he was known as a bit of a smooth guy, yeah. The vibes were good.

They weren't so. But yeah, I searched for his name. like, I was like, surely someone's done a bunch of stuff about him. It's barely anything. It's nuts. Anyway, matter unsurprisingly, refuses to cooperate throughout the process, telling prosecutors that, quote, silence is golden.

And it seems to help. Prosecutors soon dropped the Camerina murder charge, pursuing matter only on the DEA agents kidnapping. But at trial, they call two guys whose testimony buries matter. One is a Colombian pilot who'd smuggled drugs with SETCO, the other is an American who'd run cocaine distribution for matter in Arizona. In 1990, a jury finds matter guilty on all counts, ordering three consecutive life sentences without parole and a fine of $225,000. Really wonder how they got there.

Matter, prosecutors say, is, quote, perhaps the most significant narcotics trafficker in custody in the world. matter says Honduras's president by now civilian leader named Rafael Kayaas has caused so much damage to Honduras to Honduran youth and is a confessed assassin I am not going to move one finger to bring him back but matter's wealth remains intact nobody sees it a single thing of his in Honduras much less all the property and dark money is stashed all over the world since his rise to power Honduras doesn't even apply a law allowing for drug-related assets to be confiscated until 1994. By that time, Mata's drug empire has already re-upped by his brother-in-law, who is arrested in the mid-90s for shipping cocaine to the United States via Costa Rica. Will this finally be the end of Juan Matabayor Zeros's narco empire? Well, no, of course it won't be.

Honduras's biggest ever kingpin is behind the world. bars with no prospect of freedom, but the empire lives on. In fact, Honduras' descent into narco statehood is arguably just beginning, which is why in part two of this show will begin on a remote jungle freeway near the Honduran border with Nicaragua, which is not coincidentally far from the home of Matta's brother Ramon. And then we'll have massacres, coups, drug flights, a president convicted on trafficking charges, and Honduras's dubious honor as the murder capital of the world. That is all to come. For now, enjoy your week and do not Instagram your crimes. Patreon.com slash the underworld podcast to make this all worthwhile for us because, I don't know,

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