Pablo Acosta Villarreal

Who was Pablo Acosta Villarreal?

Pablo Acosta Villarreal was a Mexican narcotics smuggler who controlled crime along a two-hundred mile stretch of U.S.-Mexico border. At the height of his power, he was smuggling 60 tons of cocaine per year for the Colombians —in addition to the incalculable amounts of marijuana and heroin that were the mainstay of his business. He was the mentor and business partner of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the so-called 'Lord of the Skies', who took over after Acosta's death.

He made his operation base in the once little dusty border town of Ojinaga, Chihuahua, Mexico, and had his greatest power in the period around 1984-1986. Through a protection scheme with Mexican federal and state police agencies and with the Mexican army, Acosta was able to ensure the security for five tons of cocaine being flown by turboprop aircraft every month from Colombia to Ojinaga —sometimes landing at the municipal airport, sometimes at dirt airstrips on ranches upriver from Ojinaga.

Chains of luxurious restaurants and hotels laundered his drug money. While at first he only managed marijuana and heroin, Acosta Villarreal became increasingly involved in the cocaine trade near the end of his life. He established contacts with Colombians who wanted to smuggle cocaine into the United States using the same routes to Texas Acosta Villarreal was using to ship marijuana and heroin from across the border in Chihuahua.