Pedro Avilés Pérez
Pedro Avilés Pérez, also known as "El León de la Sierra", was a Mexican drug lord in the state of Sinaloa 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.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, it is believed Avilés was set up by Fonseca Carrillo, the cartel's treasurer. Caro Quintero, Aviles' foreman in Chihuahua, began acquiring marijuana and poppy plantations. Corruption of state officials was brokered by Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, 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.
