Héctor Luis Palma Salaza

Jesús Héctor Luis Palma Salazar was born in Noria de Abajo, Mocorito, Sinaloa, on April 29, 1960. He began as a car thief and eventually worked as a gunman for Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo of the Guadalajara Cartel. Palma rose up the ranks and, along with Abelardo "El Lobito" Retamoza Machado, eventually became a co-leader of the cartel. He was associated with Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán.

Following the loss of a large cocaine shipment, which was blamed on El Chapo and Palma, in 1988 El Lobito Retamoza was killed but Palma spared. Following El Lobito's death, Palma contacted and created an alliance with Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán of the Sinaloa Cartel.

Palma splintered from the group, which was handed down to Felix Gallardo's nephews in Tijuana, who later formed the Tijuana Cartel (also known as the Arellano Félix Organization). Palma, along with a Venezuelan trafficker named Rafael Enrique Clavel, the one-time boyfriend of Palma's sister Minerva Palma, began operating their own cartel.

First arrest and family's murder

In 1978, Palma was arrested in Arizona for drug trafficking and sentenced to eight years in a U.S. prison. Upon his release, he discovered that his wife, Guadalupe Leija Serrano, had run off with Clavel and taken her and Palma's two children.

Clavel forced Guadalupe to withdraw US$7 million from a bank account and later decapitated her and shipped her head back to Palma. The two young children, Jesús (aged 5) and Nataly (aged 4), were taken to Venezuela and thrown off a bridge named 'Puente de la Concordia', located in the city of San Cristóbal, Táchira, about 40 kms from the border with Colombia.

Soon afterward, Clavel began working for the Tijuana Cartel. In retaliation, Palma executed Gallardo's lawyer and Clavel's three children. Clavel would later be arrested and soon be murdered in jail by an inmate on Palma's orders.

Palma returned to trafficking, this time with the Sinaloa Cartel, sharing leadership with Adrián Palma Reyes and Joaquin Guzmán Loera (El Chapo), who would later become the leader of the Sinaloa cartel while Adrian Palma Reyes became a lieutenant of Guzman and leader of the Badiraguato plaza in Sinaloa with the Reyes family as his armed wing.