| Remembering Kiki Camarena
At 2:00 pm on Thursday, February 7,1985, Enrique (Kiki)
Camarena (37) stashed his DEA badge and his service revolver
in his desk drawer and headed for a luncheon date with his
wife, Mika (34). Kiki, a U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration agent, had been in Mexico for four and
one-half years on the trail of Mexico’s marijuana and
cocaine barons. He was due to be reassigned in three weeks,
having come dangerously close to unlocking a multi-billion
dollar drug pipeline which he suspected extended into the
highest reaches of the Mexican army, police and government.
As he stepped through the consulate portal
into the sunlight of the warm Guadalajara winter day, he
moved to his pickup truck, turned off the truck’s burglar
alarm with his key and unlocked the door. But he was
interrupted before he could get into the cab and grab the
two-way radio, with which he could alert his partners.
According to the DEA’s reconstruction of events, five men
appeared at the agent’s side and shoved him into a beige
Volkswagen Atlantic, threw a jacket over Kiki’s head and
they sped away. That was the last time anyone but his
kidnappers would see him alive.
Kiki’s Camarena’s body was found one month
later in a shallow grave, 70 miles from Michoacan, Mexico.
He had been tortured and beaten and brutally murdered.
News of the tragedy was hitting newspapers,
radio station and television news broadcasts, and members of
the National Federation of Parents for Drug Free Youth were
angry and sick of the killing and destruction caused by
alcohol and other drugs in America.
The Red Ribbon became their symbol to eliminate the
demand for drugs, and the Red Ribbon Campaign became the
annual catalyst to show intolerance for drugs in our
schools, workplaces and communities. In 1988, the National
Federation of Parents for Drug Free Youth (now the National
Family Partnership) coordinated the first National Red
Ribbon Week, an eight-day celebration proclaimed by the
Congress of the United States with President and Mrs. Reagan
serving as honorary chairpersons. |
