Steve Fisher’s account of Mennonite farmer Franz Kauenhofen’s rise and fall reads like a real-life Breaking Bad tale. In 2000, Mennonites eventually settled on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula; they bought and cut down large areas of jungle in Campeche to grow crops like soybeans and hoped to live in isolation and peace, free of religious persecution and the distractions of modern life. When Pablo Escobar sought a new shipping route to smuggle cocaine into the US, the fields the Mennonites had created were perfect landing strips for planes that needed to refuel or unload drugs. This setup propelled one of the Mexican cartels, later known as the Sinoloa cartel, to become one of the most powerful drug traffickers in the region—and launched Kauenhofen down an unlikely trajectory.
Kauenhofen also testified that he oversaw an additional 20 cartel members who provided logistics and security for planeloads of cocaine.
He continued to dress like everyone else. But he amassed a fleet of trucks, four-wheelers, motorcycles and an arsenal of weapons — including high-powered machine guns capable of taking down helicopters — to safely escort shipments to Sinaloa, according to the deposition.
In his deposition, Kauenhofen specifically mentioned 15 different planeloads of cocaine during his four years working for the Sinaloa cartel, and he alluded to many more. He said each landing earned him $325,000.
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