Getty Jaime Kuykendall (right) and the actor who plays him in Narcos: Mexico
Jaime Kuykendall is a key character in the popular Narcos: Mexico series on Netflix. He’s the station chief who must make some of the major calls in the DEA station’s lonely battle against the Guadalajara Cartel, which had become synonymous with powerful factions in the Mexican government. (Warning: There will be some spoilers in this article for Narcos: Mexico.)
However, was Jaime Kuykendall real? Was there really a station chief for the DEA by that name? Yes, Jaime (sometimes called James Kuykendall) was real. He even wrote a book about the death of Kiki Camarena.
Here’s what you need to know:
Several Members of the Kuykendall Family Have Entered the DEA
James Kuykendall with the actor playing him on Netflix.
The real Jaime Kuykendall was photographed at events for Narcos: Mexico alongside the actor who plays him (Matt Letscher). The author’s biography for the book Kuykendall wrote states the following about him today:
Born and raised in South Texas, James Kuykendall was a U.S. Border Patrol agent at the age of 21. He later spent several years matching wits with drug traffickers on the Texas/Mexican border as a U.S. Customs investigator and Drug Enforcement Administration agent, then had tours of duty in Guayaquil and Quito, Ecuador, Houston and Guadalajara, Mexico before retiring as the agent-in-charge of the DEA office in Laredo, Texas. Since retirement he has done private investigations in Texas and Mexico, risk consulting in Panama and security work in Hermosillo, Mexico. Presently owns a real estate appraisal business in Laredo, Texas, where he resides and, most recently, was a consultant with the Narcos-Mexico television series.
According to the book Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic, Jaime Kuykendall “worked for Customs and Border Patrol in the 1960s, running the Texas-Mexico border fighting the then-incipient drug gangs.” Kuykendall was named James, but he married a Mexican woman and grew up in a “small Texas border town of Eagle Pass,” so people called him Jaime. In 1973, he opened the DEA’s office in Ecuador, and that’s where his son, also named Jim Kuykendall, was largely raised.
By the 1980s, Jaime Kuykendall was in Mexico, where he did indeed become the station chief for the DEA office in Guadalajara, the book reports. In real life, he was really in that position when DEA agent Kiki Camarena was killed. Jaime Kuykendall wrote a book called O Plomo o Plata? Silver or Lead? His son went on to become a campus police officer and then also entered the DEA.
Jaime Kuykendall’s brother, Travis, was also in the DEA, running its El Paso office, according to the book by Sam Quinones.
Narcos: Mexico pivots around the real-life death of Camarena, the DEA Agent who persistently went after the Guadalajara Cartel as it forged closer ties with Colombian drug traffickers to bring cocaine across the U.S./Mexico border.
In the book, Desperados: Latin Drug Lords, U.S. Lawmen, and the War America Can’t Win, by Elaine Shannon, Kuykendall is quoted as saying that the traffickers “were doing whatever they damn well pleased.” The book recounts why Kuykendall decided to stay in Guadalajara as things heated up right before the Camarena death, quoting him as saying, “If you like to hunt elephants, you like to be where there are elephants. And, here, there are elephants everywhere.” He recalled how Camarena felt differently, telling Kuykendall, “Jaime, it’s time to go. We’re way out front. And there’s nobody behind us.”
Kuykendall once said, according to the book, “All the United States is to Mexico is a rich, fat wh*re who wants to be plundered.”
The actor who plays Jaime Kuykendall visited with the real man to prepare for the role. “He has troves of material from that time,” Letscher told People Magazine. “He’s very dedicated to Kiki and making sure that Kiki’s story stays alive and that people understand the sacrifice he made for his country. He showed me around and took me down to the Rio Grande. I saw the border for the first time.”
In later years, Kuykendall has spoken out about the CIA and the Kiki Camarena murder. Kuykendall is quoted in the book Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs, and the Press by Alexander Cockburn. The book alleges that DEA officers investigating Camarena’s death “knew that the drug agent’s murder was a joint operation between the drug cartel and the DFS, an agency with intimate ties to the CIA.”
Kuykendall said, “The CIA didn’t give a damn about anything but Cuba and the Soviets. Indirectly, they (the CIA) have got to take some of the blame.” He alleged the CIA “protected the DFS for decades,” and stated “The DFS just got out of hand.”