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The Underworld Podcast

The Cartel Puppetmaster: Juan Matta Ballestero

The Underworld Podcast

The Underworld Podcast

True Crime, Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.6871 Ratings

🗓️ 4 November 2025

⏱️ 59 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros began life as a pickpocket in his hometown of Tegucigalpa, before heading out on the perilous border roads of Latin America as an emerald smuggler. Soon he was making friends in high places, scoring deals on consignments of cocaine - and connecting coca producers in the Andes with up-and-coming narcos in Mexico. All the while, Matta forged ties with the elites and corrupt soldiers who’d run Honduras for a century, capturing the small state and ensuring its future as a coup-happy transshipment point for years to come. But when Matta took part in the narco world’s most notorious murder, in 1985, his world came crashing down. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:07.1

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0:25.6

Offer valid first to the 28th of November, first time shoppers only T's and C's apply.

0:29.6

It's 1970 at Dallas Airport, Washington, D.C.

0:35.6

And Juan Ramon Matta Bayesteros, a slim 25-year-old Honduran,

0:42.6

is arriving on a flight from Bogota, Colombia,

0:45.8

carrying a little more than Hawaiian shirts and toiletries.

0:49.8

Mata, a smooth-talking former pickpocket from Tagusi Galpa,

0:54.0

Honduras's ramshackle capital city,

0:57.0

has tried for almost his entire adult life to live in the United States.

1:01.0

Each time he's overstayed his visa, been booted out, then returned under a different alias.

1:08.0

Can't knock a guy for trying.

1:10.0

After all, as Bobby Kennedy said,

1:12.7

only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly. You can knock a guy, however,

1:19.3

for carrying with him a suitcase stuffed to the brim with bricks of high-grade Colombian blow,

1:24.8

24.5 kilos in total, hardly small-time stuff.

1:29.9

You see, matter is far from a pickpocket these days.

1:33.3

His social circles are politicians, military generals, business magnates and narco kingpins.

1:41.4

He's built a rep in the Latin American underworld, smuggling drugs and emeralds across some of the most dangerous borders on earth.

1:48.1

Now, Matta reckons, it's time to show his friends in organised crime what he's really made of and sneak into the biggest consumer market around.

1:58.7

But Matta's plan is over as quickly as you can say narcole trafficante, and definitely

...

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