Puig’s shocking defection tale: drug cartels, smuggling and murder

It may now be clear why Yasiel Puig has never been interested in detailing the backstory of his rise from Cuban defector to American baseball phenomenon.

According to a harrowing profile recently published in Los Angeles Magazine, Puig’s complex tale that led him to the Dodgers includes Mexican drug cartels, murder, smugglers and a staged kidnapping, amazingly helping him land a seven-year, $42 million contract and superstar status.

Puig had been trying to leave Cuba for nearly a year, but on his fifth attempt to flee, smugglers affiliated with a well-known Mexican crime syndicate picked up the star outfielder and three other people, then stashed them in a dingy motel in the Yucatan Peninsula.

Puig’s journey, the magazine story says, citing court documents and interviews, was underwritten by a small-time Miami crook, Raul Pacheco. Pacheco allegedly agreed to pay the smugglers $250,000 to get Puig out of Cuba, and Puig would owe 20 percent of his future earnings to Pacheco.

Once in Mexico, the negotiations turned dicey, and Puig and his companions — his then-girlfriend, an amateur boxer and a Santeria priest — were essentially held captive while the smugglers reached out to American sports agents, asking for increasingly rich pay days.

“If they didn’t receive the money, they were saying that at any moment they might give him a machetazo” — a whack with a machete — “chop off an arm, a finger, whatever, and he would never play baseball again, not for anyone,” said Yunior Despaigne, the boxer, who had approached Puig about defection after initial hesitation because Puig had a reputation as a state informant.

Eventually, Puig was rescued when Pacheco sent in a team of fixers in what amounted to a staged kidnapping.

Though Puig was playing with the Dodgers by June, the smugglers were still demanding money, pulling a gun on Despaigne and threatening him, his mother and Puig if they were not paid.

“The man … told me to tell Puig that if he didn’t pay them, that they would kill him,” Despaigne said.

Despaigne claims Puig had already paid Pacheco and three backers $1.3 million when Puig asked one of Pacheco’s associates, Gilberto Suarez, to help make the threats stop. Suarez told Puig he would take care of the situation. One month later, the captain of the smuggling boat, Yandrys León, was found dead in Cancun, with 13 bullet holes, though Despaigne said he had no evidence that Puig’s financiers were involved in the murder.