Lieutenant Martin Castillo

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Lt. Martin Castillo is a fictional character on the 1980s police drama Miami Vice. He was portrayed by Edward James Olmos in the show and Barry Shabaka Henley in the 2006 motion picture.

[edit] DEA

Not much is known about the mysterious character of Martin Castillo. Even throughout the show, not much was revealed about him or his family life. The only real emotional side of Castillo in the series was in the first season when he told of his stories with DEA.

Castillo worked for the DEA for five years and he was based in Tailand where his primary goal was to bring down the opium supply of General Lao Li. Castillo believed that Li was turning his opium supply into heroin and shipping it to other major marketing dealers. One night while working alongside Agent Dale Menton, Castillo planned a bust in which Li's opium would be intercepted; this plan however, was opposed greatly by Menton.

The next morning when Castillo's team were in their covert areas ready to make the bust, they were ambushed by Lao Li's henchmen; Castillo was critically shot, but was only survivor. After bandaging himself as best as he could, he went back to his home to warn his wife May Ying that she could be a target. But he found that his home had been destroyed by grenades and he assumed that his wife had been killed; this made Castillo go back to the states.

[edit] Miami Vice

It was never said what Castillo did when he came back to the country, but he ended up replacing Lt. Lou Rodriguez's position as head of Miami vice when Rodriguez was killed. Even though it was a shaky start between his workmates and him, Castillo ended up getting their respect when he proved he was able to be a good boss and also a friend.

When he was put in charge of finding two corrupt homicide detectives Castillo, along with detectivesSonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs. After being led to a suspect named Albert Szarbo and his Oriental accomplice, Crockett and Tubbs figured out that Szarbo wanted to rob every safety deposit box at the hotel the were undercover in. After robbing the deposit boxes, Szarbo and his sidekick were killed in their hotel room by foreign gang members.

Vice detectives Stan Switek and Larry Zito told Castillo the next day that Szarbo's tongue had been cut in a wierd design, and that his accomplice had tatoos in Thai down his arm. After hearing this Castillo grew angry that he didn't know the man was Thai. Later on, Castillo found a surviellance photo featuring a woman he reconized; it was his wife May Ying. This threw Castillo into a large shock, since he thought she was dead. The next episode Castillo came in contact with old friend Dale Menton, who had been with him only hours before his team's ambush. After talking about the past, Castillo got Menton to confess that he had ratted the team out and that he was responsible for the numerous deaths in Thailand. Menton even called him 'an arrogant bastard', and that 'his main problem was that he never knew when to back off.' Menton even told Castillo where his wife would be, and that General Lao Li was in Miami as they were speaking.

Castillo met with Li, and began to ask questions that implicated the General to be sneaking Thai people across the people as part of a slave trade. Lao denied this accusation, but Castillo decided to persue this lead: he however had to warn his wife first. He found May Ying's address and she was speechless to see he was alive. Castillo then found out she had remarried and had a son, but this did not stop him from caring about her. He even had to warn her and her husband that Lao Li had used them as leverage so he wouldn't continue an investigation, but it didn't stop Castillo from doing so.

While gathering facts from scarce leads, he had a wire placed inside the General's holding place, where he had his grandsons held there for questioning. They had apparently drawn attention, which Li was not going to let happen in order to keep his slave trade going. Lao Li then told his henchmen to kill his grandsons, which Castillo and his team picked up on the wire. After moving in and apprehending Li, Castillo smiled as he saw his longtime enenmy being taken away for a long prison sentence.