by Austin Galt
Don Mario was one of the country’s top capos being described as the ‘New Pablo Escobar’. Apart from controlling the Águilas Negras he had also recently formed the Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia (AGC) or Gaitanista Self-Defence Forces, known more colloquially as the Urabeños. This name originated from those AUC paramilitaries stationed in the Eastern Plains who were from the Urabá region and included Don Mario who previously managed the finances of the Centauros Bloc.
As Don Berna sat in jail in early 2008, Don Mario began making moves to take over his operations which led to confrontations with the Oficina de Envigado and its allies the Paisas. He was unable to see things through after he was captured on 14 April 2009 at his hideout in Necocli, Chocó. I just happened to be in the Unicentro shopping mall in Medellín when news broke of his capture, with shoppers crowding around televisions to see the man who was partly responsible for the violence engulfing the city.
Celebrating the capture of Don Mario was the new leader of the Oficina de Enviagdo, José Leonardo ‘Douglas’ Muñoz. With Don Berna out of the picture, he had taken control of the criminal organisation but was in a power struggle with two other factions, one led by Mauricio ‘Yiyo’ López and the other led by Félix ‘Beto’ Isaza.
The internal war really kicked off when Douglas was captured at a luxurious apartment in El Poblado on 15 April 2009, just one day after the capture of Don Mario, therefore cutting the celebration short. Douglas was replaced by Erick ‘Sebastian‘ Vargas and Beto soon joined his side. Yiyo turned himself over to US authorities in July leaving Maximiliano ‘Valenciano‘ Bonilla to take his spot. It was now a war between two – Sebastian and Valenciano.
Sebastian was already a leader of his local crime gang by the age of 15 and a couple of years later he was recruited by Don Berna, subsequently becoming a member of Los Pepes and La Terraza before managing the Oficina’s network of assassins. He was also part of Don Berna’s paramilitary groups but never demobilised and when his boss was extradited he took control of Medellín’s domestic operations.
Valenciano was 13 years old when his father was killed in a mafia hit, after which Don Berna took him under his wing and groomed him to become his heir, showing him the city’s brothels, collection houses and how the criminal operation ran smoothly with the help of corrupt authorities. By the age of 16, he already commanded his own band of sicarios. After his mentor’s extradition, he took control of the Oficina’s international drug-trafficking operations.
*
While in the country in 2009, I took the chance to fly down to Cali to see Pedro. I had done the same on my visit to the country a couple of years earlier. He would always pick me up from the airport whenever I travelled there, and then we would always go to his father’s office to say hello. His father was always nice to me but this time was the warmest he had ever been. He remarked on the fact that I had been friends with his son for a long time. (My father had made a similar comment to Pedro at my wedding.) It had been eight years since we had first met in Cali.
Sadly this would be the last time I saw Pedro as he died a few years later from natural causes, still relatively young in his 50s. We hadn’t spoken for quite a while and I only learnt of his passing about a year after it happened. I wish I’d had the opportunity to say goodbye as he was such an important part of my Colombian experience. The last time I spoke to him he asked ‘When are you coming to Cali?’ I haven’t been back.
After enquiring about drug routes on my first trip to Cali all those years ago, I never once asked him about any details of his narco life. He would tell me things in his own time over the years of our friendship, with each new story more hardcore than the last – some things I suspect he had never confided in with anybody else, and I took this as a sign of his growing confidence in me. I never judged Pedro on his past, just how he was with me. He may have done some bad things in his life but he was a good man with a good heart. He was certainly a good friend to me and he is missed.
*
In 2010, Lily and I decided to leave Sydney with our two young daughters and live in Medellín. Life is generally harder in Colombia and I wanted our girls to see that for themselves, for at least some of their lives anyway. They would then appreciate just how lucky Australians are. Both Lily and I wanted the girls to inherit part of the Colombian culture. Lily also missed her family. We never really discussed the dangers of living in Medellín. It is her home city, after all.
We flew into the city in early July, arriving to news of a massacre in Envigado which saw eight people killed at the Guru Bar nightspot. Several gunmen had opened fire on the club’s patrons around 2 am in what was part of the dispute for control of the Oficina de Envigado between Valenciano and Sebastian. The two opposing forces had also aligned themselves with the country’s top criminal bands. Sebastian made an alliance with the Rastrojos to fight off the threat posed by the Urabeños who had allied with Valenciano.
Don Mario’s downfall saw leadership of the Urabeños fall into the hands of the Úsuga brothers – Juan de Dios known as ‘Giovanni’ and Dairo known as ‘Otoniel’. Both brothers were part of the EPL guerrillas until its demobilisation in 1991. They joined up with the paramilitaries a few years later, eventually working in the AUC’s Centauros Bloc until its members demobilised. As the new leaders of the Urabeños, they looked to expand quickly, increasing both the amount of land used for coca plantations and the pressure on the Oficina de Envigado and other rivals.
The Urabeños began making inroads into Medellín under the guidance of Henry de Jesus Lopez known as ‘Mi Sangre’ or ‘My Blood’. He started out as a low-ranking member of the Oficina de Envigado before joining the AUC, firstly with the Cacique Nutibara Bloc and then the Centauros Bloc. In 2000, at the behest of Carlos Castaño and Miguel ‘Arcángel’ Arroyave, he formed the Capital Bloc in Bogotá partly in response to the FARC’s intention to take control of the capital as laid out at their seventh and eighth conferences. By 2001, he controlled much of the Colombian capital, based out of the San Andresito shopping zone.
Mi Sangre demobilised in 2005 in order to clear his name, and soon after began expanding into Medellín in 2007 and in the process ordering the assassination of a member of the Oficina de Envigado. The attempt failed and, with Don Berna and Rogelio vowing revenge, he fled to a farm owned by Juan Carlos ‘El Tuso’ Sierra before taking refuge in Argentina. Only once Don Berna was extradited did he return to Colombia and link up again with Don Mario and the Úsuga brothers.
With the Colombian government publicly calling for his arrest, Mi Sangre returned to Argentina in 2010 and was eventually arrested in Buenos Aires in 2012 just as he was about to meet with the Mexican drug-trafficking group Los Zetas of which he was their biggest supplier of cocaine. In 2016, he was extradited to the United States.
A close associate of Mi Sangre was Camilo Torres Martinez, nicknamed ‘Fritanga’ due to his time waiting tables at his mother’s fried-food restaurant in Valledupar. He joined the AUC’s Centauros Bloc but didn’t demobilise, preferring to continue his criminal ways alongside Don Mario. He was arrested in 2008 but released the following year. An arrest warrant was issued again in 2010 but he had vanished and was thought to be dead. Instead, he had faked his own death by paying to have a death certificate issued in December 2010. He came back to life in a big way in 2012.
In July 2012, Fritanga married his model girlfriend in an ostentatious wedding costing over $1 million on Múcura Island, a couple of hours from Cartagena. About 200 guests, including showbiz celebrities and even three American policemen, attended the sumptuous week-long celebration which featured some of Colombia’s top vallenato stars. There were different bands and themes on each night and when police raided the party early in the morning of the sixth day, the guests started clapping thinking it was just another performance. It wasn’t. One of Fritanga’s bodyguards had betrayed him by tipping off authorities. His drug-lord days were essentially over after he was extradited to the United States in 2013.
With Sebastian controlling most of Medellín’s local gangs, known as combos, Valenciano had fled to Venezuela where he was captured in November 2011. He was extradited to the United States and sentenced to 20 years in prison. The internal war, which had left more than 5000 dead, was over. Sebastian was now the undisputed leader of the Oficina de Envigado. The festivities were short-lived, however, as the Urabeños, who had been reinforced by some of Valenciano’s men, were still looking to take over Medellín.
The year 2012 began badly for the Urabeños. Its leader, Juan de Dios ‘Giovanni’ Úsuga, had just celebrated New Year’s Eve at a ranch in Acandí, Chocó, when he was killed by government security forces. Authorities discovered he was holding a party featuring a vallenato band so a tracking chip was placed in the guitar case of one of the band members. The criminal boss was shot dead in the raid just before the sun rose on a new year. His brother Dairo ‘Otoniel’ Úsuga had left the party just over an hour earlier and subsequently became the criminal group’s top boss.
In response to Giovanni’s death, an armed strike was enforced on 4 January and lasted for 48 hours. Everything was shut down from the Caribbean coast, except for Cartagena, to the western border of Medellín. Pamphlets had been handed out making it clear that everybody should be mourning the death of the crime boss. It was the peak of the tourist season and the main street in Santa Marta was packed with both domestic and international tourists alike but there were no shops open for them. All transport services were also shut down. It was a sign of just how powerful the AGC or Urabeños had become.
The Urabeños didn’t stop applying pressure to the Oficina de Enviagdo which also had government authorities on their tail. Beto, who was disabled after losing a leg in an attack by La Terraza, was captured near Rio Negro in May 2012. Police only came across him by chance after looking for someone else. It was a pistol hidden in his wheelchair that gave him away. He was the organisation’s number-two man. The number-one man was next.
Sebastian fell in August 2012 at a farm in Girardota, just north of Medellín. Valenciano had told authorities to follow Sebastian’s security chief which proved the key to his capture, although it was easier said than done as Sebastian often moved in a convoy of up to eight cars on routes that made it obvious if they were being followed. Therefore, a spy plane was used to track him down. Sebastian was found in possession of a huge arsenal of weapons, including a submachine gun fitted with a silencer, a grenade launcher and fragmentation grenades. President Santos congratulated all those involved in the takedown with a Twitter message stating, ‘Gold medal to the Police for this capture’. Sebastian was extradited to the United States in 2013.
His arrest led to a couple of factions forming – those loyal to Sebastian and those against him. It was a massacre that took place in the early hours of 1 January 2013 that saw Sebastian’s partners prevail. Nine people, including four young women, were executed at a property previously owned by Rogelio located on the mountainside in Envigado.
Fredy Mira known as ‘Fredy Colas’, Sebastian’s head of security who had unwittingly led police to his boss, appeared the major benefactor of the massacre and he assumed control of the Oficina. He was often seen in the company of beautiful models at electronic-music concerts in Medellín and Cartagena and was once detained outside a nightclub in El Poblado in possession of several ecstasy pills. At the time of the massacre in Envigado, he was conveniently partying in Cartagena.
Mira had been arrested a couple of times previously after the DEA disseminated a photo of him but he was released due to there being no Colombian warrants issued for him. He was even driven home by police on one occasion. He eventually turned himself over to American authorities in 2015, becoming the star witness against Ayman Joumaa – a Lebanese man with Colombian nationality who is considered one of the largest money launderers in the world. The days of preferring a tomb in Colombia than a jail cell in the US are over.
After much bloodshed, the Urabeños and the Oficina de Envigado called a truce in mid-2013. On 14 July, the first mafia summit was held in the Aburrá Valley in which a ceasefire was agreed upon. The following day saw the leaders of several local gangs arrive in luxury cars at a football pitch in the Belén neighbourhood of Medellín to watch a game of football being played by gang members, after which a party was held to celebrate the peace.
A week later, on 22 and 23 July, a second mafia summit featuring some of the heads of both criminal groups was held at a farm just outside of Medellín in San Jerónimo. The pact between the warring parties, known as the ‘Pacto del fusil’ or ‘Pact of the Rifle’, was sealed and involved a redistribution of tasks whereby the Urabeños continued with large-scale drug trafficking and the Oficina resumed its original function of collecting mafia debts and dues. Homicide rates dropped immediately and calm was restored in the city.
The Urabeños had also previously negotiated a truce with the Rastrojos in November 2011, although that was nullified when word began to spread that the Comba brothers were looking to turn themselves over to US authorities in 2012. In response, the Urabeños turned their attention to Valle del Cauca, the last real stronghold of the Rastrojos, where they allied with the Machos.
The Machos was reborn by the ‘junior narcos’ who are the relatives of those drug traffickers captured or deceased. They were essentially third-generation drug traffickers and included Héctor ‘Chicho’ Urdinola, the nephew of Iván Urdinola who was also believed responsible for the murder of his widow Lorena Henao, and Greylin ‘Martin Bala’ Varón, whose father worked for Víctor Patiño. They looked to bring the Urabeños on side in their own fight against the Rastrojos.
As for Víctor Patiño, he had returned to Colombia in 2010 intent on recovering his assets and avenging the deaths of his family members. That meant confronting the Rastrojos and he is thought to have teamed up with Chicho Urdinola and Martin Bala and helped to strengthen the alliance with the Urabeños. By the end of 2011, Patiño’s personal war had already left over 500 people dead.
The alliance between the Machos and the Urabeños saw Chicho run the drug trafficking from Cali with Martin Bala in charge of assassinations while the Urabeños took control of the larger drug-trafficking activities in Valle del Cauca and its surrounds. Chicho was captured in Villavicencio in January 2013 which saw Martin Bala assume control but he was caught in May 2013 in a Harley-Davidson outlet in the zona rosa of Bogotá.
The fall of Chicho Urdinola and Martin Bala saw disputes break out in Cali, none more graphic than the massacre caught on video in the discotheque Barra de la 44 when eight people were dispatched by sicarios in November 2013. It was Enrique ‘Kike’ Jaramillo who emerged as the city’s most powerful gangster.
Kike Jaramillo began his drug-trafficking career in the Cali Cartel under Víctor Patiño. Due to a vendetta against him in the late 1990s, he fled to Europe where he continued his illicit activities. By 2011, he was back in Colombia and a billionaire. He was known to travel with a 30-strong contingent of bodyguards, which gives some indication as to his standing.
He came to public attention after he was accused of being the intellectual author of a massacre in October 2014 which left another eight people dead, one of whom controlled the market for the new synthetic drug ‘pink cocaine’, known in the nightclubs as ‘2CB’. Jaramillo was also thought to be one of the owners of a massive 7-ton load of cocaine confiscated by police in Cartagena in April 2014. In a surprise move, Jaramillo voluntarily handed himself over to American authorities in late 2014.
Jaramillo had once rented 90 men from the Urabeños to confront Ramiro Herrera, known as ‘El Señor de la R’ or ‘The Mister of the R’. He was the brother of Pacho Herrera and, after spending over a decade in prison in the United States, had returned to Colombia in 2012, intent on recovering assets and reorganising the Cali Cartel. Unfortunately for him, he was recaptured in early 2016.
The next to rise in Cali was Eduard ‘Boliqueso’ Cardoza who controlled the city’s biggest criminal networks k
nown as oficinas de cobro or collection offices. He was originally allied with the Rastrojos before switching alliances to the Urabeños. Boliqueso was captured in Brazil in April 2016, leading to a power struggle which once again increased violence in the city. The cycle repeats . . .
The Pacific port of Buenaventura was controlled by La Empresa or The Company which took over the area in 2010. Formed by local businessmen and drug traffickers, it initially allied with the Rastrojos until the Urabeños pushed in and started a war with La Empresa in 2012, leaving over a hundred dead. The fighters from Urabá won the war but La Empresa was able to regroup and disputes between the two opposing outfits continued. Several ‘chop houses’ where victims were chopped into pieces have also been found in the city.
The other Pacific port of Tumaco is the major exit point of Colombian cocaine today and the surrounding area is absolutely teeming with coca plantations. It was originally controlled by the Rastrojos but when the Comba brothers turned themselves over to US authorities, it was an Ecuadorian man who entered the picture and became the region’s biggest capo.
Washington ‘Gerald’ Prado was known as ‘The Pablo Escobar of Ecuador’. Posing as a wealthy fishing entrepreneur, he owned a large fleet of boats, including dozens of go-fast boats which would refuel at one of his fishing boats at sea before continuing on to Central America and Mexico. After learning he was being tracked by the DEA and Colombian authorities, he returned to the safety of his home city of Guayaquil in Ecuador which didn’t extradite its citizens to the United States. However, an attractive undercover female agent lured him back to Colombia where he was captured in 2017.
In the coffee region, the Urabeños allied with La Cordillera which started out as a group of feared assassins created by paramilitary leader Macaco. The group controlled the city of Pereira before going international, spreading to other countries such as Ecuador and Argentina. In fact, one of its leaders, Héctor ‘Monoteto’ Duque who was Macaco’s right-hand man, was assassinated in Buenos Aires in July 2008. Many of La Cordillera’s members came from demobilised paramilitaries of the Central Bolivar Bloc.
