by Austin Galt
The Muzo mine later produced both the largest emerald in the world named Fura and the most valuable in the world named Tena. They were both found in 1999 and named after tribal leaders from the region’s folklore. Carranza’s legendary good luck led to the expression, ‘Where Víctor passes a stone appears’. About his good fortune, Carranza once stated, ‘I’ve been good, the emeralds are looking for me’.
Víctor Carranza was a simple but wise man. Small in stature, he rose to great heights becoming one of the country’s richest men. In 1992, Forbes magazine estimated his worth at around $1 billion. Apart from his mining concessions, he owned many properties, including cattle ranches in the Eastern Plains, apartments in the most exclusive zones of Bogotá, luxury hotels in Villavicencio and San Andrés and a shopping centre in Cartagena.
He never had a daily schedule and would announce to his men when he wanted to travel somewhere and would point his driver in which direction to go, making it difficult for his enemies to know exactly which route he would take. He also only ate food prepared by his wife for fear of being poisoned, while he kept his distance from his children in order to protect them.
Carranza was arrested in 1998 on charges linking him to paramilitaries with allegations he financed the Autodefensas Campesinas de Meta y Vichada (ACMV) or Peasant Self-Defence Forces of Meta and Vichada, more commonly known as Los Carranceros. Witnesses stated Carranza’s men, including his nephew, participated in the paramilitary schools set up by Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha under Yair Klein, while Carranza himself was seen at meetings with Rodríguez Gacha, ACDEGAM founder Henry Pérez and Carlos Castaño. Iván Duque, a top paramilitary boss known as ‘Ernesto Báez’, many years later called Carranza the ‘czar of paramilitarism’. Nothing was ever proven and by 2002 Carranza was a free man again, having been absolved of all charges.
Apart from some paramilitary activity during La Violencia in the 1950s, it was the esmeralderos who introduced paramilitarism to the Eastern Plains at the beginning of the 1980s. Víctor Carranza, Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha and the father of Héctor ‘Martin Llanos’ Buitrago, also called Héctor Buitrago and who heralded from Boyacá, all purchased land in the region and brought private armies with them to protect their interests against the FARC guerrillas who already had a strong presence there. Carranza initially arranged with Henry Pérez to take some of his fighters, Rodríguez Gacha brought a chapter of MAS, called the Masetos, while Buitrago had several men who eventually grew in size to form the ACC.
With Colombia’s top emerald baron deprived of his liberty in the early 2000s, Yesid Nieto, a rich AUC-linked drug trafficker from the Eastern Plains, arrived in Boyacá and declared himself as the new emerald czar in open defiance of Víctor Carranza. His arrival, by the side of one of Carranza’s main rivals in Pedro Rincón, marked the beginning of a new green war or at least a fracturing of the peace that had been in place since 1990.
Yesid Nieto was connected to paramilitary figures such as Cuchillo and El Alemán, and it was thought the paramilitaries were interested in taking control of the emeralds which would help to launder their drug profits. Members of El Alemán’s Elmer Cárdenas Bloc arrived in Boyacá and carried out many selective killings in 2001 and 2002. Coca plantations and cocaine laboratories also began springing up in the area.
Upon Víctor Carranza’s return to the region, El Alemán, who was introduced to Nieto by Carlos Castaño, decided to pull his paramilitaries out as he didn’t want to be involved in disputes between the esmeralderos. This left the paramilitaries of the region under the command of the AUC’s Cundinamarca Bloc, led by Luis Eduardo Cifuentes known as ‘El Águila’ or ‘The Eagle’. He was infamous for his barbaric forms of torture, including stabbing victims in their sexual organs or burning them with acid, while other victims were stripped, tied up and thrown alive into fields of ants. One of his victims also showed signs of cannibalism.
Nieto survived a shoot-out, despite being shot in the head, in his apartment building in the north of Bogotá in 2006. It lasted for five minutes and left over 250 bullets lodged in the walls. The attack was allegedly ordered by his ex-associate Daniel ‘El Loco’ Barrera over disputes regarding the coca plantations. After recovering in hospital, Yesid Nieto fled to Guatemala where he was killed in October 2007.
The man who brought Nieto to the emerald region, Pedro Rincón known as ‘Pedro Orejas’ or ‘Pedro Ears’, was arrested in 2008 for the murder of Miguel Pinilla, the trusted bodyguard of his ex-brother-in-law Maximiliano Cañón. Rincón pumped 12 bullets into Pinilla in front of several witnesses but was still inexplicably released from jail later that year.
Carranza and his partners then made a pact with the Rincón clan to exploit a new emerald vein discovered between two of their respective mines. The peace didn’t last long, with Pedro Rincón accused of breaking the conditions of the pact. Carranza therefore opted to shut down exploration. That decision didn’t go down very well with Rincón.
Víctor Carranza had fallen in love with the Eastern Plains and became the largest landowner in the area around Puerto López. The Castaño brothers even asked his permission to enter the region. It was on the main highway near Puerto López that he escaped a couple of assassination attempts in July 2009 and March 2010. On both occasions his convoy was attacked with gunfire, rockets and grenades, while in one of the attacks a stolen petrol tanker rammed into a car driven by his bodyguards. Carranza was lucky to survive the Hollywood-style shoot-outs although some of his bodyguards weren’t as fortunate. The attacks were carried out by members from ERPAC led by Pedro ‘Cuchillo’ Guerrero who was a close associate of Pedro Rincón.
An attempt to regain the peace was made in 2011 and 2012, but it was unsuccessful as the body count continued to rise and with Carranza nearing death, due to cancer, his successor began to emerge in Jesús Hernando Sánchez. Apart from his associations with Víctor Carranza, he was also a partner in several companies with El Dorado Cartel leader Julio Lozano. It was his company Perfect Emerald that paid for the drug boss’s security detail. Sanchez also owns over 50 percent of the company Esmeralcol which was linked to the El Dorado Cartel after the El Espectador newspaper published a confidential investigation by Colombia’s anti-laundering unit which revealed the cartel used the company to launder its massive drug profits.
Sánchez was the victim of an attack in October 2012 in which he was shot 11 times while shopping for clothes in the zona rosa of Bogotá. He somehow survived, although he spent two months in a coma and lost an eye and a kidney. It was rival emerald capo Horacio Triana, the brother-in-law of Pedro Rincón, who was deemed to be the intellectual author of the attack and he was arrested in 2016. Testimony was given that Triana was also behind a plan to detonate a bomb in the elevator of the building where Jesús Hernando Sánchez lived.
Upon the death of Víctor Carranza in April 2013, Pedro Rincón became the new emerald boss. To maintain his position at the top he is believed to have allied with the drug trafficker Mauricio ‘Puntilla’ Pachón. The reign of Pedro Rincón, however, didn’t last long after he was rearrested in November 2013 and subsequently sentenced to over 20 years in jail for Miguel Pinilla’s murder.
A couple of weeks before being arrested, Rincón had been injured in a grenade attack as he sat drinking and enjoying a local festival in the town of Pauna, Boyacá. The attack killed four of his associates while his son was seriously hurt and subsequently died of his injuries a couple of months later. Rincón suggested his enemies, including the Murcia and Cañon clans, were behind the attack.
In September 2014, Luis Murcia was killed at his farm in Cundinamarca after he had gone to check on his fighting roosters. He was also suspected of being behind the murder of Pedro Rincón’s lawyer. It was another case of the green war turning friends into foes as both Murcia and Rincón fought together in the 1980s against Molina and Carranza.
With Pedro Rincón incarcerated, a new era has begun with Jesús Hernando Sánchez becoming Colombia’s top emerald boss.
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Several extradited drug traffickers who have paid for their crimes in the United States have started trickling back into Colombia in recent years, including Eduardo Restrepo known as ‘El Socio’ or ‘The Partner’. He was an important member of the Norte del Valle Cartel and in control of drug-trafficking activities in the state of Tolima. His Mexican mafia partners from the Tijuana Cartel nicknamed his operation ‘El Cartel de la Lechona’ or ‘The Lechona Cartel’ after Tolima’s traditional food dish, lechona, consisting of roast pig stuffed with rice and vegetables. Subsequent court cases also revealed he financed the paramilitaries of the Tolima Bloc.
Restrepo befriended many of the region’s politicians and businessmen and was known for holding extravagant parties, such as his 43rd birthday party held in 2001 which featured Colombia’s top salsa band Grupo Niche. He was captured in 2006 and extradited to the United States. He returned to Colombia in 2012 only to spend another three years in prison. Unfortunately for him, his properties, including luxury apartments and houses, farms, restaurants and nightclubs, are all gone after being forfeited to the state.
Another returned capo is Gabriel Puerta Parra. He was known to be a mediator in disputes and even claimed he once saved Eduardo Restrepo from being assassinated. He started out as the owner of money-exchange houses and it wasn’t long before drug traffickers began requesting his services. He was a member of ‘The Dirty Dozen’ which helped to dismantle Pablo Escobar’s organisation. With his criminal record cleaned, he dedicated himself to his passion of raising cattle on his farm in the Middle Magdalena and it was there that he resolved disputes between both narcos and paramilitaries. He was even nicknamed ‘El Doctor’ because he inspired confidence and respect.
It was for his dealings with the Norte del Valle Cartel and the paramilitaries that Puerta Parra was put on the list of the top 12 Colombian drug traffickers wanted by American authorities. He was captured in 2004 and subsequently extradited to the United States where he was sentenced to 11 years in prison, although with his cooperation he was given early release in 2010 and he returned to Colombia.
Néstor ‘Felipe’ Caro had a $5 million bounty on his head at the time of his capture in 2010 as he soaked up the sun on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. Hailing from the Casanare state capital Yopal, he was one of the few autonomous Colombian capos still operating. He was previously a military officer and the presence of several high-ranking army officers at his wedding caused a scandal known as ‘narcoboda’ or ‘narco-wedding’. Caro had paid the DAS to wipe his file but the law was still able to catch up with him and put an end to his criminal career which had spanned two decades. After being extradited to the United States he was deported back to Colombia in 2013.
Orlando Sánchez Cristancho, the man the press believed was The Man in Overalls, slipped quietly back into the country after serving over four years in prison and another couple on probation in the United States. He couldn’t stay out of trouble and he was arrested at his farm near Bogotá in March 2017, wanted by American authorities for money laundering and bank fraud.
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Lily and I settled up on the mountain slope in El Poblado, and at midnight at the beginning of December each year, I watch from my balcony the fireworks which are part of the mafia tradition from Don Berna’s days. It is quite a sight and sound. The beautiful climate makes life in Medellín a good quality one and it is the reason we decided against living in Bogotá.
While I missed not being able to hang out regularly with my friends I would still fly in occasionally if something was happening. Ally also brought in some of the world’s top DJs to play at dance parties in Colombia, such as those held at the top of the Tequendama building, and I would sometimes fly into Bogotá to attend these parties with him.
One such occasion was for a party to celebrate Ally’s birthday. Before the hijinks commenced, Ally and I went out to grab a bite to eat and while driving in the north of Bogotá a police car drove right by us in the other direction. I noticed they were looking in our direction and I just knew they would come back for us. I had often seen police pulling over cars with two or more male occupants in Medellín, especially luxury cars. Ally drove a BMW and, sure enough, the police siren sounded a minute later.
We were both ordered out of the car and then asked if we had any drugs on us. We stated we didn’t have anything but they insisted we empty our pockets. That’s when I knew this was a shakedown. Possession had just been decriminalised, although they might have thought a foreigner wouldn’t have known that. They didn’t find any drugs but they found something else.
Ally had recently spent a month in China training kung-fu at a Shaolin temple and he had bought a telescopic steel baton while he was there. Bingo! The policeman’s eyes lit up when he found it behind the front seat and he told us it was illegal to carry the weapon in the car. (I’m still not sure of the merits of this charge.) The policeman told Ally he would have to go with them to the police station.
Ally protested, ‘Es mi cumpleaños y tengo una fiesta esta noche.’ It’s my birthday and I have a party tonight.
‘Ahh, feliz cumpleaños!’ the officer replied, pretending to be sincere.
Ally didn’t seem very thrilled with the birthday wishes and offered a wry smile. We both looked at each other and knew where this was going.
‘Podemos arreglar esto ahora?’ Ally questioned. Can we sort this out now?
‘Tal vez,’ came the reply. Maybe.
Now it was just a matter of negotiating. The policeman’s eyes zeroed in on Ally’s wallet as he opened it up.
‘100,000?’ Ally suggested.
The policeman could see he had more than that in his wallet and shook his head.
Ally had 150,000 pesos or around US$60 on him and the policeman happily took all of it. Both policemen then shook our hands and wished us a merry evening. Robbery with a smile! Ally wasn’t impressed but I shouted him a birthday dinner and he was back in good spirits later that night.
Living in Colombia, I have been able to explore many more parts of the country, including Hacienda Napoles which has now been converted into a popular tourist park. The hippopotamus population has grown to several dozen and is the only herd of wild hippos outside of Africa. Some have escaped into tributaries of the nearby Magdalena River causing problems for local fishermen and farmers – Pablo Escobar’s legacy lives on in many forms!
Escobar and his family also owned many properties in the nearby municipality of Guatapé which is next to a large reservoir and is a holiday spot for locals. Several gangsters own holiday houses on the lake and tourists can take a boat ride with a guide who will point out those properties. The area is known for the El Peñón de Guatapé or The Rock of Guatapé which is one of the biggest monoliths in the world.
The region around Guatapé was heavily affected by violence and that was why I hadn’t travelled there earlier. Most notably, the FARC exploded a car bomb with 400 kilograms of dynamite in the nearby town of Granada on 6 December 2000. That and the follow-up attack left 23 civilians and five policemen dead, while over 100 houses were destroyed. This was only a month after the paramilitaries had come through the town, killing 17 civilians. With no paramilitaries or guerrillas to contend with, tourists now flock to the area.
I have travelled to many paisa towns and upon leaving one town up in the mountains I got a bit lost and ended up on a dirt road. With Lily and the girls in tow, I continued on to see if the road led anywhere but it just went to a large house with the entrance guarded by several heavily armed men. I had stumbled onto a gangster estate. One of the guards looked us over cautiously and I asked him which way to the main road. He pointed back in the direction we had come.
We also once happened upon a menacing-looking character in the town of San Jerónimo during an Easter break spent there. Having just hopped aboard a mototaxi to take Lily and me back to the farm where we were staying, the driver proceeded down a narrow one-way street only to see a car with dark-tinted windows coming
towards us from the wrong direction. There wasn’t enough room for either vehicle to pass and as the car arrived at our position a stand-off ensued. The car was clearly in the wrong but it was not moving. It didn’t take long before the driver opened the door and exited the vehicle. He just looked at us without saying a word. The driver of our mototaxi went pale. He ordered us to get out before he reversed as fast as he could. He picked us back up a few minutes later, revealing the man was ‘el hombre mas peligroso del pueblo’ – the town’s most dangerous man.
San Jerónimo is known to be where several of Medellín’s top gangsters have vacation homes and it was on his property there that Gustavo Upegui was assassinated in 2006. While playing with my daughters near the entrance to the farm, my attention was captured by a Rolls-Royce with tinted windows slowly driving by and pulling into the adjoining farm. It is the only such car I have seen in all my time in Colombia and I can only imagine who was inside.
Lily and I took the girls on a cross-country adventure to the state of Santander which features the Chichamocha National Park. It provides stunning canyon landscapes, while the local delicacy is hormigas culonas or big-butt ants – a crunchy and nutritious little snack. We stayed in the nearby Spanish colonial town of Barichara which was declared a national monument in 1978.
A favourite pastime of mine is driving around the country, experiencing the beauty of all the different landscapes, and while Lily and the girls didn’t much enjoy the long journey home, it was a highlight for me. As we headed up high into the mountains of southern Santander, mist covered the narrow strip of road, while a constant drizzle added to the already dangerous driving conditions. The paved road turned into a slippery dirt road as we descended the mountain and the car was hit by falling rocks. With so many deadly landslides occurring each year throughout the country, we were all a bit on edge.
We soon arrived at a remote little town perched on a picturesque mountain ridge. Landázuri was known for its guerrilla presence; nine policemen who were eradicating coca plantations in the area were massacred there by the FARC in 2007. The FARC also planted many landmines in the region, which have killed more than 150 people, and the guerrilla leader responsible for that was Alberto Chapparro, known as ‘El Carnicero de Landázuri’ or ‘The Butcher of Landázuri’. He was captured in 2009 which came as a relief to the townsfolk.
