Helmer Herrera

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Helmer Herrera

Francisco Hélmer Herrera Buitrago (born August 24, 1951 in Palmira , Colombia ; †  November 6, 1998 ibid), also known as Pacho or H7 , was a Colombian drug dealer who belonged to the Cali cartel . He was fourth in the cartel's internal hierarchy.

Life

Beginnings

Herrera grew up in the Colombian city of Palmira, in the department of Valle del Cauca . His father is said to have been the drug dealer Benjamin Herrera Zuleta . During his high school years, Herrera studied engineering maintenance, an experience that later earned him a job in the United States . When he lived in the United States, he was also a jeweler and precious metals broker. In the 1970s he finally sounded out the New York City market on behalf of the Cali Cartel to look for better outlets for cocaine . Here he also started selling the drug. He was therefore arrested in 1975 and 1978.

Cali cartel

1983 Herrera traveled to Cali to negotiate with the Cali Cartel over supply and distribution rights for New York City. He later opened trade routes for cocaine through Mexico for the Cali cartel , having previously established connections with smugglers.

Herrera also ran one of "the most sophisticated and profitable money laundering businesses," as the United States' Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) found. Herrera was soon promoted to a leader within the Cali cartel and was given control of several areas in Colombia.

According to the DEA, the Herrera operations involved the import of a cocaine base from Peru and Bolivia , which was to be brought to conversion laboratories in Colombia using its own means of transport. It is believed that Herrera hired guerrilla forces such as the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) and Movimiento 19 de Abril to guard remote laboratories.

Herrera always stayed in the background and was never interviewed, and his name was almost never mentioned with that of the other leaders of the Cali cartel. Although it has been argued that he was the source of most of the money that went into illegally funding Ernesto Samper's presidential campaign , Herrera himself never spoke on the subject and was never formally involved in the investigation. His name only came to light after a terrorist attack on a soccer field in Candelaria in Valle del Cauca on September 25, 1990. 20 armed men in army and police clothing opened fire on the crowd in which Herrera was sitting, killing 18 without hitting Herrera.

The attack has been attributed to the Medellin cartel, and in particular Pablo Escobar , who apparently blamed Herrera for a car bomb that exploded on January 13, 1988 in the Escobar apartment building in one of the most affluent areas of Medellin city . Much blood was spilled on both sides in the war between the cartels, but Herrera took a backward role, leaving the fighting to the brothers Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela and Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela . Another attack on Herrera was committed on July 27, 1991 in a summer resort, where masked gunmen with pink armbands shot people at the scene, killing 17 people and injuring 13 others.

Herrera has been identified as one of the main funders of the Los Pepes organization , but his name has never been officially associated with them.

Operation Kingpin

In November 1991, the DEA initiated Operation Kingpin, which targeted two of Herrera's distribution cells in New York City. As part of a large-scale wiretapping campaign, the DEA used over 100 simultaneous court-approved wiretaps on cell phones. At the end of Operation Kingpin, nearly 100 traffickers were arrested and more than $ 20 million in cash and assets and over 2.5 tons of cocaine were seized. In addition, records of transactions and personnel were confiscated from computers, which later provided a better insight into the structure of the Cali cartel.

Imprisonment and death

On September 1, 1996, Herrera surrendered to the Search Bloc , a unit of the Colombian National Police. Herrera was the last of the four leaders of the Cali cartel to be caught. He was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison on drug trafficking charges, which was extended to 14 years in 1998.

In prison, Herrera is said to have changed his lifestyle and devoted himself to football by becoming a prison sports organizer and sponsoring football tournaments. He also started a bachelor's degree in business administration. Although he was supposed to be in the prison's maximum security area, Herrera visited the other wings where he met with his lawyers. On November 4, 1998, Rafael Angel Uribe Serna entered the prison and went to the soccer field where Herrera was playing. Uribe was reportedly drunk, but apparently Herrera stopped playing when he saw him and wanted to greet him. After hugging Herrera, Uribe drew a gun and shot him seven times in the head. Uribe was overwhelmed by other inmates and then taken away by prison guards while Herrera was taken to a hospital where he died.

There are a number of possible motives for Herrera's murder. These include old campaigns of revenge by members of the Norte del Valle cartel , especially a man known by the code name JJ and under the command of Wilber Varela . He was apparently the victim of an assassination attempt by the leader of the Cali cartel a few days earlier. The collaboration between Herrera and the DEA over the betrayal of Orlando Henao , head of the Norte del Valle cartel, is also considered a motive. Other hypotheses point to Herrera's longstanding conflict with communist guerrilla groups. The assassin Uribe had been a personal advisor to Herrera for 10 years and a frequent visitor. Uribe stated that he decided to kill Herrera because he threatened Uribe's family when Uribe was unable to kill Víctor Carranza as Herrera ordered. However, these explanations were found to be implausible and were probably a ruse to divert attention from the real masterminds. Uribe was also the uncle of the brothers Luis Enrique and Javier Antonio Calle Serna, the "Comba" brothers who took control of the Norte del Valle cartel after the death of Varela. Uribe himself was murdered in October 2009.

Movie and TV

In the series Narcos and Narcos: Mexico , Herrera is played by the Argentine actor Alberto Ammann . In the series, Herrera is portrayed as openly homosexual. In reality, it is also believed that Herrera was homosexual.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Elaine Shannon Washington: Cover Stories: New Kings of Coke . In: Time . June 24, 2001, ISSN  0040-781X ( online [accessed July 7, 2020]).
  2. ↑ Ron Chepesiuk: The Bullet Or the Bribe . Taking Down Colombia's Cali Drug Cartel. Praeger Publishers, 2003, p. 238, 25, 67 ( online [accessed July 8, 2020]).
  3. ↑ a b DEA - Publications - Press Releases - August 6, 1995. Retrieved July 7, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Semana: OTRA GUERRA. Retrieved July 7, 2020 (Spanish).
  5. ^ Dominic Streatfeild: Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography . Thomas Dunne Books, 2002, pp. 360 .
  6. ↑ a b Casa Editorial El Tiempo: FINAL DE UN CAPO QUE EMPEZÓ COMO MANDADERO. November 6, 1998, accessed July 7, 2020 (Spanish).
  7. ↑ Ana Lilia Pérez: Cocaine Seas: The ways of the worldwide drug trade . Pantheon Verlag, 2016, ISBN 978-3-641-18419-3 .
  8. ↑ Casa Editorial El Tiempo: BUSCAN A JJ POR CRIMEN DE PACHO HERRERA. November 8, 1998, Retrieved July 7, 2020 (Spanish).
  9. ↑ The gay man in the drug cartel. Retrieved on July 7, 2020 (German).
  10. ↑ Tom Behan: Defiance . IB Tauris & Co Ltd, 2008, ISBN 978-0-7556-2237-5 .
personal data
SURNAME Herrera, Hélmer
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Herrera Buitrago, Francisco Hélmer (full name); Pacho; H7
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Colombian drug trafficker
DATE OF BIRTH August 24, 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH Palmira , Colombia
DATE OF DEATH November 6, 1998
Place of death Palmira , Colombia