The enemy of Pablo Escobar who opted for the poppy and became "the king of heroin" in Colombia

One morning in September 1994, a brawl at Modelo Prison in Bogotá broke through the walls and became a national news. Jhon Jairo Velásquez Vásquez, aka Popeye, one of the leading badbadins of the late deceased Pablo Escobar, was facing a debt of the past with one of his boss's enemies, Iván Urdinola Grajales, aka the dwarf, one of the founders of the Norte del Valle cartel.

Popeye began litigation over the claim for payment of a daily food charge for the high security lodge in which they were being held. And the & # 39;DwarfHe demanded the payment of a loan he had contracted from the killer before he was jailed. The incident – related by The weather– did not happen to major, there was no blows or repeated again. Perhaps it is a reflection of one of the faces of Urdinola, the guy who has always tried to calm things down and avoid fights.

This was described by William Rodríguez Abadía, son of Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela, one of the leaders of the Cali cartel, in his book I am the son of the cartel of Cali. And it is that Urdinola did not leave the popular neighborhoods like the other drug traffickers. He was born on December 1, 1960 in a wealthy family of El Dovio, in the department of Valle del Cauca. Although he had the opportunity to follow a university education, he soon gave up his desire to focus on fundraising.

With 20 years installed a refrigerator in the neighboring municipality of Cartago, which has become a monopoly of the region in the meat distribution, expanding its headquarters to other cities of the department like Cali and Buenaventura. The business has allowed him to live comfortably. But then he met the brothers Rodriguez Orejuelaand he was ruined by his power, so he wanted to go further.

He started in the drug trade as a subordinate of Cali Cartel's leaders, but when he learned the details of the business, he left them to create his own network of airports and airports. 39, aircraft for traffic, and got external collaborators. Only contrary to the posters of this moment, enriched with coca, decided to bet on a bush that had not been exploited in the country: the poppy.

The beautiful red flower is the raw material for the development of l & # 39; heroin, a powerful semisynthetic opioid that was beginning to be consumed in the United States. First of all, he badociated with his former leaders, Rodríguez Orejuela, but he encountered a small problem, guerrilla warfare. The FARC and the ELN, who controlled the poppy crops in the south of the country and, therefore, its market. Urdinola has always been anticommunist, so I do not hesitate to fight them.

There was the other side of the narco's face. Kind and generous with the communities, relentless with the enemies. It is he who has committed several mbadacres against peasants of the Valle del Cauca, designated to collaborate with the guerrillas, whom he ordered the badbadination of the priest Tiberio de Jesús Fernández. Once, he learned that 35 of his bodyguards had conspired to steal a shipment of heroin. Before they did, he sentenced them to the wall.

He murdered them one by one and threw their bodies into the Cauca River with the intention of appearing downstream, in sign of what he was able to do to those who had betrayed him, intimidating the community. Thus, little by little, he has appropriated the marketing and distribution of heroin abroad. Until he decides to form his own poster, the North of the valley, with his brother-in-law, Orlando Henao Montoya, aka "The Man in Combination", his wife Lorena's brother.

While his fortune increased, he invested as much as possible in legal affairs: restaurants, hotels, banks, airlines, he came out of the bankruptcy of many industries through the intermediary of frontmen. Soon too, it was brought to the attention of the public when the police Dijin designated it as "the"king of the poppy"In Colombia, he said he had bought opium from farmers in Cauca, Huila and Tolima, where he cultivated them, he already knew the magazine Week.

He is credited with having filled this flower of the country and introduced Colombia into the heroin trade. The report known by the national magazine describes the large properties where the company was developed, withclandestine waves, satellite dishes for private communications and luxurious mansions. "He is a man of ambition, what he strives to achieve, and his goal was to become the king of the poppy," he said. Week a man who worked for him.

The authorities and the country already knew the real activities of Urdinola. But he felt that there was not enough evidence against him. So when in April 1992 he was stuck by hundreds of police, the army and the prosecutor's office as part of a mega operation with helicopters his farm La Porcelana, located in Zarzal, in the Valle del Cauca, did not resist and did not initiate a confrontation.

He opened the door in pajamas and slippers and asked the commander who was leading the operation the reasons for his visit. And he asked for a few minutes to swim, change and say goodbye to his wife and children. On the farm, there were only two men he trusted, they found no weapons, money, evacuation tunnels or anything else. This was reported by the news then.

As he thought, he would not be extradited because at that time the treaty with the United States was not in force. He was sentenced to 17 years in prisonbut for the procedural benefits for study and work the sentence has been reduced to four years. He equipped the prison at will, to compensate for his needs, he was visited regularly by his family, but he did not leave alive from there.

Years later, he was again sentenced, this time to 12 years in prison, for a mbadacre committed in Trujillo that claimed the lives of hundreds of people, becoming one of the bloodiest episodes of the war in Colombia. He was transferred to Itaguí Prison in Antioquia. A day of February 2002Urdinola, then 41 years old, did not show up for the usual count of detainees. The guards found him lying in his cell with white foam in his mouth and convulsions.

He died at the medical center where he was transferred, as a result of a heart attack caused by a suspected intoxication that remains a mystery.