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Felix Vijo

Felix "El Granjero" Vijo was a Colombian drug lord and the boss of the Hermanos Carnales during the 1980s and 1990s. Vijo was a powerful crime boss whose cartel took control of almost the entire country (apart from the isolated Los Grandes region) from 1989 to 1991, and by January 1991, he had netted $5,522,170 in dirty money and $5,245,436 in legal money (although he never had more than around $750,000 at any given time).

Biography[]

Felix Vijo was born in Tensaca, Tensaca department, Colombia, the older brother of Alejandrito Vijo and the uncle of Hector Alejandro Vijo. He and his brother worked as small-time marijuana planters at Los Campos (on the outskirts of Tensaca) during the 1980s, forming the Hermanos Carnales ("full brothers") cartel. His brother was murdered by a rival cartel in Rogandes in 1989, and Vijo set about building up his organization to get his revenge. Vijo was joined by his nephew and later by Tony Quintero, a strongman whom he had saved from criminals when Quintero was a boy. Vijo came to dominate the city of Tensaca, but he caught the attention of local police chief Pablo Crespo and Colombian National Army Special Operations Command chief Panfilo Ramos, both of whom attempted to solicit bribes from him. Vijo reluctantly raised a $50,000 bribe for Crespo, but, as he violently expanded into Rogandes, he attracted the attention of higher law authorities, such as the Federal Police and the DEA. In 1990, he proceeded to take over Foscani department and Molino department as well, and he came to have a net worth of over $700,000 by year's end. By that point, he was widely seen as a philanthropist, as he built over five new aerodromes and laid out new asphalt roads across the countryside, and he raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars through the airborne smuggling of marijuana and cocaine across Colombia's borders. By the middle of 1990, however, his takeover of Foscani led to the National Army launching several search-and-destroy operations against his cartel, and, by year's end, he had also made enemies with the CIA and the US Army. In the start of 1991, the National Army began a grand offensive against him, shutting down several of his regional operations either through search-and-destroy operations, sending in the Federals to arrest whole operations, or through blockading entire cities to prevent his local operations from laundering their money (and, thus, operating).

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