
Hector "Don Hector" Salamanca (1939–15 July 2009) was a Mexican drug lord and high-ranking member of the Vuente Cartel. A fearsome and ruthless cartel leader, Salamanca carried out the murder of Chilean drug manufacturer and Gus Fring's partner Max Arciniega in 1989, and brought up his nephews Lalo, Tuco, Marco and Leonel in the family business. In 2002, after his nephew Tuco's arrest, he was sent to the North-American border to supervise the Cartel's operations, but was double-crossed by his underling Nacho Varga who switched up his heart medication with intoxicating pills which left Salamanca permanently paralyzed. Afterwards, he was confined to a wheelchair and unable to speak, but his standing within the Cartel remained the same, though he had to experience the pain of Fring's revenge who systematically took out each relevant Cartel member, including Salamanca's relatives and Don Eladio Vuente, until only Salamanca was left. In a last-ditch attempt to take retribution against Fring, Salamanca and Fring's competitor, kingpin Walter White, hatched a plan in 2009 to murder Fring involving faking Salamanca's cooperation with the DEA so Fring would go to kill him, only to be killed along with Salamanca through a pipe-bomb strapped to Salamanca's wheelchair, thus honoring Salamanca's old edict of "blood for blood".
Biography[]
Early career[]

Salamanca in 1989
Salamanca was born in 1939 in Mexico. A founding member of the Ciudad Juarez Vuente Cartel, Salamanca controlled most of the illegal cocaine trafficking operations from Mexico to the United States. He instated his nephews as members of the Cartel and imparted on them the family's philosophy of looking out for each other above all else. Early on in his career, he was charged with a litany of felonies and sentenced to 17 years in jail, being incarcerated at the San Quentin State Prison in California and refusing to cooperate in exchange for immunity before his release in the early 1980s. In 1989, Cartel boss Eladio Vuente decided to take up an offer made by Chilean meth manufacturers and partners Gustavo Fring and Max Arciniega to distribute their highly product and transfer it to transfer to the U.S. While Vuente accepted the proposition, he didn't appreciate the perceived scheming manner in which Fring organized the meeting, so at his hacienda In Juarez, he had Salamanca shoot Arciniega in the side of the head and kill him in front of Fring's eyes, who was massively devastated by his loss and made it his personal quest to impart revenge on Salamanca and the Cartel.
Handling business North of the border[]

Salamanca in 2002
In 2002, after his nephew Tuco was arrested for assaulting Mike Ehrmantraut, Salamanca was sent to Albuquerque, New Mexico to take up his operation and assure he wouldn't receive a stiff sentence. He met with Ehrmantraut and offered him $5,000 in exchange for him admitting to the District Attorney's Office that the gun used in the assault was his and not Tuco's; though Ehrmantraut initially refused, after multiple threats were made against him and his family by Salamanca's men, he was forced to concede but convinced Salamanca to give him a higher payment of $50,000. Afterwards, Ehrmantraut began staking Salamanca's narcotics transporting operation, cutting it off by robbing his truck driver Ximenez Lecerda and putting a halt to their income stream, with Lecerda being killed for it. As a result, Salamanca resorted to Fring, asking him to traffic his product from then on through his Los Pollos Hermanos trucks. When learning of Tuco stabbing another inmate at the prison he was jailed at, he developped a serious heart condition and began taking prescription pills; one of Salamanca's lieutenants, Nacho Varga, saw an opportunity in this to kill him, since he'd been trying to use Varga's father's legitimate business as a drug dealing front. He successfully switched up his regular medication with sugar pills, and when Salamanca took them after having a stroke when infuriated about Vuente's preferance for Fring over him, he collapsed and suffered from paralysis as a result.
Paralytic state[]

Salamanca in 2008
Salamanca ended up comatose after his stroke, and though he was in severe condition, doctors believed there was a chance he could have regained his speech and possibly even have been able to walk again, with his other nephew Lalo coming from Mexico to supervise business in his absence. However, Gus Fring, who was put in charge of overseeing Salamanca's recovery, purposefully stopped his treatment before he was fully rehabilitated, leaving him to suffer in silence for the rest of his life.