Helmer "Pacho" Herrera (24 August 1951–4 November 1998) was the fourth-in-command of the Colombian Cali Cartel and a major enemy of Pablo Escobar's Medellin Cartel. Herrera was the man behind the Cali Cartel's split from Medellin, as he set up his own cocaine smuggling routes through Mexico that ran all the way to New York City and Los Angeles. Pacho was the youngest and most physically fit of the cartel's four godfathers, was unmarried, and was openly homosexual, riding around on motorcycles with his leather-clad biker gang. He was assassinated by the rival Norte del Valle Cartel in prison in 1998.
Biography[]
Herrera meeting with the Ochoa Brothers
Helmer Herrera was born on 24 August 1951 in Palmira, Valle del Cauca, Colombia, the brother of Alvaro Herrera. Herrera was a homosexual, and his father said that he would not grow into being a man due to his sexuality; Herrera lacked self-confidence for years, but this changed when he met the leaders of the Cali Cartel. He studied technical maintenance, and he worked in the United States as a jewel and precious metals broker until he began selling cocaine in New York City. In 1975 and 1978, he was arrested on distribution charges. In 1983, he headed back to Colombia and negotiated supply and distribution rights with the Cali Cartel for New York, opening up routes through Mexico that he had already established. Soon, he became the Cali leader in Jamundi, Palmira, and Yumbo, three major cities. Herrera hired guerrillas from FARC and M-19 to guard his drug labs in Colombia, turning communists into mercenaries. Herrera was such a big earner that the Cali Cartel bosses Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela and Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela decided to make him a partner in leading the cartel.
Herrera meeting with Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, January 1986
Herrera served as the Cali Cartel's business representative, and, in 1984, he helped negotiate a deal with Mexican drug trafficker and Guadalajara Cartel boss Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo by which Guadalajara would be paid to transport Cali's cocaine from Mexico to the United States. In 1986, as the DEA began to crack down on Felix Gallardo during Operation Leyenda, Felix Gallardo met with Herrera at his birthday party on 8 January 1986 and demanded that Cali pay its $200 million debt to his cartel, but Herrera warned him that Felix's murder of DEA agent Kiki Camarena was bad for business, that the repurcussions were Felix's problem, and that the money would come when it came. Felix Gallardo responded by attempting to monopolize drug trafficking in Mexico to force the Colombians to come to terms with him, making a deal with Gulf Cartel leader Juan Nepomuceno Guerra to incorporate the Gulf into the Guadalajara federation, but, by the time that Felix Gallardo and his lieutenant Amado Carrillo Fuentes decided to renegotiate with the Colombians in Panama later that year, Herrera had made a new deal with Guerra by which Guerra would also traffick the Colombians' drugs, removing Felix's advantageous monopoly over the cocaine trade. They then negotiated that Cali would supply Felix with 65,000 kilos (70 tons) of cocaine, as Felix sought to enter the cocaine retail business in addition to transporting it for the Colombians. During the meeting, however, Herrera made several subtle jabs at Felix's organization by saying that the Cali Cartel was like a "family" and asking if Guadalajara was also like one, he asked if Felix was still having trouble maintaining his lieutenants' loyalty, and he also said that he liked Juan Matta-Ballesteros and said that, if he had been family, he would have questioned Felix Gallardo about how a man in the business for so long was able to be busted by the DEA. Nevertheless, the two cartels concluded a deal, and Amado acquired a fleet of jets to traffick Colombian cocaine into the United States via the "Mexican trampoline".
War with Medellin[]
Herrera shooting at Escobar's sicarios
During the 1980s, he formed a rivalry with Pablo Escobar and the powerful Medellin Cartel, as they could not agree over which cartel would be allowed to distribute drugs to the city of Los Angeles. Herrera decided to talk to him about sharing the city, but Herrera secretly met with the disaffected Ochoa Brothers and decided to collaborate against him. The bombing of Escobar's apartment failed, leaving his daughter deaf in the left ear, so the Ochoa Brothers persuaded him to contact General Jaramillo to fight Escobar. They decided to get rid of Escobar's cousin Gustavo Gaviria, the man who ran his day-to-day operations, to weaken the cartel (as well as to stop his secret sexual relationship with their sister Marina Ochoa). Gaviria was whacked on 12 August 1990 by the police, and journalist Valeria Velez later told Escobar that it was the Ochoa Brothers who betrayed him, as she discovered that they were in Cali at the time of Gaviria's assassination. Escobar sent his men to massacre the Cali Cartel and assassinate Herrera at a soccer match in Cali, but Herrera was not one of the fourteen cartel members to be killed, as he was dressed the same as the rest of them.
Cali-Medellin war[]
Herrera in 1992
By 1992, Herrera was ready to negotiate a peace with Escobar and the Medellin Cartel, offering his lieutenants Fernando Galeano and Gerardo Moncada a deal in which Cali would pay $3,000,000 to settle the dispute over Los Angeles. They managed to raise the price to $10,000,000, but Escobar rejected this new deal, demanding no less than $30,000,000 from the Cali Cartel in exchange for police. Galeano and Moncada conspired against Escobar due to his unreasonable behavior, and Escobar had the two of them murdered in July 1992 at his "La Catedral" prison. Herrera decided to win the war against the Medellin Cartel by forming an alliance of all of Escobar's enemies, including the families of assassinated judges and politicians, policemen, and the DEA, kidnapping agent Steve Murphy with the goal of recruiting him to assist the Cali Cartel in taking down Escobar. Herrera blackmailed him, showing him that he had pictures of the massacre of the 1989 La Dispensaria raid and an audio recording tying Murphy to the incident; Colombians would imprison him if they discovered that Search Bloc was an American-backed death squad. Murphy told Herrera that he wanted to defeat Escobar, but he warned Herrera that he would be knocking on his door after Escobar was taken down.
Taking over Miami[]
In 1992 and 1993, Herrera waged war against Escobar as an ally of the Rodriguez brothers, the vengeful Judy Moncada, former Medellin associate Don Berna, and the AUC leaders Carlos Castano Gil and Fidel Castano Gil. In 1993, he managed to persuade El Leon, Pablo's man in Miami, to lead a silent coup. The Cali Cartel offered El Leon a better deal than Pablo had, and El Leon introduced the Cali Cartel to Pablo's bankers and drugs, defecting to Cali. Herrera was responsible for setting up the Cali Cartel's operations in Miami, weakening Escobar's drug operations.
Rise of Cali[]
Pacho Herrera in 1995
After Escobar's death in December 1993, the Cali Cartel rapidly rose to become the top cartel in the country. In 1994, Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela announced that the Cali Cartel would be going legitimate in six months, shocking many of his associates and allies. That same night, Rodriguez Orejuela decided to assassinate several men opposed to his plan, having his security chief Jorge Salcedo tap phone conversations in order to draw up a list of men who needed to be killed. Herrera himself rode to a riverside party along the Cauca Valley, driving there with his gang of leather-clad bikers. Herrera proceeded to buy a bottle for his old rival, Claudio Salazar, claiming that they were no longer rivals. Herrera proceeded to slow dance with one of his sicarios and kissed him on the lips, and he then headed over to Salazar's table and smashed his head with the bottle of wine. Herrera had Salazar tied to two motorbikes and bisected, and he drove one of the bikes himself. The dismembered Herrera's body was then thrown in the Cauca River, where it was cut to pieces by the chicken wire that it had been wrapped in.
Herrera was then sent to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico for his own safety, and he worked with Amado Carrillo Fuentes - now the boss of the Juarez Cartel - to smuggle cocaine into the United States and Canada. He stayed at the drug lord's opulent mansion with a view of Texas, and he had a homosexual relationship with a young male butler there. Carrillo Fuentes attempted to convince Herrera to join his business rather than retire with the others, but he later told Carrillo Fuentes about how the Cali leaders were the only ones not to judge him for his homosexuality, even as his father and many other criminals judged him. Carrillo Fuentes decided to make a deal with the Norte del Valle Cartel, in which they would do business together in exchange for Herrera being killed. Herrera, the young male waiter, and Alvaro were attacked at the Ciudad Juarez mansion by several Norte del Valle hitmen, and the waiter was gunned down while heading to warn Pacho; Alvaro was heavily wounded and paralyzed by the shooting. Herrera managed to kill all of the attackers, and he returned to Colombia to seek his revenge.
Downfall[]
Herrera after being shot
Herrera proceeded to kill a Norte del Valle leader with a car bomb and declared war on them; he also planned to kill Gerda Salazar's sons, who were all higher-ups in the cartel. He headed to her ranch and shot her dead, and he proceeded to surrender to police general Rosso Jose Serrano at a church. He felt safe in prison, but his vendetta with the cartel continued behind bars. On 4 November 1998, Herrera played soccer with several other sicarios in prison, and he took a break to drink water next to his lover. It was then that a gunman shot his lover in the face and shot Herrera several times, killing him.
