Eduardo "Lalo" Salamanca (1961–25 June 2004) was a powerful lieutenant of the Vuente Cartel and a nephew of Hector Salamanca who handled his family's business North of the American border in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 2004. A cunning, resourceful and ruthless drug lord with the deceitful mind of a tactician, upon his arrival in the US, he grew suspicious of Cartel distributor and longtime Salamanca family rival Gustavo Fring, as well as his moves to start his own operation and ultimately take revenge on the Cartel, so he made efforts to both prove Fring's double-dealing actions and weaken his organization. Fring countered his actions by having Salamanca arrested for murder and later arranging for his release on $7 million bail through crooked lawyer Saul Goodman so he would flee to Mexico where he would be an easier target to kill; Salamanca survived the attack on his compound after killing Fring's assassins and subsequently framed his death to continue his one-man crusade against Fring, which took him as far as Germany to confirm the existence of an underground super laboratory where he eventually managed to corner Fring after outsmarting and killing his security personnel. Though he was on the brink of achieving his goal, Fring had implemented an emergency precaution in the form of a gun he had stashed inside the lab, and after a brief but intense firefight, he shot and killed Salamanca, having his body buried below the lab's ground and successfully convincing the Cartel that he wasn't involved with his death.