Jose Vicente Castano Gil (2 July 1957-17 March 2007), also known as "El Profe", was one of the Political and Military Directors of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, as well as the Commander of its Centauros Bloc and leader of the paramilitary group from 2004 to 2007, succeeding his brother Carlos Castano Gil. He co-founded first the Peasant Self-Defenders of Cordoba and Uraba with his sibling in 1994, then the United Forces in 1997, organizing most of the personnel and overseeing its expansion across the national territory via murder and mayhem, as well as its financing, primarily through cocaine trafficking. A promoter of the peace process with the Government of President Alvaro Uribe, after having his brother Carlos killed in 2004, Castano became disillusioned with the negotiations following the trial and extradition of numerous paramilitaries, and so refused to surrender himself to justice. This resulted in the formation of a conspiracy to assassinate him on the part of the State, rebellious Self-Defense Forces and former drug dealing allies, and a raid at his finca in Nechi, Antioquia ended with his death in 2007.
Biography[]
Jose Vicente Castano Gil was born in Amalfi, Antioquia on 2 July 1957, the sixth of 14 children of landowners Jesus Antonio Castano Gonzalez and Rosa Eva Gil Meneses and older brother of Fidel and Carlos. Due to the large size of his household, he was forced to leave school at the age of 12 to assist his father with his properties. Upon reaching maturity, Vicente departed for Venezuela searching for opportunities and remained there for two years. The entire Castano family was struck when in 1981, patriarch Antonio was kidnapped for ransom by the FARC guerrillas and murdered despite payments being sent on behalf of his children: this led to Fidel and Carlos, who were already renowned drug traffickers in Medellin, becoming paramilitaries and founding the first self-defense groups in Eastern Antioquia. At this time, Vicente entered the mining and gold trade and began involving himself in illicit activities as well. An arrest warrant was issued against him in Germany in 1989 when a 650-kilogram cocaine shipment allegedly belonging to him was intercepted in Munich, although Castano always maintained he was set up by his brothers' partner and later enemy Pablo Escobar.
Following his brother Fidel's murder by Carlos's hand in 1994, he summoned Vicente to a meeting where they agreed to work together to unify the different self-defense groups in the area under a single banner in order to confront the rural far-left guerrillas, and the two founded the Peasant Self-Defenders of Cordoba and Uraba, with "El Profe" coordinating the manpower needed for this task and recruiting many of the initial members of the group that would later rise to be relevant commanders in the organization, such as Salvatore Mancuso or Carlos Mauricio Garcia Fernandez "El Doble Cero". He also started taxing local entrepreneurs for the cause, employing the method of dumping the bodies of dead revolutionaries outside the properties of those that did not commit entirely to the new demands to motivate their cooperation. With the ruthless and efficient initiative of the paramilitaries, the Castano brothers were able establish the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia in 1997, quickly becoming the second largest private militia in the country. The continued financing of the group, which Vicente was in charge of, was also made possible through his partnership in the cocaine trade with drug lord and fellow paramilitary Diego Murillo Bejarano "Don Berna", who transported his and Castano's loads through the country's northern coast to the United States.
At the front of his Centauros Bloc of the Self-Defenses, and also supervising the Calima Bloc through Commander Hebert Veloza "HH", he also took a violent approach against the Colombian left and the labor unions that supported it, being responsible for the attacks on, kidnappings and murders of Sintraemcali laborer Diego Quiguanas Gonzalez and National Workers' Federation President Wilson Borja in 2000, Liberal former Governor of Arauca Luis Alfredo Colmenares Chia and Congressman Octavio Sarmiento Bohorquez in 2001, SUTEV integrants Marco Antonio Beltran Banderas and Alexander Amaya Bueno and FARC member Julio Enrique Galeano in 2002. With the arrival of Alvaro Uribe to the presidency, Vicente and Mancuso pushed Carlos and the rest of the Self-Defenses to sit and negotiate a peace agreement to end in the eventual complete disarmament of all personnel and reintegration into civilian life. These terms were formalized at Santa Fe de Ralito, Cordoba in 2003, where the paramilitary leaders agreed to cease their activities and surrender to justice within two years at the latest, so long as the Colombian Government assured their resocialization and internment in common rural colonies to serve out their respective sentences.
Despite these promises, the Uribe administration gradually imposed conditions onto these accords with Peace Commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo, and the following years saw several paramilitaries arrested and extradited to American prisons. The upper echelon of the Self-Defenses felt betrayed, and this was compounded by Carlos Castano's deal with the Drug Enforcement Administration to hand over his fellow commanders in exchange for relocation outside the country. At that point, they voted on his execution, and Vicente oversaw the operative to kill his own brother through his underling Jesus Ignacio Roldan Perez "Monoleche", whose squad surrounded Carlos and shot him dead at his ranch in San Pedro de Uraba in 2004. Now sought for extradition with Don Berna by the United States and taking over the leadership of the Forces, as well as all of the family's prized art and livestock interests, which amounted to more than $112 billion, el Profe stayed as reticent as ever to go along with the peace deal, and after willingly disbanding the entirety of the Centauros Bloc in 2005, was one of the few initial paramilitary chiefs who remained fugitives from justice. He again failed to surrender himself in 2006, and faced with his complaints that the original demands were not being fulfilled, President Uribe and Commissioner Restrepo began devising a plan to kill him.
Death[]
The Government initially attempted to hire Don Berna's man Daniel Alberto Mejia Angel to kill Castano, freeing him from prison and letting him return to his stomping grounds, but that scheme failed when he was killed by his superiors for trying to muscle his way into the top of the criminal gang La Oficina de Envigado. They then went to the incarcerated Berna, his right-hand man Carlos Mario Aguilar Echeverri "Rogelio" and Vicente's subordinate HH, who betrayed him, as well as other traffickers and paramilitaries who held him accountable for the failed peace deal and resented him living in hiding while they served their sentences. At that moment, they decided he had become a liability and began spreading the rumor that he was cooperating with the DEA with help from his wife and narco-entrepreneur Luis Guillermo "Guillo" Angel Restrepo. Afterwards, this group located and restrained Byron Alfredo Jimenez Castaneda "Gordo Pepe", el Profe's assistant and one of the only people who knew of his whereabouts, holding his family hostage and forcing him to get in contact with Juan Fernando Velez Isaza "Panina", his only other point of contact. The two met in Medellin and Pepe told his friend that if they did not comply, they would both be killed. At that point, Panina gave the killers the route to Vicente's Salsipuedes finca in Nechi, Antioquia. On 17 March 2007, a team composed of Rogelio's men and corrupt Colombian National Police which was led by La Oficina lieutenants Mauricio Cardona Lopez "Yiyo" and Pedro Antonio Lopez Jimenez "Job" rolled into the property. Castano saw them coming and returned fire before running inside the house. Surrounded, el Profe went into the restroom and shot himself in the head. His attackers proceeded to grab his dead body, dismembering it and photographing his severed head to prove he was dead before the American authorities, then throwing his remains into the Cauca River.