Analysts reconstruct the profile of the leader of the Gulf Clan, who has been compared to the famous Pablo Escobar.
The weekend ended with the news that Colombia’s biggest drug lord, Dairo Antonio Úsuga, alias Otoniel, 50 years old and head of the Gulf Clan, had been arrested in a military and police mega-operation.
A great coup by the Government of President Iván Duque after months of being against the wall due to social protests.
According to Colombian analyst Sergio Guzmán, Otoniel It had control of a large part of the drug trafficking that sends its product abroad, so it is something that cannot be minimized and gives the Executive reason to celebrate.
“However, the drug trafficking business continues to rise and the power vacuum left by Otoniel it will most likely be filled by some other kingpin in the short term. They are already talking about a successor who they say Little Bad Boy (Jobani by Jesús Ávila). Then, this, as in the previous coups, will not be the end of drug trafficking or the Gulf Clan, it will continue as it continued when Pablo Escobar was killed or the brothers Miguel and Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela were extradited in the 1990s, ”says Guzmán , for which the profitability of this illicit business makes it very difficult for this to end, as there is a great demand.
He also mentions that the failed war on drugs has no results unless the course is straightened, and in two or three years the capture or death of another drug trafficker who could become more sadistic and cruel than Otoniel.
The Clan del Golfo, according to a map by Fundación Pares, has control of a very large part of northwestern Colombia and its Pacific coast.
For the government, the tactic continues to be to attack the structures of drug trafficking organizations, and insist on restarting aerial spraying with glyphosate, but it is unlikely that this will significantly reduce the capacity of these groups, according to experts.
President Iván Duque celebrated his arrest as the most forceful blow that drug trafficking has received since the death of Escobar, the king of cocaine who was shot dead in Medellín by the authorities, although in reality between the two there is an abyss of power, he recalls AFP.
Even the Colombian authorities offered as a reward $ 800.000 and those of the United States five millions dollars, a country that today awaits his extradition to try him for drug trafficking offenses.
A life tied to crime
The capo, who is accused of massacres, displacements, kidnappings and accused of pedophilia, was arrested on Saturday in a jungle area of northwestern Colombia, where he was born into a peasant family, in an action in the that some 700 uniformed soldiers participated, backed by 18 helicopters, according to the Army.
Otoniel He was the leader of the Clan del Golfo or Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia (AGC), a group dedicated to drug trafficking and heir to the paramilitaries Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), which currently has about 2,000 troops and a presence in more than 200 municipalities.
With his fall “the hegemony of a family disappears, the Úsuga, founders and head of the Clan,” he explained to EFE the director of the Peace and Reconciliation Foundation (Pares), León Valencia.
Elizabeth Dickinson, senior analyst for Colombia at the International Crisis Group, told this newspaper that this character began in his teens in the EPL (Popular Liberation Army), a left-wing insurgent group (demobilized in 1991), but his pragmatism led him later the peasant self-defense groups, that is, paramilitaries, who also demobilized. He was always linked to drug trafficking and organized crime, and was rising in the ranks among the post-paramilitary organizations that are now concentrated in the Clan del Golfo.
Dickinson believes that his capture is also important for the victims, since he is responsible or has been linked to acts of violence in Colombia for three decades. It is also a powerful achievement for the country’s intelligence, since it has a large amount of information on drug trafficking and its links with businessmen and politicians can be very important.
According to President Duque, Otoniel he was also a sexual predator. “It was known in the region to be looking for girls of 12, 13, 14 years old. He intimidated families and extorted them in order to have the virginity of his daughters ”.
In Colombia he had 128 arrest warrants for drug trafficking and recruitment of minors, among other crimes.
“He murdered more than 200 members of the public force (…); many soldiers have suffered on behalf of this murderer and his friends ”, denounced the president.
The Government of Colombia has already announced that it is working to send him to a jail in the United States, as an extradition order weighs on him, said Defense Minister Diego Molano, in an interview with the newspaper. Time.
“That is the way for all those who commit transnational crimes. (…) Almost 30% of the total tons of coca that were taken from Colombia belonged to the Clan del Golfo ”, the organization led by OtonielMolano added later in a statement to the media.
Despite the fact that in five decades of the fight against drugs, backed by the United States, Colombia has killed or captured several drug lords, the South American country continues to be the main producer of cocaine in the world and the Americans its largest buyers.
The most wanted narcos
Otoniel was the most wanted drug trafficker in Colombia and one of the main ones by the DEA (Drug Control Administration) of the United States.
His capture removes one from the list, but other Latin American drug traffickers remain at large.
According to the DEA, these are five other criminals in the region for whom it rewards for information about them:
- Rafael Caro Quintero, who next to Ismael “Mayo” Zambada leads the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico. The reward is $ 20 million.
- Zambada himself follows, with $ 15 million to know his whereabouts.
- Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes alias “El Mencho”, leader of the Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel. The reward is $ 10 million.
- The fourth was Otoniel, with five million dollars, who would have been captured thanks to information from the Gulf Clan itself, according to Colombian Defense Minister Diego Molano.
- The dominican Julio “Álex” Díaz He is also one of the most wanted drug traffickers for links in drug cases such as heroin, fentanyl and cocaine. He is Dominican.
- The list is closed by the son of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán ”, Jesus Alfredo Guzman, Who is wanted for possession and distribution of controlled substances.
These and other names from other regions of the world are present in the search lists of the United States for entering, or helping to do so, drugs for consumption within its borders. (I)
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