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Many may know Pacho Herrera from “Narcos,” played by actor Alberto Ammann, but do you know the real story behind the Netflix drama?

We’ve laid out a summarized version of the Cali cartel’s thriving business life. However, what about the inconspicuous man that earned all the money but passed on all the fame, Pacho Herrera? What was he like?

The short answer? Wild.

“Pacho Herrera, believed to be the son of Benjamin Herrera Zuleta, an Afro-Colombian smuggler known as the Black Pope, is a wealthy valley rancher with business interests in New York,” wrote TIME magazine in 2001.

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Although he wanted to remain low key, Pacho Herrera was probably the most well-known of the Cali cartel ring leaders, behind the Rodriguez Orejuela brothers. Interestingly enough, according to “Transnational Criminal Organizations, Cybercrime and Money Laundering” by James Richards, Herrera studied technical maintenance in high school and later earned a job in his expected field in the U.S. Additionally, while he lived in the United States, he worked as a jeweler and a broker before he entered into the cocaine business.

B.P.D

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According to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, Pacho started by selling small amounts of cocaine in an amateur operation. However, all of this quickly changed after he joined the Cali cartel. He visited Cali, Colombia to get a dealer for the New York circuit in order to help expand it. However, he noticed the business opportunities the Cali cartel offered and decided to expand trafficking routes to Mexico and conduct a super successful money laundering business instead.

As the DEA Immediate Press Release from 1996 details, “The violence and suffering caused by Herrera’s criminal activities ranged from the jungles of Colombia to the neighborhoods of Florida and the streets of New York.”

Pacho, the hustler, focused on his money; and boy, did he make a lot of it, especially after Cali promoted him within the cartel for his business prowess. Pablo Escobar had Florida locked down. Pacho, on the other hand, had the connections that opened New York for the Cali cartel. Business was booming.

Pacho and Pablo
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Soon, things got tense between Pablo and the Cali cartel as Cali insisted on a war with the leader of the Medellin cartel. “Final De Un Capo Que Empezó Como Mandadero” (“The End of a Mafia Captain that Started as an Errand Boy”) by El Tiempo explains that things especially got heated after Pablo assumed Pacho orchestrated the exploding car on January 18, 1988 at the Monaco building of the Antioqueña capital, which was Medellin cartel territory.

The article continues to report that Pablo called a hit on Pacho about two and a half years later on a soccer field outside of Candelaria with car bomb attack still on his mind. The spray of bullets killed 18 people and injured four others, but Pacho came out of the shooting unscathed. This would be the dance that Pablo, Pacho and the other Cali members would go through for years, until the Cali mafia was finally successful in the death of Escobar on Dec. 2, 1993.

A.P.D.

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The Snitch that Tanked the Cali Cartel

On Nov. 6, 1988, The Washington Post reported that Pacho himself bit the dust in the jail yard during a soccer game by a man posing as a lawyer named Rafael Angel Uribe Serna. It doesn’t seem like anything went too well for the Cali cartel after Pablo died. The front-runners of the cartel became more and more paranoid. They killed and tortured entire families that they felt were leaking information. However, it turns out the person leaking information was the man the Cali cartel brought on to take down Pablo, Jorge Salcedo. Oh, the sweet, sweet irony.

Salcedo would be integral in the arrest of the cartel front-runners, Miguel and Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela, in 1995. However, Pacho had been much more careful with his possessions and identities (real and fake) during Cali’s success. Because of this, it took the Colombian police longer to catch up to him. However, they consistently got closer and closer.

As reported by El Tiempo in the article, “Final De Un Capo Que Empezó Como Mandadero,” Pacho had avoided over 41 raids before he finally turned himself into the police on Sept. 1, 1996.

Pacho, The Snitch
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The Washington Post explains that after initially getting a sentence of six years and eight months with a one-million-dollar fine, Pacho sold out his own brother to get his sentence reduced. This action is most likely what lead to the jail yard murder just a few months later after his sentencing hearing. Snitches get more than just stitches in the cartel life, they get bullets.

After his death, no one could pin down the exact dollar amount of Pacho Herrera’s net worth. Factoring in his hidden assets makes determining the monetary value of his assets difficult. However, he most likely died a multi-billionaire. This could especially be the case, seeing as The New York Times estimates that the Pacho owned about 12 ranches and 32 companies.

Clearly, the cartel life was for Pacho. But the bigger they are, the harder they fall.

To find out the particular details behind what brought the end of the Cali cartel, view our article here.

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