Claudio Salazar (died 1994) was a high ranking member of the Norte del Valle cartel before his death at the hands of the Cali Cartel in January of 1994.
Biography[]
Born to Gerda Salazar, a notorious smuggler and one of the leaders of the Norte del Valle cartel; Claudio immersed himself with the activities of the cartel at a very young age.
Sometime in the 1980s, he started doing business with Gilberto and Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela of the rising Cali Cartel. He soon develops an animosity towards the young and successful smuggler Hélmer Herrera and they both developed a feud.
In 1994, Claudio and his wife are invited to a party hosted by the Rodriguez brothers in Cali. During the party, Gilberto makes a controversial announcement about the surrender deal which was brokered between the cartels and the government, which forced all cartels to cease operations within six months in exchange for lenient prison sentences. Claudio, just like most of the Norte del Valle leadership, isn't pleased with the deal and later at the hotel apartment, rants about it to his wife before going out to a bar. The conversation is taped and sent to the Cali cartel leadership. Miguel Rodriguez, who hated the way Claudio treated the wife convinced Gilberto that it would be safe to kill Claudio than be sorry. Seizing the opportunity, Herrera and his gang confront Claudio; where they present him with a bottle of aguardiente. Herrera dances with a patron of the bar, before returning to the table to share the aguardiente with Claudio. Instead, to take revenge, Herrera ends up smashing his head with the bottle and chaining his body to four Harley Davidson motorcycles moving away from each other, quartering him. Claudio's body is later covered with chicken wire and dropped into the river to feed the fishes.
Claudio's wife Maria later became Miguel's mistress, and had Jorge Salcedo and Navegante kidnap his son from Gerda. After Miguel's imprisonment, Maria moved in with Claudio's boss Orlando Henao Montoya.