Jorge Salcedo Cabrera was a counter-surveillance expert employed by the Cali cartel.
Salcedo was ingenious and intelligent, evident by his experiments with biodiesel during his youth. Salcedo met Carlo Cordova while serving in the Colombian Army and was recruited into Cordova's security firm, which provided security to the Cali cartel.
In the early 1980s, he inspected the hotel room in Panama, where a meeting took place between Cali cartel leader Hélmer Herrera and Mexican drug trafficker Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo. In the early 1990s, he served as the cartel's bomb-maker and made a variety of explosives to use during the hunt for Pablo Escobar. He was eventually promoted to head-of-security for the Rodríguez brothers.
After Escobar died in 1993, Salcedo considered leaving the Cali cartel and establishing his own security firm. However, Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela forced him to stay with the organization for six more months till they surrender to the Colombian government. He succeeded in catching a mole planted by the DEA during one of Gilberto's parties. The cartel later forcibly had Salcedo threaten a safety inspector to cover up the Yumbo gas incident. A few months later, Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela was arrested in a surprise Search Bloc operation. Miguel blamed Cordova for the arrest, and had him killed with his family. Miguel's son David, resented Salcedo and repeatedly looked for opportunities to pounce on Salcedo.
Fearing for his family, Salcedo contacted Chris Feistl and Daniel Van Ness, the two DEA agents responsible for Gilberto's arrest. Salcedo had them under surveillance ever since Gilberto's arrest. He struck a deal with the DEA in which he and his family would be placed in witness protection in the United States in exchange for Miguel's location. Despite a failed raid at first, Salcedo's information eventually led to Miguel's arrest by General Rosso José Serrano. David discovered Salcedo's ties to the DEA and placed a bounty on him, forcing him to leave Cali. However, the DEA forced Salcedo back to Cali in order to convince cartel chief accountant Guillermo Pallomari to turn states. Salcedo is forced to kill Navegante as he waited for the DEA agents to convince Pallomari.
After he and Pallomari testified against the Cali cartel in the US courts, he disappeared with his family into the DEA witness protection program as a mechanic.
Trivia[]
- He is one of the seven characters that appears in both Narcos and Narcos: Mexico (the other characters are Amado Carrillo Fuentes, Hélmer Herrera, Pablo Escobar, Poison, Navegante and Orlando Henao Montoya.