There is not a day that journalist Robert Posada, 40, does not miss Marcelo, his 12-year-old Boston terrier. He sees him very little since his return to Tuluá.
After 15 months in exile, he considered that it was best for the dog to continue under the care of the veterinarian to whom he had entrusted it before traveling.
Two weeks ago he visited him and is still affected by the farewell.
He “chased me to the door.
He wanted to go with me.
"Sometimes I think it's better not to see him because it hurts me a lot to say goodbye," he says, looking behind his shoulder from the passenger seat.
The scene reveals why he cannot stay with Marcelo.
An armored truck with three escorts from the National Protection Unit (UNP) takes him to the center of the city of 230,000 inhabitants.
He is one of the most visible victims of the wave of violence that is experienced in the heart of the department of Valle del Cauca.
A traffic officer was murdered, another injured and six taxis set on fire was the result of last Saturday, February 10.
It was a flurry of crimes carried out by members of the La Inmaculada gang as retaliation for the capture, the day before, of one of its leaders, Mauricio Marín, alias
Nacho
.
Subsequent investigations revealed that the order to spread terror came from prison.
Andrés Felipe Marín, alias Pipe
, Nacho's brother,
sent it .
Authorities arrested four people, including two young people, ages 14 and 17.
One of them said that they were promised payments of 400,000 pesos (100 dollars) for each homicide and 140,000 pesos (35 dollars) per burned car.
They are not new or isolated facts.
A week before, on Saturday the 3rd, the Police had deactivated a car loaded with explosives in the vicinity of the Mayor's Office.
It is Wednesday, February 14, and the anti-explosive truck used in that episode is still parked in the main square of Tuluá.
Security fences were installed on the surrounding streets, interspersed on the right and left, forcing vehicles to move slowly in a zigzag pattern.
“They did all this to prevent a hitman from being committed and they would escape easily,” says Robert.
The truck transporting him stops a few meters ahead.
The man gets off, enters the City Hall, crosses a metal detector and goes up to his office.
A police officer in a bulletproof vest guards the entrance.
A dozen officials, inside, carry out their work refreshed by the air conditioning.
None of them say it out loud, but they are afraid to be there, working.
The fear generated by the situation increases when having a person threatened with death as a boss.
This is what some municipal workers unions have expressed to Robert, who has the communications on his desk.
A member of the Colombian army guards a street in Tuluá.Andrés Torres Galeano
With the same frankness he says that he accepted his position as Secretary of Institutional Development precisely so that he would not be killed.
He has been receiving pamphlets, anonymous messages and funeral wreaths for more than three years.
The multiple investigations and articles that he published in different media about La Inmaculada's links with people linked to the last Administration - which governed from January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2023 - made him a declared enemy of the gang.
In September 2021, walking through the La Esperanza neighborhood, he was attacked by several men, in what he describes as “intimidation.”
“The only journalist who referred to that attack was Marcos Montalvo, saying that it was worrying that something like this happened and no one spoke out,” he recalls.
A seasoned 68-year-old journalist, Marcos was his friend and, like him, was threatened for denouncing acts of corruption in the Transit Secretariat, in which La Inmaculada allegedly had influence.
The sound of computer keyboards begins to be heard outside Robert's office.
He is silent.
As best he can, he stammers a few apologies before bursting into tears.
After a few minutes, he resumes the evocation of him.
Marcos was murdered five days after the attack on Robert, just two streets away.
A hitman approached him while he was talking with some friends in a store and shot him four times in the chest.
No one else was hurt or robbed.
The perpetrator pulled the trigger, got on a motorcycle and escaped.
The message was clear.
Robert, however, decided to continue publishing.
It was a matter of time before something happened to him.
Faced with imminent danger, the Foundation for Freedom of the Press (FLIP) and Reporters Without Borders helped him leave the country in July 2022. He traveled through Mexico City, Madrid and La Paz.
The threats did not stop during the exile.
“They sent me to tell me that they knew I had left Colombia, but that I had left my family here, that they knew their routines and where they lived.”
The organizations could not continue financing his support, he spent all his savings, he was left full of debt.
“The most interested in not killing me are my friends, to see if I pay them what they lent me,” he adds, laughing but with his eyes still watery.
Robert Posada, journalist and Secretary of Development of Tuluá, on February 14.
Andrés Torres Galeano
With the little money he had left he bought a return ticket in October 2023. At the El Dorado airport in Bogotá, a member of the UNP was waiting for him, who warned him that he should not return to Tuluá.
The spirituality that he did not develop as a young man, he assures, came to the surface at that moment.
“I asked God to do his will,” he says and shows a picture of the archangel Saint Michael that he carries in his wallet.
He attributes the proposal that Gustavo Vélez, a former mayor who at that time was seeking a second term under the endorsement of the Conservative Party, to divine collaboration.
“The most threatened mayor in Colombia”
To identify the mayor's office you only have to follow police officers and bodyguards.
As one approaches, their number grows.
Outside, leaning on a counter, his wife, Luz Elena Londoño, is waiting for the mayor, who told the
Cali newspaper
El País
that her husband is “the most threatened mayor in Colombia.”
An official approaches her to say goodbye to her, arguing that she “is about to leave for the school route.”
Questioned about the strange term, she laughs and explains.
“They call it that because they leave with police, escorted to the houses, as if it were a school route.
“They have to take turns because there are not enough vans to take them all in one trip.”
Mayor Gustavo Vélez, 54, opens a wooden door and appears smiling.
He wears jeans and a light blue shirt.
It's lunchtime, midday, and in the basement of the Mayor's Office a caravan of motorcycles and armored vehicles is waiting to take you to eat sancocho, a traditional soup from the region.
He is accompanied by his wife and Robert, whom he has hosted since he returned to Tuluá.
“As soon as I arrived, they canceled my reservation at the hotel because I supposedly posed a danger to the staff.
The mayor then told me to stay at his house and advise him on campaign communications.
He won and appointed me secretary to protect me from any attack,” comments Robert gratefully.
Mayor Vélez's house was, in principle, his recreational estate.
He had no alternative to moving there after receiving dozens of intimidations when he was a candidate.
Although 25 men are in charge of his security, the president jokes about the situation.
“Why am I going to give myself a bad life for that?
I am blessed.
I have been with my wife for 39 years, and she puts up with me after so long,” he asserts.
But his life has been significantly affected.
A young man is inspected by a member of the Colombian Armed Forces.
Andrés Torres Galeano
Upon arriving at the farm, a grandson throws himself into his arms.
The other three, as well as their four children, moved to other municipalities for fear of being the target of attacks.
It is not for less.
In the months before the vote, held in October, her first-born son's office was shot at and his parents' house received a fragmentation grenade.
Fortunately, only material damage was reported.
Those responsible, Vélez points out, belong to La Inmaculada, which distributed pamphlets ordering journalists in the area to refrain from covering their political campaign "if they did not want to become a military objective."
Óscar, the son who is visiting, is convinced that the reason for the criminal group's animosity towards his father dates back to his first stage as mayor, between 2016 and 2019, when Vélez fought them.
La Inmaculada—named after the neighborhood in which it was founded—was already established as the main criminal group in Tuluá.
It had taken its first steps, like almost all organizations of that style, by taking over the micro-drug trafficking market, and later jumped into extorting merchants.
“They charge them to let them sell products.
They have even killed food distributors for not having their authorization,” says Óscar.
The Prosecutor's Office has indications that the gang had control over the hiring of some Mayor's Secretaries in other periods.
Seeing how the posters he hung were removed and burned, Vélez chose to do electoral proselytizing in a different way.
He turned his efforts to social networks and hired former military man and paraglider Jorge González to fly over the municipality with a banner from his campaign.
It was his bet to show himself.
The outcome was bittersweet.
He swept the polls with 41,340 votes—well above the 22,082 of Ever Villegas, his rival—but it cost the life of González, who was murdered in October after making an emergency landing in a sector controlled by La Inmaculada.
“He managed to call us, he told us where he was, but when we went to pick him up they had already shot him,” says Luz Elena Londoño.
The mayor of Tuluá, Gustavo Vélez, is one of the most guarded and threatened politicians in Colombia.
Andrés Torres Galeano
It was not the only death.
On December 31, one day before Vélez's inauguration, hitmen attacked Eliecid Ávila, the only conservative councilor who had been elected in the regional elections.
He died two days later.
“I'm not going to lie to you, it's been hard.
We were also clear about what it was going to be like.
And so far we are just starting, they are not going to break us.
Yes or no, Robert? “Vélez says and raises his head, looking for his secretary, guest and friend of his.
The fear
This same Wednesday, around midnight, more than 30 members of the Police enter the La Inmaculada neighborhood.
The trucks and vans that transport them only reach the main roads.
At one point the uniformed men go down with flashlights, helmets and rifles to explore the narrow, unpaved alleys on foot.
Some blocks remain desolate and in others there are minors in a park or neighbors chatting around a table, playing chess.
The movements of the different units – there are uniformed special operations, anti-narcotics and anti-terrorism – were previously defined through images taken by drones.
In command of the operation is Colonel Nicolás Suárez, 40 years old, the top person in charge of security in Tuluá since last October.
Under his command he has nearly 500 men and women of different specialties.
They were the ones who managed to capture those responsible for the burning of taxis on Saturday, February 10.
“We located checkpoints at the entrances and exits of the municipality.
There they fell,” he says.
In his opinion, in addition to the arrests, it is key to undermine the economic support of the criminal gang.
“We have to hit their finances, identify who is willing to launder their money,” he adds.
Suárez, like many of his subordinates, has received messages from his relatives expressing concern that something will happen to him.
Members of the special commandos guard the city after the events that occurred on February 10. Andrés Torres Galeano
In the streets, people prefer to remain silent.
A street vendor located at the exit of the San Bartolomé parish complains about the sales, which are unusually bad for an Ash Wednesday.
He blames “the bandits and the mayor, for how hot [dangerous] they made the town.”
Minutes later he refuses to continue speaking.
He says two men warned him “not to be loud with journalists.”
The scene is repeated with another group of men who are around the elderly and feed the pigeons.
"Which owes nothing fears nothing.
I will not comment further because you know that this is delicate,” says one of them.
The violence in Tuluá, a city more populated than medium-sized departmental capitals such as Riohacha or Tunja, has gained relevance on the national agenda.
Iván Velásquez, the Minister of Defense, was visiting this Friday and led a security council.
He announced that the Government will support the mayor in his fight against crime.
Vélez, among other things, wants his children to be able to return and for his parents to live without fear.
“No one wants to sit with my mother when she goes to mass.
The other ladies change their clothes out of the anxiety of being seen with her and something done to them.
“She complains to me,” he concludes aggrieved.
Police patrol a street in the Valle del Cauca city.
Andrés Torres Galeano
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