Jaime Ramírez Gómez

Jaime Ramírez Gómez
File:Bg(f) Jaime Ramirez Gomez.JPG BG Jaime Ramírez Gómez
Brigadier General
Personal details
Born	July 4, 1940
Died	November 17, 1986 Fontibón

Jaime Ramírez Gómez (born July 4, 1940) was an official of the National Police of Colombia, who led a fight against the illegal drug trade in Colombia since the 1970s. For this reason, he became the national director of the Colombian drug enforcement unit, working in team with Minister of Justice Rodrigo Lara Bonilla against the Medellín Cartel. The biggest crush against the mafias was given by Colonel Ramírez on March 7, 1984 in a very well planned operation that involved DEA to locate and destroy a huge cocaine production camp in the middle of the jungles of the Yari River (between the departments of Caqueta and Meta) and known by the same mafias as "Tranquilandia" (the Tranquil Land). It triggers direct hostilities of the mafias against the Colombian State, starting with the murder of the same Minister Bonilla on April 20 and the Colonel two years after.

The importance of Brigadier General Ramírez against drug dealers has been highlighted many years after his murder as it is known the big damage made by the mafias to the Colombian and international communities. On August 10, 1992, 7 years after the murder of Ramírez, the Presidency of the Republic decreed his posthumous promotion to Brigadier general, a position that was set to be given to him one month after his murder.

Carvalho and the Queen of Cocaine

The fights of Colonel Ramírez started in the 1970s when he led the dismantling of a gang of counterfeiters and drug dealers in Bogotá, whose ringleader was a Brazilian man known as Iván Darío Carvalho, alias El Mocho, allegedly born in Medellín. The Police arrested him on April 1975 and found at his residence cocaine valued in 150 million Colombian pesos and equipment for the counterfeit of passports and visas. This operating led to the Police incursion to a property of El Mocho in the municipality of Tena, Cundinamarca, where they found connections with Verónica Rivera de Vargas, alias the Queen of Cocaina.

Chief of the Colombian Drug Enforcement Unit

The successes of Colonel Ramírez against the mafias brought him to the position of Director of the Colombian Drug Enforcement Unit at the same moment the political leader Rodrigo Lara Bonilla and a bitter enemy of mafia and corruption, was promoted to Minister of Justice by the presidency of Belisario Betancourt Cuartas (1982-1986). Ramírez and Lara made a team to search for connections with drug dealers and enlisted 30 persons, many of them participating in politics, and the discovery that the mafia was using several aircraft and legal airports to export illegal drugs to United States and Europe. With that information, Minister Lara ordered the suspension of any flight that was seen as suspicious, making a heavy blow to the mafia operations, as well to denounce dirty money in different political parties and even in sport teams.

The enforcement actions of Minister Lara against ringleaders such as Pablo Escobar Gaviria, Carlos Lehder, Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha, the Ochoa brothers (Fabio, Jorge and Juan David Ochoa), all known as the Medellín Cartel, make him a target of dead. The security protection for Minister Lara was strict under Colonel Ramírez and DEA, who frustrated a first attempt of murder in Medellín that led to the arrest of American Joseph Harold Rosenthal, alias Edward John Burn, involved in money laundering associated to narcotics.

The next big blow to mafias and probably the biggest one, was led also by Colonel Ramírez and DEA, with the compromise of Minister Lara. It was the destruction of a huge camp for the production of cocaine hidden in the jungles of the Yarí River, between the departments of Caquetá and Meta. The place was named by the same mafias as Tranquilandia (Tranquil Land) and the Police seized 1,500 kilograms of cocaine (13.8 tons) and arrested 40 persons in what was called the "Yarí 84 Operating" on March 7, 1984. The camp had 9 cocaine laboratories, 8 landing strips, health centers, communications and basic services such as water and electricity.

With the destruction of Tranquil Land, the mafias declared war on the Colombian State, starting with the murder of Minister Lara on April 30, 1984, seven weeks after the seize of the cocaine production camp.

Murder of Colonel Ramírez

The dead of Minister Lara brought terrible consequences for Colombia and for the same mafia leaders, who became also a target of international persecution, while the country was deeply divided between those who accepted the corruption from the mafia and those who join to fight it, many times without the support of the same State. Although it was a wounded mafia, it was powerful and began a chain of murders against political leaders, judges, policemen, journalists and everyone who dared to face it.

The name of Colonel Ramírez was put in the dead list of the mafia and it did not rest until could break his security to avenge the damage he did to its criminal network. On November 17, 1986, when he was returning with his family to Bogotá, men from a green Renault 18 began to shoot his own car in a bridge between the municipalities of Mosquera and Fontibón, profiting that he was without the convoy. Colonel Ramírez lost the control of his car and crushed against a rock, not far from a Police station. The assassins approached his car and shot to him in front to his wife and sons.

The murder of Colonel Ramírez was just one station in a macabre war of the mafia against the Colombian State in its attend to outsmart it. But it was also a milestone to fortify it promptly and with international support like DEA in order to hunt to the end the main ringleaders of the Medellín Cartel. On August 18, 1989 a successor of Ramírez, Colonel Waldemar Franklin Quintero, was also murdered by the same brain criminals, but 4 months after, on December 15, justice got its first meaningful victory on that war with the dead of Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha, alias The Mexican. The next was Pablo Escobar Gaviria, alias El Patrón, who gave up to the authorities in 1991, but making sure the Colombian government would compromise to a non-extradition regulation to the United States. But after he escaped and tried to recreate his war against the State, he was shot down by the Police Special Force on December 2, 1993.

Legacy

Although Colonel Ramírez was not properly recognize at his time for facing almost alone the monster of the mafia, his importance has gotten attention years after his dead, thanks to the historical revisions of different sources, including his own former enemies such as John Jairo Velásquez, alias Popeye, lieutenant of Pablo Escobar, who published a book, "Surviving Pablo Escobar" (2015), where he described the crimes of the Medellín Cartel.

Honorific Mentions

Colonel Ramírez was murdered one month before what would be his promotion to Brigadier General. But after his dead, the Direction of the Colombian Police suspended a posthumous promotion allegedly because "he died outside a police operation". After a legal battle of 7 years, the Presidency of César Gaviria Trujillo ordered the posthumous promotion of Ramírez.

Representations in Television

• In the series of Caracol Television, Pablo Escobar, The Drug Lord (2012) by Carlos Moreno, portraying the life of the drug lord, Colonel Ramírez is called "Colonel Jiménez" by actor Julio Pachón.
• In the series of Fox Telecolombia, Alias El Mexicano (2013) by Diego Mejía and Monica Botero, Colonel Ramírez keeps his same real name and he is performed by actor Rafael Novoa. In this series, Colonel Ramírez is one of the protagonists at the side of Minister Lara and some fictional characters that represent the fight of many people that faced the mafias without any fear to lost their lives.