Daniel Rendón Herrera

Daniel Rendón Herrera (alias Don Mario; born 1966) is a Colombian drug lord. He was captured on April 15, 2009 while hiding in a jungle.^[1]

He was once the leader of the Los Gaitanistas drug trafficking parmilitary gang, formerly known as Auto-defensas Gaitanistas (Gaitanist Self-Defence Group), and founding member of the "Los Urabeños" criminal gang.^[2][3][4]

Biography

Daniel Rendón Herrera was born in 1966 in Antioquia to a poor family, one of 14 children.^[5] One of his brothers is the former paramilitary leader Freddy Rendón-Herrera, alias El Aleman (the German);another brother is evangelical pastor and paramilitary John Jairo de Jesús Rendón-Herrera, alias German Monsalve.^{[6][7][8][9][10]}

Daniel Rendón Herrera was second in command, after his brother, of the Elmer Cárdenas block of the ACCU (Peasant Self-Defense Forces of Córdoba and Urabá), a paramilitary group that belonged to the AUC (United Self Defense Forces of Colombia). He was a great friend of Carlos Castaño Gil, who was the top commander of the AUC; and in his honor named one of his organizations, called Heroes of Castaño, that later became a block of a new narco-paramilitary organization, created by himself, the AGC (Gaitanist Self-Defense Forces of Colombia), in which took command of 400 men in the Urabá region, and controlled the drug traffic, through alliances made with the guerrillas.^[11][12][13]

References