"They have been 29 years of suffering": relatives of Pablo Escobar's victims

[Akrapovic]

A soccer referee, Álvaro Ortega, and an announcer, Miriam Naza, were two of the victims in the Caribbean region of the drug lord.

After 25 years of his death, there is no official figure of the assassinations attributed to Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria, head of the Medellin Cartel who was killed on December 2, 1993.
His son Sebastián Marroquín estimates 3,000 homicides ordered by his father. The police calculates at 5,500. But the number may be higher and includes policemen, journalists, judges, soccer referees and presidential candidates, among others.

Among those victims are the Bolivarian official Alvaro Ortega, murdered by assassins in the middle of Medellin in November 1989, when he was walking with a colleague, the Barranquillero Jesús Díaz.
Ortega, married to Betty Barrios, left two daughters, Monica and Lorena. His family, 29 years later, maintains that everything went unpunished. Nobody responded for this murder that forced, for the first time in the country, to suspend the professional soccer tournament.

Another victim was Miriam Naza Guzmán, Barranquillera journalist, who died in Medellin after a car bomb exploded attributed to the drug lord. Twenty-five years after the death of Escobar, these are his testimonies.

Jesús Chucho Díaz had ten years as referee of Colombian professional soccer when he decided to retire. "Pablo Escobar made me abandon what I was most passionate about," recalls the Barranquilla whistle after 25 years of the death of the feared drug lord.

On November 15, 1989, Jesús Díaz had been designated to be in the match between Medellín and América de Cali, at Atanasio Girardot, as well as his super friend Álvaro Ortega.

Chucho remembers as a film everything that happened that day, when he was walking through the Center of Medellín with Álvaro, and a few steps from the traditional hotel Nutibara there was an attack against the Bolivarian referee born in the village of El Roble, municipality of Guamo.

Ortega had been the central point of the one-way confrontation at the Pascual Guerrero in the capital of Valle. The 'Red Devils' won 3-2, Álvaro, with three minutes left until the end, he annulled a 'half volley' goal to Carlos Castro, from Poderoso de la Montaña.

That decision bothered Pablo Escobar, who ordered the coastal whistle to be killed, as reported by alias Popeye, deputy of Escobar Gaviria.

"I told Alvaro not to accept going to Medellin after that confrontation. I predicted that the only thing that Colombia lacked was the assassination of a referee. Unfortunately I was not wrong, "says Díaz. La Dimayor chose Orlando Reyes from Bogotá as the central defender, Ortega, line 1 judge and Díaz as the two for the one-way confrontation.

he wounds left by Pablo Escobar in Bolívar

29 years after the assassination of Bolivarian referee Álvaro Ortega Madero at the hands of assassins in the service of the head of the Medellín cartel, Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria, his family in Cartagena, Barranquilla and Lima (Peru) believe that the time has come to remove the case , tell some truths and make football pay for that death.

After the death of the most famous drug trafficker in the world, 25 years ago, the memories of his crimes in the Heroica always end up being in sport and the murder that destroyed the heart of the Ortega Barrios and Ortega Madero family and destroyed the national football, to the point that in 1989 was the only year in the history of Colombian soccer in which there was no champion after the President of the Dimayor, Alex Gorayeb, announced to the country, seven days after the assassination of Ortega, the suspension of the championship on November 22, 1989.

"Those who made the arbitration appointments, I'm almost sure, sold my brother to the mafia," he told EL HERALDO Egel Ortega Madero, who by the time of his brother's murder was 23 years old.

"How can one explain that on October 26 my brother is practically sentenced by Pablo Escobar for annulling a goal to Medellin for an infringement inside the area in a correct manner (went to forward Carlos Castro) and before a month he is designated to return to integrate the arbitration body for that same party, but in Medellín. That does not leave anyone an alternative to think something different. If today an arbitrator is not appointed for a prudent time after having some controversial action or is not assigned to direct a certain team by request. My brother was given these people so that Escobar could kill him, "he said.

For the widow of Ortega Madero, Betty Barrios, her daughters, Monica and Lorena, as the rest of their relatives in Cartagena have been 29 years of suffering in silence, no one has asked them how they did to get ahead, how they did to continue their lives with the emptiness left by his father, that is why they believe that the time has come for football to pay for that life that was lost.

"At the time, some gifts were offered that the family considered were not appropriate. The dignity and honor of my brother were not, nor are they negotiable, but today we see that soccer has been enriched, there are a kind of benefits that never came to my sister-in-law's family and my nieces.

Betty (the widow) is a single mother, she had to raise her two daughters alone, both are professionals (Monica studied cosmetology, lives in Barranquilla, has two children, and Lorena is a social communicator and because of her work she lives in Lima), they never they received only one benefit from the Dimayor or the Federation.

A house was offered in the Ciudadela neighborhood when Álvaro and his family lived in the Boston neighborhood of Barranquilla and considered that the change would not benefit the education of 3 and 5 year old girls at the time. Today, all of his relatives have studied the situation and we are going to sue the Colombian Football Federation and the Dimayor, "he announced.

Because of the death of Álvaro Ortega, the Colombian justice never issued a conviction; the confession of alias Popeye, head of sicarios of the Medellin Cartel, referring to Escobar's order to assassinate Ortega Madero, is the only truth after 29 years.