Protagonist of ‘La Sierra’ arrested

Medellin Police Thursday arrested Jesus Alberto ‘El Mocho’ Martinez, paramilitary and one of
the protagonists of the 2005 documentary ‘La Sierra’ about paramilitary gangs in Colombia’s second largest city.

The 27-year-old criminal was captured in his neighborhood La Sierra together with three other alleged members of the paramilitary group ‘Los Desmovilizados’ (the Demobilized), newspaper El Tiempo reported.

‘El Mocho’ was one of three main characters in the documentary filmed in 2004 in the Medellin neighborhood of the same name as the film,

The film showed the then-22-year-old Jesus, who had his hand blown off when building a grenade, alongside his commander Edison and Cielo, the at that time 17-year-old girlfriend of a jailed member of the paramilitary group.

After involvement in gang wars with the local ELN guerrillas and later the Cacique Nutibara bloc of the AUC, Jesus initially was left out of the demobilization process, because he had lost his ID. In the documentary Jesus was portrayed frequently smoking marijuana and taking cocaine.

According to El Tiempo, Jesus did eventually demobilize as part of the Heores de Granada bloc, but later joined a new paramilitary gang.

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