From the north of Cauca to the border with Venezuela, the routes full of mount, clandestine trails and drug trafficking corridors have been sown with unprecedented violence.
The explosions that destroy military vehicles, mutilate soldiers and paralyze entire peoples do not arise from nothing: they are the result of strategies designed millimetrically by three invisible leaders that, far from the battle front, pull the wires of the war.
One of those faces is that of Michael Fabiana Hernández Páez, better known as Alias Karina Cortés, a woman of just 26 years of age, but who has demonstrated a brutal efficiency at the head of the structure Jaime Martínez, one of the most radical features of the central General Staff (EMC) of the Disidences of the FARC.
WEEK He learned that his criminal career began at age 19, and in just seven he has promoted the role of squad leader and director of a guerrillas school in Naya, where he also executes war councils, which ends in shooting and punishments as barbarism acts.
Karina not only trains combatants. It also orders internal murders, manages financial resources and designs explosive attacks. One of the most recent occurred on March 26, 2025, when an attack on the Patia, Cauca sector was perpetrated by its order, using improvised explosive artifacts (AEI).
This operation, far from being an isolated fact, is part of a chain of terrorist actions that has been executed since 2022: from clashes with the ELN in Huisitó, to shooting of their own men in the shell and Yurumanguí, in Buenaventura.
Military intelligence sources that spoke exclusively with WEEK They describe it as a lethal operator, capable of combining armed violence with the manipulation of social movements, communal action joints and even indigenous leaders, to camouflage their true intentions under a pseudo -political clothing.
He carries a COLT CAR-15 rifle and maintain direct contact with aka Pablo Villa, another of the heads of the FARC dissidents, in addition to having properties in rural sectors of Valle del Cauca, from where he planned his displacements.
The woman was captured by the army, but sources of intelligence believe that her actions continue from her detention center.
In the center of Cauca, aka Rayo represents another key piece of subversive chess. His real identity is still unknown, but his influence on the armed structures of the structure Carlos Patiño is indisputable.
With more than 16 years of experience, this squad ringleader exercises control in the areas of El Plateado, the Sinai, the beauty and other paths of the Micay Canyon, in Algeria and El Tambo.
Rayo is the typical old school guerrilla: formed in weapons management courses, political work and military strategy, his leadership is based on fear. He directs extortion operations to coca growers and small illegal miners, but is also in charge of protecting higher leaders, planning ambush with explosives and executing forced displacements.
Its influence on territorial criminal intelligence is such that it coordinates clandestine support networks that inform you of army movements in real time.
The public force considers it a high value objective, responsible for cruel attacks with explosives in strategic corridors that connect to Cauca and Nariño. These attacks have left multiple military casualties and have sown terror among rural communities.
“Alias Rayo represents a high danger actor. Its neutralization is key to dismantling the logistics and financial networks of the Western Jacobo Arenas bloc,” says an intelligence report to which this means of communication had access.
Further, but no less lethal, there is Arturo Archila Rincón, aka Raúl or Nacho, the great strategist of the ELN Eastern War Front, who today directs its operations from Venezuelan territory, in the state of Apure, exactly.
With 59 years and more than three decades in illegality and terrorism, this leader is one of the most dangerous men in ELN. His power not only lies in his military experience, but in his ability to coordinate armed, political and financial actions in Arauca, Boyacá and Casanare, the so -called “ABC” of the armed conflict.
Alias Raúl has at least five capture orders, a blue circular of Interpol and is involved in some of the most serious attacks in recent years.
According to the military forces, he was the one who ordered the attack in Fortul in 2003, the murder of nine police officers in 2008, and the assault that cost the life of eleven soldiers in Boyacá in 2015. It has also been linked to the planning of the attack against the General School of Cadets Santander, in 2019, which left 23 dead.
In 2020, he ordered the kidnapping of an army noncommissioned officer in Saravena. From its sanctuary in Venezuela, where it moves between Puerto Contreras, Caño Azul and Puerto Córdoba, continues to coordinate the use of explosives to ambush military caravans, destroy energy infrastructure and send messages of power.
The offensive against these illegal armed groups does not stop in the different areas of the Colombian national territory.
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