Drug war in south Santiago: two drug lords and a police officer executed
Two narcotics leaders and a police officer were murdered in Lo Espejo in recent months. Investigators point to an imprisoned drug lord as a possible orchestrator.
Executions and territorial disputes shake the south of the Metropolitan Region
According to biobiochile.cl, the murder of two drug lords in less than six months, combined with the recent killing of a police officer in Lo Espejo, has once again exposed the violent gang war competing for control of the south sector of Santiago. Behind the crimes lies the figure of a narco boss operating from prison, in the midst of an area historically dominated by organised crime.
El Pájaro and El Poroto: two fallen leaders
The first to be killed was Robert Soto Guerra, 35 years old, known as "El Pájaro" and leader of the Los Pájaros gang. Soto Guerra operated from La Legua and was considered one of the most powerful drug traffickers in the south sector of Santiago until 19 March 2026, the date of his murder.
Héctor "El Poroto" Cárdenas Venegas, 45 years old, a narco from the José María Caro neighbourhood in Lo Espejo, attended his funeral. The closeness between the two was well known: amateur football was one of the bonds that united them. Cárdenas Venegas went on to work as manager of Juventud Polonia, a team from José María Caro that in 2010 competed in the Copa Chile and lost 13-0 to Audax Italiano.
On 22 September, El Poroto met the same fate as his colleague: he was executed.
A shadowy drug lord and foreign hitmen
The version gaining most traction among investigators points to César Liberona Miranda, alias "El Cojo César", as a possible orchestrator of both executions. Liberona, another historic name in narcotics in the area, was arrested in 2024 and is believed to have decided, from prison, to halt Soto Guerra's rise before he continued to grow. He would later have done the same with Cárdenas Venegas.
"Robert started to take a lot of power, started to grow", recounts a police source who has closely followed investigations in that area.
The relationship between the three was not always one of enmity. Police sources assert that El Pájaro and El Cojo César maintained some closeness, and that El Poroto was friends with both. Power in the south sector was not exclusive: it was disputed between clans, and the imprisonment of other leaders—such as the Marchants, whose gang fell in 2022—opened space for Soto Guerra's rise.
A new element distinguishes current violence from that of previous years: those carrying out the dirty work are no longer compatriots, but foreign paid hitmen. One of them is allegedly linked to the murder of Second Corporal of Carabineros Cristopher Aguilera Fernández, killed with a direct shot to the head during a patrol last weekend.
"In the south sector this is historical. It is like a geographical area of permanent settlement, a criminal enclave", notes a former prosecutor who knows the capital's underworld in detail.
Operation Betis as the connecting thread
Both executed narcos appear connected to the same drug supply network linked to Betis of Cerrillos, a neighbourhood club used as a front for trafficking. A PDI operation carried out in 2025 left eight people arrested, among them former professional footballer Cristopher Veas, alias "El Lory".
According to background information gathered during that investigation, the gang transported large shipments of drugs from the north of the country to Santiago and maintained direct ties with organisations in the south sector, including those led by Soto Guerra and Cárdenas Venegas.
"Those from Betis knew Robert, who managed the Legua Junior team, and they also knew El Poroto with the Varsovia team", notes one of the investigators who participated in the inquiries.
Prefect Eduardo Gatica, head of the Metropolitan Anti-narcotics Brigade, confirms this: "These investigations have a common factor, which is having originated from an initial investigation that was Operation Betis. An investigation developed in 2025 that succeeded in dismantling an important criminal organisation that brought large drug shipments from Bolivia, which was then distributed in the south sector of Santiago and where there was subsequently money laundering through front companies".
According to the officer, one of the principal buyers in that network was who later commercialised the drugs in the neighbourhoods of the sector.
State retreat and narco proliferation
The mayor of Lo Espejo, Javiera Reyes Jara, points to another factor: the retreat of the State in neighbourhoods as breeding ground for drug trafficking. The absence of sustained institutional presence in historically marginalised sectors would have facilitated the entrenchment of criminal structures that today operate with hired hitmen and distribution networks spanning from Bolivia to the streets of south Santiago.
Source: Google News CL — Santiago