He woke up late that day, with the sun already scorching the red brick of a two-story house on the outskirts of Cali. The air inside was suffocating. He saw on the wall the picture of red roses that he had drawn for his mother – Mom, I love you – and the picture of the Looney Tunes that he had hand-painted for his son – I love you Liam David -. He was not very tall, had short hair, a dark complexion and small, hard eyes. He washed his face, ate breakfast, and dressed in the poorly folded clothes he kept in a plastic zippered closet. The change of clothes he put in a backpack was the only indication that he was going on a trip. It was a few minutes before noon when he met his grandmother.
“In the name of God, grandmother.
“May the Lord bless you, Dad, where are you going?”
“I’m going there, I’ll come back now,” he replied, without meaning to say exactly.
Determined, the boy crossed the threshold and descended the spiral staircase that led to the sidewalk: he had to kill a man.
Johan David Castillo López, alias Ito, was the 18-year-old Colombian hitman who, along with four other gunmen, attacked Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio on August 9th. In a video, Villavicencio can be seen getting into his truck after a rally, surrounded by his bodyguards. In a split second, Ito appears like a shadow in front of the vehicle, dressed in jeans, a loose white T-shirt and a cap on his head. Nobody notices him until he pulls out a gun and starts shooting. Ito flees in the middle of the street until he is shot by one of the politician’s bodyguards. He falls and a few seconds later a police officer arrives and starts kicking him to take the gun away. Ito tries to get up and run, but collapses again. He is seriously injured. Another officer grabs him by the arms and leads him to the sidewalk.
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Nancy Lopez, grandmother of Johan David Castillo López, aka “Ito,” in her home in an Eastern California neighborhood.Christian EscobarMora
From here there are different versions. In one case, the killer is shot twice and a crowd of people who, after a few moments of confusion, have only just realized what has happened, beat him until he is close to death. In another case, as explained by authorities, Ito receives nine shots that immediately leave him dry. In any case, five minutes earlier he had finished the work that had taken him to travel by road from Colombia to Ecuador. His family received the coffin containing his body seven days later, on the 16th, and paid for the repatriation themselves with contributions from family and friends. They buried him in Cali’s Central Cemetery, a labyrinth of tombs and pantheons that is difficult to navigate. They did not engrave a message on marble. They handwrote her name on a cardboard box that they placed over their niche.
An almost life-size photo now hangs in the living room of Ito’s family home in the Lagunas neighborhood. The boy, who would soon turn 19, poses with the victory sign. He wears a thick watch, a denim shirt and black trousers. He’s leaning against the hood of a white car that looks like his, but wasn’t. He saw it parked on the street and liked it. Ito did not own a car or a motorcycle. He used his brother-in-law’s bike. He didn’t have a cell phone either. When he went to Ecuador, ostensibly to work in construction, there was no way for his family to contact him. A week before the crime, he called his mother and sister to tell them he was fine and not to worry. “We haven’t heard from him since. Until we saw on the news that he had apparently killed someone and then they killed him. It was terrible,” said his sister Michelle Castillo in the kitchen. The balloons and red ribbons that decorated his coffin during the wake are still kept in his former room.
Photography by Johan David Castillo López, aka “Ito”.Christian EscobarMora
Michelle has tanned skin, Afro hair tied in a bun, and tattoos on her legs and arm engraved with the name of her brother, the most famous killer in recent times. Ito’s first job was as a seamstress in a workshop where he made pants and T-shirts. I was 15 years old then. After that, he literally worked full-time on the construction site: in the morning he worked as a laborer and at night he acted as a guard so that no one stole bricks and plaster. He soon had his first problems with the law. He seriously injured another boy in a fight. He was imprisoned in a juvenile detention center for two years between the ages of 16 and 17. In these last months he was unemployed and idle. His sister says that he used to be a joker and very talkative, but recently he has become quiet, taciturn and elusive. He became angry at everything.
Ito became a father very early, at the age of 15. Although he did not live with the mother and baby, he wanted to be a present father, not like the one he had, who left him when he was four and never came back. “His father was an irresponsible man. And the mother, my daughter, works like an external donkey in another house. Spend the day there,” explains Nancy López, the grandmother. The authorities and the press have spelled her nickname as H, Hito, all along, but the sister clarifies that this is a mix-up. She called him that when they were little because he moved in bed like a little worm, and from then on she chose the diminutive Ito. In her opinion, he was loving. Every day he opened the door to her room and said to her: Sister, I love you. To the grandmother, he seemed to be a man who followed the straight path of the Lord, because every time he met her he said “in the name of God.” “It got tired of saying it so often.” However, in the media he is considered a contract killer who committed an assassination attempt even though he was of legal age. Ecuadorian authorities believe he has killed before. They don’t believe that whoever organized the murder – certainly a drug cartel enraged by Villavicencio’s anti-crime speech – sent a novice to pick up the gun for the first time.
Ito lived in a poor area with few opportunities. The boys spend the day on the street with nothing to do. They drink rum from tiny glasses and dream of having money to buy a motorcycle. Nobody gives them anything, they don’t enjoy any privileges, they don’t have important friends because they don’t have many, they don’t even have an ID card. They don’t exist. If they go looking for a job and say where they are from, they are immediately rejected. Some of the most prolific gunmen in Colombia’s history grew up in this part of the city. A boy who is already a legend murdered 32 people. As a child, a social leader says he was mistreated by his neighborhood friends. When he grew up, he wanted to watch the world burn. The neighbors closed their doors and hid in their houses when they heard his footsteps from far away. One day, to the relief of many, someone paid him with the same coin. These guys kill and get killed. In his world, it’s much easier to keep an iron between your shirt and pants and achieve a certain gangster status than to find a formal job that allows you to make a living. The criminal networks that hire them, called offices, give them orders. For someone unknown and an easy target, they can pay a few hundred dollars. If the future corpse has a name, the bill increases to 1,000 or 2,000.
Junior Cáceres, tall, thin, thoughtful, straightens his hair and thinks of Ito, his brother-in-law.
“It’s difficult when you’re young and have to choose between a ticket and breakfast. Or between breakfast or lunch. That’s very difficult. You end up doing bad things. I sometimes warned him about the people he hung out with, but…
According to authorities, Ito was the one who recruited the remaining hitmen who traveled to Ecuador. Several of these boys came from a nearby neighborhood, Potrero Grande, a place recently planned and built by the state between 2005 and 2008. Scattered groups from the city that needed to be relocated ended up here. It was and is an extremely vulnerable population. Small houses measuring 40 square meters were built, with one room below and one above. Cali has 22 municipalities, this is the 21st. About 39,000 people live there. The neighborhood is divided into sectors, which led to rivalries. The boys from one sector faced off with those from another to the death. The most ruthless, those who were not afraid of dying, triumphed over the others. In recent years, this violence has declined sharply, in part due to the work of social leaders like Luis (not his real name).
Luis works in the Abriendo Camino program, which works to prevent children from falling into the world of crime. Many people pay attention to him because one day he picked up a gun and killed someone. He spent almost a decade behind bars. He points out to the boys that it’s not worth killing for sneakers and a tracksuit. Behind the place where we are having this conversation, the Somos Pacífico Cultural Technocenter, a few months ago a boy was killed who had murdered another three years earlier. He had rebuilt his life, he played football, he didn’t get into trouble. The past caught up with him.
Members of the Abriendo Paths project (a community health program for violence prevention and conflict resolution) post posters inviting them to a service fair in the Potrero Grande neighborhood. Christian EscobarMora
Luis wears a Nike hat, a flashy watch, rings and his arms are covered in tattoos.
“The boys live with death. I’m not justifying what they do, but who lives hungry? And when there is no other option, we always prefer the lesser evil: rob someone, okay, but not kill them.
24-year-old Diego Fernando Vargas learned about this biblical commandment late in life. He began committing crimes at the age of 12 and committed his first murder at the age of 15. He has only served time for one murder, but claims to have committed others. He spent between 16 and 22 years behind bars. “I liked killing more than stealing. “It was easy for me, nothing more,” he says on his motorcycle with his helmet on. He always carries it with him in case someone appears around the corner with the intention of taking revenge for his past actions. He has a gun in his house. He has a skull and the word “Your Nigga” tattooed on his neck, which he says is a drug cocktail that opens the doors to paradise. He swears he doesn’t want to get into trouble now. He has three children, one of whom is a baby. On weekends he sets up a mobile sausage stand on a corner.
Diego Fernando, in the Potrero Grande district. Christian EscobarMora
“We try to look for people with leadership qualities. We try to convince the children: You have a dream, I’ll help you,” intervenes Juan Camilo Cock, a skinny guy who, from a kilometer away, you can tell he’s riding a bike, the Colombians’ favorite pastime. Cock heads the Alvaralice Foundation, which specializes in social programs. Once, he says, Potrero Grande was the most murdered community in all of Cali. The level of violence has decreased and now takes place more underground. The school children meet in the parks to fight. Children grow up in a violent environment. As they get older, they attack each other first with stones, then with knives, and finally resort to weapons – after a while we will come across some 10 year old children playing with stabbing themselves with small sharp sticks.
For some parents, changing their minds about their children is not easy. Nelson López considered him a “good boy” who didn’t get into trouble. One night he came home and he was gone, he was gone. He went to Ecuador because life in Colombia was unbearable. He made a living washing cars or laying bricks on a construction site. He was looking for something better, something that would take him out of mediocrity. During his stay in Ecuador, he never communicated with his parents, not even called them. Something strange about José Neyder López Hitas, a boy who prided himself on being familiar.
The next time they saw his face, he was in a police photo along with five other Colombians suspected of being involved in the Ecuadorian politician’s murder. The portrait highlights the black legend of Colombia as a country that exports assassins. 17 former soldiers from here are in prison because they assassinated President Jovenel Möise in Haiti in 2021. And on the beaches of Cartagena in the Colombian Caribbean, Paraguayan anti-Mafia prosecutor Marcelo Pecci was shot dead.
In Nelson López’s small room, hidden behind a curtain, the radio is playing: “Abraham knew that God had the power to give him everything he asked for.” The man touches his bald head and looks into space as if he could to take you out of this nightmare for a few moments. As a child he took José Neyder to the Protestant church, but when he grew up he refused to go. He hoped that something divine had nevertheless taken root in his heart. But suddenly he was transformed into a vile murderer: “He was a sensible boy. A little guy who liked the camel. I don’t know why he made this decision. Maybe he got carried away by other people.”
Nelson Lopez, father of José Neyder López Hitas in his home in Potrero Grande. Christian EscobarMora
I pray for him every day, he says.
Not far from there, a few streets away, the fish in an aquarium and the cockatoos and parrots locked in cages have been left without an owner. Like everyone featured in this story, Andrés Manuel Mosquera left home one day and never returned. He is 30 years old and is the smallest of those shown in the police portrait. He is wearing a tracksuit and a white T-shirt, which is pulled up slightly at the moment of the flash. He had a criminal record for making weapons, which, according to his mother, blocked the way for many jobs. He served this sentence under house arrest.
Diana Ortiz, mother of Andrés Manuel Mosquera Ortiz, watches her son’s room. Christian EscobarMora
“I never felt like it was strange,” says Diana Patricia Mosquera, the mother. The day he left, he had a soda, bread and juice and said he was going to work in Ecuador to help his two daughters. It was the first time I left Colombia. Diana types “Fernando Villavicencio” into the Twitter search engine every day in case news about her son comes up. The Ecuadorian public prosecutor’s office accuses him of murder and drug trafficking. The consulate has sent the mother the requirements to visit her son in Guayaquil prison, but she does not have the money to make this trip. Andrés Manuel liked to box and dance. He left a fan, a speaker, a few hats and two pairs of sneakers scattered around his doorless room, as if he planned to come back the next day. His sister Tania believes he is innocent. His theory is that the police arrived at his brother’s home in Quito and took away all the Colombians there.
However, the police place them all at the crime scene, a crime planned by someone else. They were the executive arm. It takes you back to the eight minutes that passed from the moment the politician left the place where he was holding a rally until the moment Ito was shot down, two other people involved were arrested and two others fled on a motorcycle and shot, they fled. In order for all of this to happen, one morning three boys had to leave their neighborhoods in Cali to embark on a suicide mission. The role of José Neyder and Andrés Manuel remains unclear, but what is certain is that Ito stood in front of the truck and started shooting. He killed his target, but within minutes death would also claim him. Ito fulfilled his tragic fate to the letter.
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