Villa Verde: El Wey

The coca capital province where the cartel exploits a pyrolusite mine.

• OperatioN: Production
• Chief: El Wey
• Ecosystem: Jungle

This province follows the high, jungle-covered valley of Rio Habana. The valley has allowed the construction of an important road and of secondary roads. The river is used as a communication way. This accessibility facilitated the creation of a large capital city in the heart of the jungle: Villa Verde. Other settlements are the small town La Marqueza and the villages of Marco and Palmeras. Marqueza and Maco are dedicated to coca activity, Palmeras relies on fishing. Human activity is focused on the coca culture. The fields are cultivated in clearings carved in the jungle by the cocaleros themselves.

This province has always been the heart of coca culture. The main coca market, where cocaleros from Villa Verde and other provinces came, was found in the center of the city. Today, the Santa Blanca buys all the coca production on the Villa Verde market. Coca bags are sent under heavy guard to Ocore labs. The syndicate of cocaleros built there one of its national headquarters, where El Yayo worked as syndicate manager of cocaleros.

Santa Blanca has developed another activity, a pyrolusite mine and the necessary labs to refine the extracted ore. This mine has become as precious to the cartel as coca production in Villa Verde. Sueño handed El Wey the responsibility to install a modern mine and associated labs. Ambitious and efficient, the Mexican has rapidly reached his objectives with the help of engineers from Barvechos Plata.

Today the mine produces about twenty tons of Pyrolusite per week. The ore is sent to labs installed in the province where cartel chemists work under El Wey’s supervision. There, they create part of the chemical precursors that allow cocaine synthesis. Chemical precursors are submitted to a very restrictive legislation that handicaps cartels. It is difficult for them to get some without corrupting many people. So for the cartels it is more cost-efficient to produce some of these precursors themselves, such as Ammoniac, Permanganate of Potassium, Acetone, Ether, Ethyl and, Hydrochloric acid.

Once produced, these chemical precursors are sent under high guard to cocaine and coca paste labs in Ocoro.

Pedro Gil, aka El Wey (The Guy)

BORN: 12/12/1988 in Toluca, Mexico

CARTEL POSITION: Pyrolusite Mine Supervisor

Coming from a miner’s family, he learned that profession in his childhood years. He befriended El Boquita in elementary school. They lost contact for some years when Pedro went to continue his studies in the nearest city. They met again as teenagers and El Boquita quickly offered him his first cartel job in a cocaine lab. Ambitious and curious, but not that smart, he started to experiment with the lab chemicals. He wanted to be known as the guy that would make the best cocaine in the world. But he ended up badly burning his face.

He’s the person in charge of the process of extracting the pyrolusite and transforming it in the chemical agent that allows the Cartel to turn coca leaves into high quality cocaine. He sends this agent to all The Bolivian Narco-labs. Self-conscious about his burns, he tries to compensate for it, showing a great sense of humor. Within the Santa Blanca he’s known as the funny guy. But if he feels that someone is judging the way he looks, he gets violent and destroys everything.