While the word sicario has been in use for thousands of years, these days when you talk about sicarios you are referring to none other than contract killers or hired assassins. They are generally professional assassins who act as mercenaries, offering their services to the highest bidder. In Latin America, they constitute actual organized gangs and even form part of important paramilitary groups.

Sicarios in Spain

While the word sicario has been in use for thousands of years, these days when you talk about sicarios you are referring to none other than contract killers or hired assassins. They are generally professional assassins who act as mercenaries, offering their services to the highest bidder. In Latin America, they constitute actual organized gangs and even form part of important paramilitary groups.

One notorious assassination attempt occurred June 17, 1999, in Madrid. Laura Fernández Navarro, then wife of controversial attorney Emilio Rodríguez Menéndez, contacted Ignacio Rocha, member of the ‘Casper” gang, to end her husband’s life. When the attorney’s Mercedes arrived his garage door, a Kawasaki ZZR600 motorcycle pulled up along the right side and the man riding shotgun took out a revolver and shoot Rodríguez Menéndez, hitting him in the lung. After crashing into various cars and taking out two trees, chauffer and body guard, Daniel Maristany Ruíz pulled out a pistol and fired eight times at the fleeing motorists, wounding the occupant of the back seat.

Sicarios, like any other hired assassins, will perform whatever type of crime-related job. Their interest is purely economic, which is why they offer their professional services to anyone who requires them. They make assassination into an actual life style, as well as a very lucrative profession. Jobs are often performed out of loyalty to the same boss or patron, but sicarios don’t hesitate in accepting other jobs as a kind of “overtime.”In some cases, sicarios have previous training. Many are former members of police forces or soldiers from Eastern or Latin American countries.


To this is owed their great skill at carrying out crime for hire without leaving tracks, since they know exactly what to do and how to do it. In other cases, sicarios are inexpert youths who see mercenary work as an easy form of survival.

The jobs most frequently performed by sicarios are the assassinations of important people, such as businessmen, government officials, members of rival mafia groups or simply enemies of the client. “The sicario kills and goes,” is how a high police commander describes it in an article published in the daily “La Razón.” They even come from abroad to commit the crime and quickly return from whence they came. They also place bombs, provoke accidents or defend targets.

Generally, sicarios act in two clearly identifiable ways.



- In public, that is, eliminating the indicated target without caring whether other people are around, presenting the incident as a simple act of terrorism or even assault.

- Or the “clean” way, in a quick and effective manner without witnesses to compromise them (or also eliminating those would may have witnessed the crime). Also commonly known as the “covert” way, when the criminal act must appear to be an accident, a suicide or a death in unusual circumstances.

These mercenaries prefer to act alone, as it is a job that brings with it many perils. Even contact with clients is very punctual and usually brought about through other members of the organization, to insure that executing sicarios and the clients never see each others’ faces and so avoid future problems.

Modus operandi of Sicarios in Spain

The modus operandi of sicarios in Spain is very simple: the client is put in touch with a member of a criminal organization, who then hires a South American sicario to travel to Spain to do the job. The latter, upon his arrival in Spain, remains hidden in a safe house until the moment comes for him to carry out the job. After completing the job he goes back to his country to wait for another one.

The sum received by sicarios varies greatly depending on the target. An important businessman, a person associated with the government or a mafia capo will reap a much greater financial reward than finishing off a person without public notoriety. Even so, there are always sicarios willing to do these types of “minor” jobs.

According to police forces, sicarios aren’t a real problem in Spain. But the numbers show that this class of homicide has been responsible for five to ten percent of violent deaths in Spanish territory in past years and the perpetrators are almost never arrested. Numbers, in any case, very different from those reflected in Latin America. On that continent, sicarios, when they opt to work in groups, compose actual armies.

It’s no coincidence that the greatest presence of hired assassins is found in key countries associated with drug trafficking. Columbian sicarios, many in the service of the narcotics clans, are infamous and often hired from abroad to perform jobs. In Mexico, gunmen from the states along the US border are widely feared; they make up actual criminal organizations and impose their own laws in their respective territories. Also in Paraguay, one of the world’s biggest producers of marijuana, mercenaries, often Brazilian, work defending the cannabis plantations. Meanwhile, in Brazil, there are already armed bodies capable of confronting any force of order.

Etymological origin

The origin of the word sicario can be traced to the Roman occupation of Palestine. The Jewish sect of the sicarios, also known as Celotas, was the first to use si carri. A si carii was someone who hid a spear, known as a sica, in his robs and stabbed the Romans and their sympathizer during public assemblies. This word has endured through time and has a taken on the meaning widely known today, which is to denote hired assassins or straight out mercenaries, who may act alone or in groups, spreading fear among their enemies

By Carlos Cabezas López