Hugo Renaldo

Hugo Jesus Renaldo, a character in HotZone, is a Brazilian mercenary. Hugo's Background Born in the slums of Rio, Huge Jesus Renaldo stabbed his first person when he was eleven, in a conflict over a soccer game. A teenage footsoldier for one of the many rival drug gangs, he was frequently thrown out of the tiny home by his African mother, and often the target of racial violence. At 14, his mother developed a relationship with an American aid worker, who relocated them to Chicago from 1984-1989. Hugo learned English, and that his tendency towards violence was useful in America as well. But a few weeks before his 19th birthday, he stabbed two rival gang members to death, and became a fugitive. His mother and stepfather gave him their meager savings and he hitch-hiked, robbed, and worked his way back to South America over the next several months. For the entirety of his twenties, Hugo was a trained mercenary for FARC [[1]] [[2]] [[3]] , a Marxist guerrilla organization in Columbia that claimed to represent the impoverished workers and funded violent operations through trade in cocaine to Mexican cartels. On a FARC assassination mission in Bogota in 1990, he was bribed successfully by CIA operatives to sabotage the mission. With American aid to Columbia increasing throughout the 1990s and culminating with the multi-billion dollar “Plan Columbia” in 1999, working as an assassin for both sides of the never-ending Columbian civil war was lucrative throughout his thirties. But one night was just “too hot”. While working with a dozen FARC rebels to place explosives on a bridge outside Medellin, two Columbian government Blackhawk helicopters attacked the operation; Hugo was a sole survivor by leaping into the 50m chasm, breaking his ankles in the shallow river below, and holing up in the jungle for two weeks, eating leeches and bananas to survive. Not knowing who to trust, he began an overland journey into Brazil. At 40, in 2010, Hugo found himself back in good old [Rio de Janeiro], his city of birth. After a few months of providing muscle for second-rate underworld elements, he walked into the office of a South African security firm that had been hired by the Brazilian government to deal with organized crime and internal terrorism. Hired on the spot, Hugo received paramilitary training and participated on numerous raids of terrorist compounds. Feeling it “get hot” again, Hugo has semi-retired from crime-fighting in Rio, and has looked outside the continent for lucrative private jobs for the past few years.