‘Bendito Menor’ and ‘La Bebesita’: A love story shaped by secrecy, weapons, flight and a shared death in Riohacha

For months, Naín Pérez Toncel and Rosa Angélica Tarazona presented themselves online as a young couple in love. Their photographs and videos showed trips, celebrations and affectionate moments across the Caribbean. They also displayed weapons, money and vehicles, details that would become part of the public image surrounding them.

That story ended early Friday, Sept. 4, in a house in Riohacha, La Guajira. A security operation found Pérez and Tarazona there. Both died, along with two other men whom authorities identified as part of the leader’s security circle.

Tarazona was 19 when authorities arrested her in September 2025 during an operation in Guachaca, a rural area of Santa Marta. Investigators said she was more than Pérez’s romantic partner. They accused her of performing financial, logistical and payment-related duties within the criminal structure associated with him.

She later received house arrest while the legal process continued. The measure could have separated her from Pérez, but she left the residence where she was required to stay and returned to the area where he was located. From then on, she appeared beside him again, despite knowing that doing so kept her within the authorities’ reach.

The couple’s online posts also helped keep them visible as they moved from place to place. Authorities followed a relationship that had begun as a public display of affection and ended under pursuit, in the same operation that killed the pair and two alleged bodyguards.