"Don Valerio" Reyes

“Just feed the bodies to Evergreen. You save funeral money, you save the earth.”

Valerio Reyes
Valerio in 2017
Biography
Full Name	Valerio Reyes Fernandez
Nicknames	Don Valerio
Status	Alive
Date of Birth	1957
Place of Birth	Havana
Age	66 (as of 2023)
Gender	Male
Ethnicity	Hispanic
Nationality	Cuban-American
Appearance
Eyes	Brown
Hair	Black
Assets
Accessories	Walking cane
Businesses	Fernandez Foundation
Career
Occupation	Crime boss
Rank	Don (1988-)
Affiliations	Reyes Crime Family
Other
Appears	Light & Shadow
Actor	Carlos Gomez

Valerio Reyes Fernandez, also known as "Don Valerio", is a Cuban criminal boss, philanthropist, and environmentalist based in Vice City. Valerio was the founder and current figurehead of the Reyes Crime Family, a Cuban-American organized crime modelled after the American Mafia.

History

Background

Valerio was born in a poor neighborhood of Havana. His father and uncle were former Son cubano musicians that performed in social clubs and casinos ran by the Italian-American Barattieri Family back in the 1950s. Following the end of Castro Revolution, the new regime drove away the Barattieri from Cuba, and his family were forced to play in the street.

Tales about the Barattieri Family, and the Italian crime culture as a whole, fascinated Valerio so much that he spent most of his childhood in the library, where he read books and newspapers about them. Not just histories and passionate family values, he learned new ways to get out from his improvished life, such as initiating a protection racket when he was 18 with his friends. After two years, he was arrested by Havana police and was imprisoned indefinitely in the infamously-harsh Cuban prison.

In the early 1980, a tall officer opened Valerio cell's door and told him that he would be leaving. Valerio thought at first that he was finally free after three years of surviving behind the bars. His happiness faded when he realized that he was "dumped" by the government; he was forced to leave the country in the Mariel boatlift mass-imigration event. For two weeks that felt like forever, he was stuck in a small fishing vessel with hundreds of other Cuban boat people. The condition aboard was distressing with lack of healthy food, water, and medical treatment. Valerio lost all his cash to a scummy merchant who sold a "big fat can of sardines".

Upon boarding in Vice City, Valerio was transported to a tent city underneath the highway in Downtown. It was a poor government initiative to temporarily house unsponsored Cuban refugees. Valerio actively switched between small-time jobs, including deliveries and hard labors. Racial discrimination between the native whites and colored people was very rampant back then. It was common for Valerio to be a bullying target. He recalled one memorable experience where he delivered meats to a white family's barbeque party. When he arrived, they humiliated him by disrobing and forcing him to wear a Cuban-hate propaganda shirt with the mocking printed words "See a Cuban, Kill a Cuban". The family had fleed Vice City before Valerio was able to exact a sweet revenge.

Valerio in 1988

Beginning from 1981, Valerio resorted to a more illegal dealings like selling Colombian cocaine in the camp. Drug business brought him to another larger opportunity of directly distributing the white powder for the Guardia Brothers, an established Cuban smuggling syndicate. With the drug money, he was able to leave the tent city and afford a small house in Ciudad Belleza. Two years later, however, he was arrested for cocaine possession and for being a sponsorless immigrant. This time, he was thrown to the USP Argonaut in Argonaut.

During his indefinite detention, Valerio rose as a charismatic and passionate leader among the other Cuban prisoners. He organized card games and book talks in the prison, and envisioned grand programs to improve Cubans' social condition in Vice City once they were freed. His bright ideas did not align with the correctional officers who intimidated him relentlessly to cease his influence. As result, his right leg was permanently paralyzed, and he had to use a walking cane to this day. In 1987, he and his close prisonmates staged a riot.

Reyes Crime Family

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Personality

Valerio is rotten to the core, never once wanting to lose his grasp over Vice City’s kingdom. As a sadistic (and environmentalist) gangster, he is infamous for petting alligators in a top-secret private wildlife preserve in Evergreen, used by the mafia for corpses disposal, punishment, and torture.