Libertadores Finalist Now Wandering the Streets

Henry Viáfara was a midfielder who became part of Colombian football history in the 1980s. He played for América de Cali in the 1985 Copa Libertadores final, which the team lost to Argentinos Juniors, in a squad that also included Julio Falcioni, Ricardo Gareca and Willington Ortiz. He represented Colombia at the 1980 Moscow Olympics and at the 1983 Copa América, and in his own account he also played for Villarrica, Selección Cauca and Pereira.

He left football in 1987. In a 2014 interview with the newspaper El País, he said that retirement brought him a great deal of free time and money, which he spent on nights out with friends and trips to a farm. He linked his addiction to the fast pace of a professional player's life, with its training camps, travel, hotels and matches, and to disappointments along the way. By the time he understood what was happening, he said, he was deep in it. He also described his years since leaving the game as hard ones and said people had forgotten him.

In June 2022, El Heraldo reported that he was 69 and wandering between Villarrica and Puerto Tejada, in Colombia's Valle del Cauca department. A video shared by the journalist Jaime Dinas showed him living on the street. The paper said he gets by on odd jobs and often lacks the money for daily needs.

Dinas asked a local councillor to step in and help him leave that situation. Viáfara himself recalled that he had once stayed at a foundation that works against drug dependence and that it had helped him a great deal, though he was still struggling financially. The article does not say what support was finally arranged.