General Pedro Valdez

VALDEZ, PEDRO (General)

The secret police chief of the “tiny South American republic” of El Salmado, and the secret leader of a gang of “terrorists” bent on assassinating the nation’s president and seizing control of the country.

At Christmas time 1963, General Valdez invites Clark Kent to come to El Salmado to impersonate Superman and serve as bodyguard to the country’s president, ostensibly because he feels that Kent’s “amazing resemblance to Superman” will serve to discourage attempts on the president’s life by terrorist assassins, but in reality because, by tricking the chief executive into believing that he now has Superman for a bodyguard, Valdez hopes to lull the president into relaxing all his other security measures so that he and his henchmen can kill him and set up a dictatorship.

Eventually, Valdez and his cohorts come to the startling realization that their Superman “impersonator” is actually Superman and concoct a cunning scheme to lure him into a Kryptonite deathtrap, but Superman successfully thwarts the scheme and takes Valdez and his fellow plotters into custody (Act No. 306, Nov 1963: “The Great Superman Impersonation!") (TGSB).