Medellin Cocaine Cartel

In the second half of the seventies, drug manufacturers in Colombia began organizing cartels that drove Cuban cocaine suppliers out of the US market. There was a leader in the leadership of the drug cartel, his deputies for various issues and the heads of the “departments”, each of whom was engaged in his own kind of activity: cultivating coca, direct cocaine production, transporting goods, foreign operations, logistics and accounting, guarding the cartel, and managing combat and punitive groups, and so on.

On a different principle, the grassroots level of Colombian drug cartels was organized. There was a symbiosis of the principle of the cellular structure of the organization and mutual responsibility. Each cell consisted of either relatives or residents of the same settlement, and performed only the functions prescribed above: workers in the production only produce cocaine, those responsible for transportation only transport, those responsible for obtaining the information needed by the cartel are engaged only in intelligence and so on. Individual cells are not connected to each other, only the cell leader has access to a higher-ranking cartel member.

In this case, the principles of the division of labor and specialization of workers, on the one hand, and safety considerations, on the other, were combined: if a government agent penetrates into one cell, then he will only know about the activities of a separate cell, and not the whole cartel. The mutual responsibility was that when a person committed a mistake, the whole cell answered. Moreover, if a person’s guilt was so great that he was sentenced to death, then not only he, but also his family was destroyed, so the person knew in advance what he was going to if he decided to betray the cartel.

Many wealthy drug lords began to buy huge amounts of land in order to launder their income from the drug trade and gain a place among the traditional Colombian elite. By the end of the 1980s, drug dealers were the largest tenants in Colombia and had enormous political power. They used most of their land to keep cattle on pasture or left it completely unused as a demonstration of wealth. The drug lords also formed private armies to fight the partisans who advocated the redistribution of these lands between local peasants.

Illicit trade in cocaine increased in Colombia in the late 1970s. She became the main source of profit. By 1982, cocaine accounted for 30% of all Colombian exports (in which it surpassed coffee).

In the summer of 1977, the rich drug lords Pablo Escobar , Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha and the Ochoa brothers teamed up to create a drug cartel.

At the end of 1981 and the beginning of 1982, participants in the Medellin cartel, representatives of the American Texas Oil corporation and the Colombian armed forces, small industrialists and wealthy landowners joined together to form a paramilitary organization known as “Muerte a Secuestradores” (“Death to the Kidnappers”, MAS) to protect their economic interests, fight against partisans and provide protection for local elites from abductions and extortion. By 1983, Colombian law enforcement officers recorded 240 political killings by the death squads of the MAS, mainly local leaders, elected officials, and farmers.

The following year, Asociacion Campesina de Ganaderos y Agricultores del Magdalena Medio (ACDEGAM) was created to provide a legal front to various paramilitary groups and for public relations. ACDEGAM worked to promote anti-labor policies and threaten anyone associated with organizations protecting the rights of peasants. MAS also threatened to attack anyone suspected of opposition. ACDEGAM built schools (the declared goal was to create a "patriotic and anti-communist" educational environment). She also built roads, bridges and medical clinics. By the mid-1980s, ACDEGAM and MAS experienced substantial growth. In 1985, influential drug dealers Pablo Escobar, Jorge Luis Ochoa, Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, Carlos Leder and Juan Matta Ballesteros began sending large amounts of cash to the organization to pay for weapons, equipment and training. The organization had computers and operated a communications center that worked in coordination with the state telecommunications office. They had thirty pilots and an assortment of helicopters. British, Israeli, and American military teachers were hired to provide training at paramilitary training centers.

The Medellin Cartel was one of the first cartels in Colombia to focus on the delivery of smaller quantities of cocaine than previously accepted. In addition, Escobar gave guarantees to customers that in the event of a seizure of goods by the police, he would reimburse all losses. The cartel had a distribution network, aircraft, and even submarines to deliver cocaine.

The Medellin cartel was the most powerful cocaine empire in the world. At the peak of its activity, the cartel "earned" more than $ 60 million per day. In the second half of the eighties, he controlled 80% of the world cocaine trade. The total amount of money earned by the cartel is tens of billions of dollars (it is possible that in fact hundreds of billions of dollars). There were many groups in the cartel, usually white Americans, Canadians, or Europeans, organized for the sole purpose of delivering cocaine destined for the United States, Europe, and Canada. While in many groups there were federal agents and informants, some groups fell into the attention of the authorities due to the mistakes of the cartel participants themselves.

The 30-year-old cartel leader Pablo Escobar has become one of the richest people in the world, whose personal fortune is estimated at billions of dollars. Escobar had 34 estates, 500 thousand hectares of land, 40 rare cars. On the estate of Escobar, 20 artificial lakes, six pools were dug, and even a small airport with a runway was built.

The main competitor of the Medellin cartel in the drug trade was the less powerful Cali drug cartel . The war between these organizations, which erupted, then subsided, continued until the collapse of the Medellin cartel. Throughout its existence, the Medellin cartel remained the most powerful criminal organization in Colombia.

After the authorities became aware of the “dubious activities”, the organization came under the supervision of services to combat drug trafficking. Evidence was collected and presented to the court, leading to indictments, arrests and prison sentences for convicts. Only a few Colombian cartel leaders were arrested during these operations. The victims of the indictments were mainly non-Colombians associated with the cartel. Most Colombians, like other people who were charged, lived and remained in Colombia or fled before the indictments were passed.

In the mid-1980s, the Medellin cartel controlled almost all spheres of life in Colombian society. Nevertheless, a serious threat loomed over him. The administration of US President Ronald Reagan has declared its own war on the distribution of drugs not only throughout the United States, but around the world. An agreement was reached between the US and Colombia, according to which the Colombian government pledged to extradite cocaine barons to the United States with American justice.

This was done because if there were drug dealers in any Colombian prison, they could, as before, freely continue to manage their gangs directly from places of detention and very soon would be free. As for the United States, then the drug dealers realized that they could not buy their freedom. The drug lords responded with terrorism to authorities' attempts to extradite cartel members to the United States. They had their own motto: "Better a grave in Colombia than a prison cell in the United States."

This agreement allowed Colombia to extradite any Colombian suspected of drug trafficking in the United States and his subsequent prosecution. This was a big problem for the cartel, and perhaps the biggest threat to it. Among successive supporters of the extradition treaty were Colombian Minister of Justice Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, police officer Jaime Ramirez and numerous judges of the Colombian Supreme Court.

The cartel has applied a bend or break strategy to several of these supporters of the treaty, using bribery, threats or violence. However, when police operations began to cause heavy casualties, some major drug lords, while hiding, temporarily left Colombia, ordering that cartel members eliminate key supporters of the extradition treaty.

In 1982, Pablo Escobar nominated himself for the Congress of Colombia. And, in the end, at the age of 32, he became a substitute in the Congress of Colombia, that is, he replaced congressmen during their absence.

Once in Congress, Escobar dreamed of becoming president of Colombia. However, once in Bogota, he noticed that his popularity did not go beyond Medellin. In Bogota, of course, they knew about him, but as a dubious person paving the cocaine road to the presidential chair. One of the most popular politicians in Colombia, the main candidate for the presidency - Luis Carlos Galan - was the first to openly condemn the new congressman's connection with the cocaine business.

The cartel launched a campaign to kill prominent political figures back in 1984.

Colombian Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla sought decisive action against drug cartels. He launched a wide campaign against investing "dirty" cocaine money in the election race. As a result, Pablo Escobar was expelled from the Colombian Congress in January 1984. Through the efforts of the Minister of Justice, his political career rolled once and for all.

On April 30, 1984, the Ministerial Mercedes of Bonilla stopped at a traffic light on one of the busiest streets of Bogotá. At that moment, a motorcyclist who approached point blank from a machine gun riddled the back of the car, where the Minister of Justice usually sat. Rodrigo Lara Bonilla died on the spot. For the first time, bandits killed an official of such a high rank in Colombia. From that day, terror began to spread throughout Colombia.

The cartel responded with terror to the total war launched by the government. The strategy was to terrorize the civilian population. The cartel has carried out hundreds of terrorist attacks on civilian and government targets. Pablo Escobar created a terrorist group called Los Extraditables. Its members attacked officials, police, and all who opposed the drug trade. The reason for the terrorist attack could be a major police operation or the extradition of another cocaine mafia boss to the United States.

The cartel threatened death with judges of the Supreme Court, demanding that they cancel the extradition treaty. Warnings were ignored. In November 1985, Escobar and other drug dealers joined together to show the government that they would not be intimidated. Escobar hired a large group of M-19 left guerrillas to commit sabotage. Militants armed with machine guns, grenades and portable rocket launchers suddenly appeared in the center of Bogotá and seized the Palace of Justice when at least several hundred people were inside the building. The partisans refused to conduct any negotiations and began to shoot in all directions, without making any demands. While they held the Palace of Justice in their hands, they destroyed all documents relating to the extradition of criminals. Large forces of the army and police were introduced into the capital. After a day of siege, assault battalions with the support of tanks and combat helicopters broke into the Palace of Justice. As a result of the attack, 97 people were killed, including 11 of 24 judges.

A year later, the Supreme Court canceled the agreement on the extradition of drug dealers to the United States. However, a few days later, the new president of Colombia, Vergilio Barco, vetoed the decision of the Supreme Court and renewed the agreement. In February 1987, the closest assistant to Escobar Carlos Lader was extradited to the United States.

Earlier, on November 15, 1984, the eldest of the Ochoa Jorge brothers was arrested by the Spanish police in Madrid, and the question arose of his extradition to the United States through Colombia. His family said they would kill ten Colombian judges in the event of such a move by the government.

On July 18, 1986, a Spanish court ruled to extradite Ochoa Colombia to face trial. At this point, the grand jury of Miami in absentia charged Jorge with collaborating with Federico Vogan to smuggle cocaine into the U.S., assisting Sandinista Home Secretary Thomas Borge, and participating in the elimination of the FBI whistleblower pilot Barry Sila .

On August 17, 1986, despite US requests for extradition, Ochoa disappeared after receiving probation on charges of falsifying documents for importing live bulls from Spain. But on November 21, 1987, Jorge Ochoa was again arrested and imprisoned on charges of smuggling fighting bulls from Spain, and twenty-four hours later, a gang of cutthroats arrived at the home of Juan Gomez Martinez, editor of the daily Colombian Medellin newspaper, and introduced a communiqué signed by Extraditables threatening to execute Colombian political leaders if Jorge Ochoa is extradited to the United States. And on December 30, 1987, Ochoa was released from prison on his own recognizance. In 1987, he was on the list of twenty richest people in the world according to Forbes magazine with a fortune of about $ 3 billion.

In 1989, Pablo Escobar tried to strike a deal with justice. He agreed to surrender to the police if the government guarantees that he will not be extradited to the United States. The authorities refused. Escobar responded to this refusal with terror.

On May 30, 1989, cartel hired killers planted a bomb in the car of the Director of the Administrative Department in Bogota, Miguel Masa Marquez. As a result of the explosion, 4 people were killed, 37 were injured.

In August 1989, terror reached its peak. On August 16, 1989, at the hands of the killers of Escobar, the judge of the Supreme Court of Colombia, Carlos Valencia, was killed. The next day, police colonel Waldemar Franklin Contero was killed. On September 2, 1989, a bomb placed in a car was blown up in front of the building of the main newspaper, El Espectador in Bogota, resulting in 84 injuries. Guillermo Cano Isas, director of the newspaper, was assassinated by order of Escobar on December 17, 1986. On October 16, 1989, assassins detonated a bomb placed in a car in front of the Vanguardia Liberal newspaper building in Bucaramanga, four people were killed.

On August 18, 1989, cartel members killed leading presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan, who promised, if elected president of the country, to start an implacable war on cocaine traffickers and cleanse Colombia from drug lords by extraditing them to the United States. The cartel declared a “complete and absolute war” against the Colombian government, seeking to stop the potential extradition of its members.

Before the presidential election, the terror of the Medellin cartel gained particular scope. Every day, cartel killers killed dozens of people. In Bogota alone, one of the terrorist groups of the drug mafia carried out 7 explosions within two weeks, as a result of which 37 were killed and about 400 people were seriously injured.

On November 27, 1989, the people of Pablo Escobar planted a bomb on a passenger plane of the Colombian airline Avianaka, on board of which there were 107 people. The successor to the deceased Luis Carlos Galan, the future president of Colombia, Cesar Gaviria Trujillo, was supposed to fly on this plane. Three minutes after the airliner took off, a powerful explosion was heard aboard . The plane caught fire and crashed into the nearby hills. None of those on board survived. As it turned out later, Cesar Gaviria Trujillo at the last moment for some reason canceled his departure.

Mass raids swept through the country, during which chemical laboratories and coca plantations were destroyed. Dozens of drug cartel participants were jailed. In response, Pablo Escobar twice attempted assassination of the chief of the Colombian secret police, General Miguel Masu Marquez. During the second attempt, on December 6, 1989, as a result of a truck explosion near the DAS headquarters in the center of Bogotá, 52 were killed and more than 600 people were injured.

On December 12, 1989, police surrounded a ranch that housed one of the alleged cartel leaders, Hilberto Rendon, and Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, one of the founders and key figures in the cartel. Rendon and the son of Rodriguez Fredi were killed in a shootout with the police, and Rodriguez Gacha himself committed suicide.

On May 13, 1990, cartel members detonated two bombs in the malls of a shopping center during Mother's Day in Bogota. As a result of these explosions, 14 people were killed, more than 100 were injured. On February 16, 1991, a mined car in Medellin was blown up, 22 people were killed.

In September 1990, Colombian President Cesar Gaviria Trujillo invited cartel leaders to surrender to the police on condition that they serve their sentences in Colombia. Less intransigent than other cartel leaders, the Ochoa brothers surrendered to the Colombian police in January 1991.

In the early 1990s, a group of Colombians created the organization Los Pepes , the abbreviation of which means "People affected by Pablo Escobar." It included Colombian citizens whose relatives died due to Escobar's fault. Los Pepes began to terrorize and prey on those who were somehow connected with him or his cocaine business. For a small amount of time, Los Pepes killed about 300 people associated with the Medellin cartel, thereby causing significant damage. Although it is believed that the Los Pepes group was actively fighting the Medellin cartel, it has been suggested that Los Pepes diverted attention from the involvement of the US and Colombian authorities in the destruction of the cartel.

By 1993, the Colombian state police, assisted and trained by the CIA , had imprisoned or liquidated most cartel fugitives.

On January 30, 1993, cartel members blew up a car bomb in the center of Bogotá, resulting in the deaths of 20 people.

The terror of the cartel led to hostility towards him by the Colombian and American governments and the rival Cali cartel. The DEA (US Department of Justice's Drug Enforcement Administration) agents believed that their four-pronged “central figure strategy” against the cartel leaders was the main factor leading to the organization’s collapse.

On April 15, 1993, cartel members committed another attack. A bomb explosion in a shopping center in northern Bogota killed 15 and injured more than 100 people.

Law enforcement authorities managed to establish the whereabouts of the hiding Pablo Escobar. On December 2, 1993, the house where Escobar was hiding was surrounded by special forces. The cartel leader put up armed resistance and tried to escape through the roof, but was killed by the Colombian National Police ^[1] .

The Medellin cartel fell apart in 1993. The rest of the cocaine empire was led by Fabio Ochoa, who was in prison. By July 1996, his brothers Jorge Luis Ochoa and Juan David Ochoa were released after serving a five-year prison term for drug trafficking.

In October 1999, law enforcement agencies in the United States and Colombia conducted the joint Millennium Operation, during which more than 30 members of the Medellin cartel were arrested in the United States, Colombia, Mexico and El Salvador. The operation "Millennium" was attended by more than 200 US law enforcement officers, they were also helped by the police of the countries in which the operation was carried out. Among the detainees were Fabio Ochoa and Alejandro Bernal, a major money laundering specialist who was responsible for international relations in the cartel. Bernal conducted operations from the cartel command center in southern Florida, equipped with the latest technology.

Fabio Ochoa Vazquez was extradited to the United States in September 2001 and was sentenced to thirty years in prison for smuggling about 30 tons of cocaine into the United States between 1997 and 1999.

It is believed that the Envigado drug cartel (an organization that had previously split from the Escobar cartel) is the successor to the disintegrated Medellin cartel.

• Medellin Cartel (neopr.) . Latin America. Date of treatment June 8, 2013.
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