Medellín Cartel

• 1. Introduction

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  The Medellín Cartel, a loose coalition of Colombian drug trafficking organizations, owed part of its American reach to a conversation between two bunkmates in Connecticut. George Jung was serving time at the Federal Correctional Institution, Danbury, for flying marijuana out of Mexico. Jung later described it as a medium-low security prison full of mob guys. His bunkmate, the Colombian Carlos Lehder, was there for stealing cars and shipping them to South America. Lehder asked Jung whether he knew anything about cocaine. Jung did not. Then Lehder told him, "you know it costs $60,000 a kilo." The line worked as a sales pitch, and both men agreed to wait until they were free before trying to enter the business. In the years that followed, traffickers around the city of Medellín operated on a scale that no smuggler had managed before. How did a handful of independent operators join forces without ever becoming a single organization? Why did some of them wage a campaign of bombings and assassinations against their own government? And what finally broke the network apart?

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• 2. A Loose Coalition

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  Pablo Escobar and his cousin Gustavo Gaviria began with an informal smuggling ring built around small gangs of hired gunmen. By the mid-1970s they were aiming to move cocaine powder into the United States. What they lacked was a major American market and a transport system to reach it. Lehder supplied much of the answer once he left prison, because he introduced Jung to Escobar. The two men ran a highly profitable distribution operation from roughly 1976 to 1978, and it made millions of dollars for them and for the cartel. Although the operation was short, it is credited with giving Escobar the market and the logistics he had been missing.

  Those profits caught the attention of other established smugglers. Between 1976 and 1979, the networks of the Ochoa brothers joined the arrangement. They were Jorge Luis, Fabio and Juan David Ochoa Vásquez. José Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha, nicknamed "the Mexican," brought his trafficking enterprise and the armed men who worked under him. Escobar's own pitch to partners was protection, and in return they helped push the cocaine into high-demand markets such as New York City and eventually Miami. At its height, the combined web moved around 2,500-3,500 kilos per day.

  No one in this coalition answered to a single boss. Scholars describe semi-autonomous traffickers who cooperated on production, transportation, financing and enforcement while each kept control of his own operation. Even the word cartel was borrowed. It seems to have been coined by the US State Department to set these groups apart from the mid-sized gangs usually associated with the drug trade. The traffickers did not call themselves that at first, though they embraced the label in later years. Authorities in the 1980s credited Medellín-linked networks with a substantial share of the cocaine entering the United States, but their estimates varied widely.

  Lehder, meanwhile, was already drifting toward a scheme of his own on an island in the Bahamas.

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• 3. Contraband To Cocaine

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  In the late 1960s, Colombian marijuana grown in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and on the Urabá peninsula traveled north hidden inside shipments of bananas. Cocaine was a different story. Argentina, Brazil and Chile handled most of the trade, with Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires and Valparaiso serving as common starting points. Havana, Cuba, often acted as a stopover on the way north. Colombia's own ports, such as Cartagena, played only a modest role.

  Two shifts in the early 1970s began to change that map. A military coup in Chile in 1973 brought a strong crackdown on Chilean traffickers, and many of them looked to Colombia as a route further north. At the same time, contraband was more socially accepted in Colombia than ever. Escobar came out of this world. Unlike his law-abiding parents, he stole tombstones from cemeteries, sanded them down to look unused, and resold them. He also stole cars and kidnapped a wealthy businessman for ransom before settling into contraband smuggling. Some claims place him in the so-called Marlboro wars over the illicit cigarette market.

  Around 1975 and 1976, cocaine became a growing problem for American law enforcement. Its popularity spread first through the entertainment industry in Hollywood, then to hotspots such as Miami. Its high price made it a symbol of wealth and glamour. For smugglers the drug had practical advantages too. It packs tighter than other contraband, so it was easier to move and harder to intercept, and its value relative to its weight dwarfed that of marijuana. Cocaine production was also almost exclusive to South America, which made it easier for regional groups to control.

  The traffickers invented new ways to deliver it. Couriers swallowed hollow pellets, multilayered condoms or balloons filled with cocaine to pass through customs on commercial flights. Cessnas carried heavy loads, favored because they fly slowly enough to hit drop zones accurately. Some schemes drew police attention toward one decoy load so that a much larger one could slip through. By 1980 the price had fallen, and cocaine reached a far wider public than the affluent crowd of the late 1970s. Crime waves followed in almost every major American city, along with small drug wars in places such as Miami.

  Colombia's smugglers took in billions of dollars, nearly all of it in cash. Coca paste arrived from Peru and Bolivia, and jungle laboratories such as Tranquilandia turned it into powder. At some points up to 15 tons per day were flown into the United States. By 1982, cocaine had overtaken coffee as Colombia's chief export. Escobar displayed his fortune openly. He appeared on the Forbes billionaires list for seven years straight, from 1987 to 1993, and his Hacienda Nápoles estate had its own zoo. He reportedly ate from solid gold dinner sets and buried cash on his farms and under the floors of his houses.

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• 4. Private Armies

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  In 1981, guerrillas kidnapped Martha Ochoa, the sister of the Ochoa brothers. That kidnapping, along with the abduction of Lehder, pushed the traffickers to build cartel-funded private armies. The armies were meant to fend off guerrillas who wanted to redistribute land, kidnap wealthy owners, or collect extortion money from them. The state itself collaborated with these criminal groups during this period.

  At the end of 1981 and the start of 1982, a series of meetings took place in Puerto Boyacá. Members of the Medellín and Cali cartels attended, along with the Colombian military, the US-based corporation Texas Petroleum, members of the Colombian legislature, small industrialists and wealthy cattle ranchers. Together they formed a paramilitary organization called Muerte a Secuestradores, or "Death to Kidnappers," known as MAS. Its purpose was to protect local elites from kidnapping and extortion. By 1983, Colombian internal affairs had registered 240 political killings by MAS death squads, mostly of community leaders, elected officials and farmers.

  A second body, the Asociación Campesina de Ganaderos y Agricultores del Magdalena Medio, or ACDEGAM, handled the logistics and public relations. It also served as a legal front for various paramilitary groups. ACDEGAM promoted anti-labor policies and threatened anyone organizing workers or peasants. It built schools meant to create a "patriotic and anti-Communist" environment, along with roads, bridges and health clinics. Behind that public face, its headquarters ran paramilitary recruiting, weapons storage, communications, propaganda and medical services.

  In 1985, Escobar began pouring large amounts of cash into the organization. Money once set aside for social projects was redirected to equipment, training and weapons. Modern battle rifles, including the AKM, the FN FAL, the IMI Galil and the HK G3, were bought from the military, from the state arms maker INDUMIL, and through drug-funded private sales. The organization kept computers, ran a communications center, and employed 30 pilots flying fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters. It even hired British, Israeli and US military instructors to teach at its training centers.

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• 5. Corridors And Protectors

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  Carlos Lehder's Norman's Cay, an island in the Bahamas, became a transshipment base around 1978, after he betrayed Jung by trying to push him out of the business. Lehder persuaded the island's residents to leave, by force or by bribery. He then lived an unconventional, hedonistic, drug-fueled life there, and his behavior grew increasingly erratic. Jung chose to steer clear of him and returned to Colombia to deal with Escobar directly. The Bahamian government began chasing the drug traffic in 1982, which shut the Norman's Cay strategy down. The cartel then chose Central America as its path into the United States.

  In 1985, the DEA, aware of the pilot Barry Seal's ties to the cartel, had him photograph the cartel's landing strips in Nicaragua. Earlier DEA investigation had suggested that the FSLN, the Sandinista party, protected the cartel's use of Nicaragua as a warehouse for Matta-Ballesteros' logistics. Knowing Seal worked as a DEA informant, the cartel put a contract on him, and he was murdered in February 1986. On the 16th of March 1986, President Ronald Reagan used Seal's surveillance pictures in a national television address. They showed Escobar, Gacha, the Nicaraguan official Federico Vaughan and several other men loading a plane with cocaine.

  Panama offered another stopover. According to tips that reached the DEA and FBI after his arrest, Manuel Noriega agreed to let the cartel use his country in exchange for bribes and a share of profits. The arrangement also gave the leadership a possible hideout and meant the government would ignore money laundering. The CIA turned a blind eye to the link because Noriega pursued an aggressive anti-communist policy. It withdrew its support only after his ties to the cartel became public.

  The cartel's reach may have extended to Cuba as well. At Noriega's trial, Lehder testified that Cuban intelligence helped manage the Nicaraguan operations and that Cuba agreed to serve as a stopover. The Soviet Union's subsidies had decreased and then ended, which almost wiped out the Cuban economy, and the drug money was running into the billions. According to Lehder, Raúl Castro personally met with him.

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• 6. Two Rival Styles

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  Los Angeles went to Medellín, New York City went to Cali, and Miami and Houston were to be shared. That was the early smuggling arrangement between Escobar and the Cali "godfathers," Gilberto and Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela. A personal dispute between Escobar and the Cali leader Pacho Herrera over territory in one of these hubs broke the alliance. After skirmishes, the two organizations became permanent enemies by 1988, supposedly after the Monaco Apartment bombing.

  The feud grew out of a deep difference in temperament. The businesslike Orejuela brothers wanted to settle trouble with the authorities through corruption. Escobar preferred violence and intimidation, especially when his often minimal bribe attempts were refused. Gilberto considered violence a last resort and bad for business, because "dead people do not pay what they owe." Cali even made job hopefuls fill out application forms listing their assets, including cars, so that it could run thorough background checks.

  Escobar's reputation for killing was unusual even in his early days, because it extended to the families of those who crossed him. George Jung said he learned this firsthand in 1978, on his first meeting with Escobar. Moments before, he saw a man shot in the chest after "voluntarily" giving himself up, since otherwise his entire family would have been killed.

  The two sides also wanted different images. The Orejuela brothers hoped to be seen as "the Kennedys of Colombia." Escobar dreamed of becoming president of the nation. Scandals over his criminal reputation ended that ambition, and he turned from the ballot toward a different kind of pressure on the state.

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• 7. War On Extradition

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  On the 30th of April 1984, two gunmen on a motorcycle pulled up to the car of Rodrigo Lara Bonilla in Bogotá traffic and opened fire. Lara was Colombia's Minister of Justice and a supporter of extradition. His killing began a campaign that lasted nearly a decade.

  The cartel feared nothing more than the extradition treaty with the United States. It allowed Colombia to send any citizen suspected of drug trafficking to be tried in an American court. The traffickers had little local power or influence there, and a trial would most likely end in prison. Besides Lara, the treaty's staunch supporters included the police officer Jaime Ramírez and numerous Supreme Court judges. The cartel applied a "bend or break" strategy to them, using bribery, extortion or violence. It also issued death threats to the Supreme Court judges, asking them to denounce the treaty. The warnings were ignored. Escobar and the group he called Los Extraditables then began a campaign of kidnappings, murders and narco-terrorist actions.

  In November 1985-35 heavily armed members of the M-19 guerrilla group stormed the Supreme Court in Bogotá, leading to the Palace of Justice siege. Some claimed at the time that the cartel was behind the raid because it wanted to intimidate the court. Others called a cartel-guerrilla partnership unlikely, since the two had clashed over kidnappings. Former guerrillas deny any cartel role, and the question is still debated in Colombia.

  The killing was widespread. Some estimates put the total at around 3,500 dead at the height of the cartel's activities, including over 500 police officers in Medellín. The full list cannot be assembled because of the limits of the Colombian judiciary. Hernando Baquero Borda, a Supreme Court justice and defender of the extradition treaty, was killed by gunmen in Bogotá on the 31st of July 1986. On the 17th of November 1986, assassins in a green Renault 18 drove beside the red Mitsubishi Montero of Colonel Jaime Ramírez Gómez, head of the national police anti-narcotics unit, and killed him instantly. His wife and two sons were unharmed. A month later, on the 17th of December 1986, gunmen on a motorcycle killed Guillermo Cano Isaza, the director of El Espectador, who had publicly revealed Escobar's criminal past.

  In August 1989, the presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán was killed by gunmen at a rally in Soacha. Another target, Miguel Maza Márquez, escaped unharmed from the DAS building bombing, which killed 52 civilians caught in the blast. The campaign reached its last major act in April 1993, when a 440-pound bomb exploded in the busy Center 93 shopping mall on Bogotá's 15th Avenue.

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• 8. The Fall

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  Los Pepes was officially formed in January 1993, and the name was short for "Perseguidos por Pablo Escobar," meaning those persecuted by Pablo Escobar. The group was largely financed by the Cali Cartel. It was led by the brothers Carlos and Fidel Castaño, right-wing paramilitary commanders who had once been part of the Medellín Cartel. Its tactics were stylized to mirror Escobar's own violence and turn it against him. Escobar had also piled up enemies inside his own organization, and he was fighting the Colombian government and American agencies at the same time. DEA agents considered their four-pronged Kingpin Strategy, which targeted senior cartel figures, a major contributor to the collapse.

  On the 2nd of December 1993, Colombian special forces found Escobar in a house in the Los Olivos neighborhood of Medellín, his hometown. Only one bodyguard remained with him, Alvaro de Jesús Agudelo, called Limón, who was also his longtime driver. He had been hiding there for almost six weeks and had grown a long beard. The day before, his 44th birthday, he had phoned his family, who were under government protection in a luxury hotel in Bogotá. They had just returned from a failed attempt to fly to Germany. Authorities traced the call from the hotel. When police arrived, gunfire broke out, and the two men fled onto a terracotta rooftop. Limón was shot dead there. Moments later Escobar was killed too, hit in the torso, the feet and the ear.

  How Escobar died is still disputed. His son Sebastián Marroquín, formerly named Juan Pablo Escobar, believes he shot himself, citing the entry wound behind the ear. Over 25,000 people attended his funeral. Many denounced his crimes, yet others saw him as a Robin-Hood-like figure who funded infrastructure and housing for the poor around Medellín. His Hacienda Nápoles estate was later turned into a theme park.

  The collections office that Escobar founded in the town hall of Envigado, a municipality next to Medellín, had let him send hired killers called sicarios after traffickers who refused to pay debts. La Oficina de Envigado is believed to be a partial successor to the Medellín organization. One account credits Don Berna with founding it as an enforcement wing. After Don Berna fell out with Escobar, the Oficina led Escobar's rivals to oust him. It then inherited the Medellín territory and its criminal connections in the United States, Mexico and the United Kingdom. Scholars add that the cartel's decline accelerated a shift toward more decentralized trafficking, giving greater prominence to other Colombian and Mexican organizations.

  The reach of Los Pepes outlasted Escobar by years. Juan Diego Arcila Henao, the last of his lieutenants to be assassinated, had been released from a Colombian prison in 2002 and hid in Venezuela. In April 2007, he was shot and killed in his Jeep Cherokee as he left the parking area of his home in Cumaná.

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