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Medellin Cartel
The Medellin Cartel was an organized network of "Drug Suppliers and Smugglers" originating in the city of Medellin, Colombia. The Cartel operated in Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Central America, the United States, as well as Canada and even Europe throughout the 1970s and 1980s. It was founded and run by Pablo Escobar together with the Ochoa Vazquez brothers Jorge Luis, Juan David, and Fabio.
During the height of its operations, the Cartel brought in more than $60 million per day. The total amount of money made by the Cartel was in the tens of billions, and very possibly the hundreds of billions of dollars. There were many "groups" during the Cartel's years, usually white Americans, Canadians or Europeans, organized for the sole purpose of transporting shipments of cocaine destined for the United States, Europe and Canada. While many "groups" were infiltrated and taken down by Federal agents and informers, a few were stumbled upon by authorities, usually due to some small misstep or careless behaviour by a member(s) of a particular "group".
Once authorities were made aware of "questionable activities", the group would be put under Federal Drug Task Force surveillance. Evidence would be gathered, compiled and presented to a Grand Jury, resulting in indictments, arrests and prison sentences, for those convicted. The number of Colombian Cartel Leaders actually taken into custody as a result of these operations, was very few. Mostly non-Colombians, conspiring with the Cartel, were the "fruits" of these indictments.
Most Colombians targeted, as well as those named in such indictments, lived and stayed in Colombia, or fled before indictments were unsealed. However, by 1993 most, if not all, Cartel fugitives had been imprisoned or hunted and gunned down by the Colombian National Police trained and assisted by U.S. Delta Force units and the CIA.
Fear of extradition
Perhaps the greatest threat posed to the Medellin Cartel and the other traffickers was the implementation of an extradition treaty between the United States and Colombia. It allowed Colombia to extradite any Colombian suspected of drug trafficking to the US and to be put on trial there for their crimes. This was a major problem for the Cartel since the drug traffickers had little access to their local power and influence in the US, and a trial there would most likely lead to imprisonment. Among the staunch supporters of the extradition treaty were Colombian Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, Police Officer Jaime Ramirez and numerous Supreme Court Judges.
However, the Cartel applied a "bend or break" strategy towards several of these supporters. When attacks against the police began to cause major losses, some of the major drug lords themselves were temporarily pushed out of Colombia, going into hiding while they ordered cartel members to take out key supporters of the extradition treaty.
Rodrigo Lara Bonilla was pushing for more action against the drug cartels.
The Cartel issued death threats to the Supreme Court Judges, asking them to denounce the Extradition Treaty. The warnings were ignored. Sometime later, 35 heavily armed members of the M-19 guerrilla group raided the Supreme Court's building, leading to the Palace of Justice siege in November 1985. The army and the police attempted to rescue the hostages, but the operation ended tragically as many of the hostages were killed in the crossfire and heavy casualties ensued. Some claimed at the time that the Cartel's influence was behind the M-19's raid, because of its interest in intimidating the Supreme Court. The issue has continued to be debated inside Colombia.
The Cartel and terrorism
On August 18, 1989, the Cartel murdered leading presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan, and declared "total and absolute war" against the Colombian government, seeking to stop potential extradition of its members. The strategy consisted in terrorizing the civilian population and cornering the government. The cartel conducted hundreds of terrorist attacks against civilian and governmental targets. However, the cartel had already started a campaign of assassinations of key political figures, as far back as 1984. The following is a list of the most notable incidents involving the Medellin Cartel:
May 30, 1989: Attempted assassination of Miguel Maza Marquez, director of the Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad (DAS) in Bogota. Car bomb. 4 dead, 37 injured.
September 2, 1989: Car bomb against major newspaper El Espectador in Bogota. 84 wounded. Guillermo Cano Isaza, director of the newspaper had been killed on Escobar's orders on December 17, 1986.
October 16, 1989: Car bomb against newspaper Vanguardia Liberal, in Bucaramanga. Four killed.
November 27, 1989: The cartel bombs Avianca Flight 203 during flight over Bogota while attempting to kill presidential candidate Cesar Gaviria Trujillo, who had not boarded the plane. 110 are killed.
December 6, 1989: DAS headquarters in downtown Bogota is bombed with over 1,100 pounds of explosives during the morning rush. The attack kills over 50, injures more than 600, and levels several city blocks, destroying more than 300 commercial properties.
May 13, 1990: Two bombs detonate separately at the Quirigua and Niza shopping malls during Mother's Day in Bogota, killing 14 and wounding over 100.
February 16, 1991: The cartel detonates a 440-pound car bomb outside La Macarena, a Bullring in Medellin, killing 22.
January 30, 1993: A car bomb in downtown Bogota kills 20. The bomb was set off in a high-rise area, and most of the dead were in higher floors as the explosive wave traveled up the buildings.
April 15, 1993: A car bomb kills 15 and injures over 100 outside the Centro 93 shopping mall in northern Bogota.
Assassinations
As a means of intimidation, the Cartel conducted several hundred assassinations throughout the country. Escobar and his associates made it clear that whoever stood against them would risk being killed along with his/her families. Some estimates put the total around 3,500 killed during the height of the cartel, including over 500 police officers in Medellin, but the entire list is impossible to assemble, due to the limitation of the judiciary power in Colombia. The following is a brief list of the most notorious assassinations conducted by the Cartel:
Luis Vasco and Gilberto Hernandez, two DAS agents who had arrested Pablo Escobar in 1976. One of the earliest assassinations of authority figures by the Cartel.
Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, Minister of Justice, killed on a Bogota highway on April 30, 1984 when two gunmen riding a motorcycle approached his vehicle in traffic and opened fire.
Tulio Manuel Castro Gil, Superior Judge, killed by motorcycle gunmen in July 1985 shortly after indicting Escobar.
Hernando Baquero Borda, Supreme Court Justice, killed by gunmen in Bogota on July 31, 1986.
Jaime Ramirez, Police Colonel and head of the anti-narcotics unit of the Colombian police. Killed on a Medellin highway in November 1986 when assassins in a red Renault pulled up beside his white Toyota minivan and opened fire. Ramirez was killed instantly; his wife and two sons were wounded.
Guillermo Cano Isaza, director of El Espectador, killed on December 1986 in Bogota by gunmen riding a motorcycle.
Jaime Pardo Leal, presidential candidate and head of the Patriotic Union party, killed by a gunman on October, 1987.
Carlos Mauro Hoyos, Attorney General, killed by gunmen in Medellin on January 1988.
Antonio Roldan Betancur, governor of Antioquia, killed by a car bomb in July 1989.
Valdemar Franklin Quintero, Commander of the Antioquia police, killed by gunmen in Medellin in August, 1989.
Luis Carlos Galan, presidential candidate, killed by gunmen during a rally in Soacha in August, 1989. The assassination was carried out on the same day the commander of the Antioquia police was gunned down by the cartel.
Carlos Ernesto Valencia, Superior Judge, killed by gunmen shortly after indicting Escobar on the death of Guillermo Cano, in August 1989.
Jorge Enrique Pulido, journalist, director of JEP Television, killed by gunmen in Bogota in November 1989.
Diana Turbay, journalist, chief editor of the Hoy por Hoy magazine, killed during a rescue attempt in January 1991.
Enrique Low Murtra, Minister of Justice, killed by gunmen in downtown Bogota on May 1991.
Myriam Rocio Velez, Superior Judge, killed by gunmen shortly before she was to sentence Escobar on the assassination of Galan, in September 1992. [*]
End of the Cartel
The violence carried out in the name of the Cartel directly lead to it being targeted, by not only its competition (the Cali Cartel), but also by the "darker influences" which had allowed it to flourish in the first place. Corrupt government and military officials who had once been on the Cartel's payroll were influenced (from inside and outside Colombia) towards support of the Cali Cartel's rise and the Medellin's fall beginning in the late 1980s and culminating with the killing of Pablo Escobar in 1993. Many members of the Cartel, including Escobar, were hunted and killed by the Colombia National Police. This force was trained and assisted by both the United States Delta Force as well as the CIA. Once most members were either killed or imprisoned, the Medellin Cartel, the most powerful and feared drug cartel in the world disappeared.
Cultural references
The 1996 Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel News of a Kidnapping
The 2001 film Blow depicts the life of American cocaine trafficker George Jung, who had ties with the Medellin cartel. Pablo Escobar appears as a character.
Killing Pablo, the 2001 book by Mark Bowden. The rise and fall of Escobar's reign.
The 2005 Don Winslow novel The Power of the Dog
The 2006 documentary Cocaine Cowboys
Characters in the HBO series Entourage created a film, titled "Medellin", based on the life of Pablo Escobar.
Both the novel and film versions of Clear and Present Danger by Tom Clancy depict the US's attempt to fracture the cartel.
See also
Pablo Escobar
Cali Cartel
Griselda Blanco
Jorge Luis Ochoa Vazquez
Jack Carlton Reed
Los Pepes
Narcotrafficking in Colombia
Norte del Valle Cartel
Cocaine Cowboys
Further reading
Mark Bowden's biography of Pablo Escobar Killing Pablo.
External links
Cocaine Cowboys (documentary about the Medellin Cartel)
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Medellin Cartel
