The Columbian Cartels

Drug trafficking in Colombia has been on the rise since the 1970’s when marijuana traffickers began to smuggle small amounts of cocaine into the United States in hidden suitcases. At that time cocaine could be processed for $1500/kilo and could be sold in the US for as much as $50,000/kilo. This great opportunity for profit through the trafficking of cocaine led to the rise of Colombia’s two great drug cartels, the Medellin Cartel and the Cali Cartel.

            The Medellin cartel was led by Pablo Escobar who was a common street thief in Colombia. The other major leaders of the cartel were Jose Gonzalez Rodriguez Gacha and the Ochoa brothers who were from a well respected family in Colombia. The cartel joined forces with Carlos Lehder, a prominent marijuana smuggler. Together the cartel and Lehder began using small airplanes to directly smuggle the cocaine into the US. The cartel used the money generated from the airplane trips to invest in new labs and better airplanes. The cartel began its downfall in the 1980s when they were coming under extreme pressure from the Colombian government who planned to extradite them to the US. It was during that time that the violent leader, Escobar was believed to have been responsible for the deaths of many government officials as well as police and innocent bystanders. Rodriguez Gacha  and Escobar were gunned down by the police and the remaining members turned themselves into the police in order to receive lenient prison sentences. The downfall of the Medellin cartel led to the rise of the much larger Cali cartel.

            The Cali cartel was a great rival of the Medellin cartel and was headed by the Roriguez Orejuela brothers an Santacruz Londono. The Cali cartel used their profits in a manner that was much more reasonable, investing profits into small business rather than buying flashy goods. The Cali cartel began to attack the Medellin cartel, singling out Pablo Escobar by forming the People Against Pablo Escobar (PEPES). The Cali cartel began dominating the cocaine trade by employing terrorist techniques such as separating their workers into different cells. They hired lawyers to study the moves of the DEA and US prosecutors in order to avoid their capture. They hired top engineers to design equipment that could not be bugged. In the mid 1990s the leaders of the group were arrested and sentenced to ten to fifteen years in jail. It is believed that they are still running their drug cartel from the prison walls.

            Following the fall of the Mendellin and Cali cartels cocaine trafficking became fragmented. The next generation of drug leaders realized that it was the larger groups that were the most vulnerable to the US and Colombian governments. They began to make smaller individualized groups that each held a specific job within the business. One group would smuggle the drugs and another group would be in charge of the drug labs. The DEA and Colombian National police believe that there are more than 300 active drug smuggling groups in Colombia today.  

Sources Used:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/business/inside/colombian.html

Related Links:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/interviews/ochoajorge.html

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/interviews/ochoajdo.html