Medellín Cartel

The Medellín cartel was a powerful Columbian drug cartel that controlled most of the global cocaine market in the 1980s. Founded by notorious drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, the cartel raked in an estimated $100 million in drug trade profits every day at the height of its operations and was responsible for about 96 percent of the cocaine that entered the United States. The Medellín cartel assumed and maintained power through brute force and corruption, using its vast riches to pay off numerous law enforcement officials and political leaders and killing virtually anyone who dared to oppose it. Despite eventually becoming the largest drug trafficking organization in Columbian history, the Medellín cartel was ultimately felled by the combined efforts of the Columbian, American, and Canadian governments, as well as the work of a few organized resistance groups. The cartel’s end came with Escobar’s death at the hands of Columbian security forces in 1993.

Background

The rise of the Medellín cartel was directly tied to the ascension of cocaine as the illicit substance of choice among recreational drug users in the late 1970s and 1980s. Cocaine is a stimulant drug made from the coca plant commonly found throughout South America. Thousands of years ago, various indigenous peoples living in the Amazon rainforest and the Andes Mountains began chewing coca leaves to achieve a drug-induced high. After European scientists successfully isolated cocaine from coca leaves in the 1850s, the substance came to be seen as a sort of wonder drug that could be prescribed for a wide variety of debilitating ailments. As reports of cocaine addiction escalated rapidly over time, however, it became clear that the drug was much more dangerous than first realized. In response to this discovery, the federal government banned all non-medical uses of cocaine with the passage of the Harrison Act of 1914.

Once recreational use of cocaine was outlawed, public interest in the drug declined significantly. In the decades that followed, substances like marijuana, methamphetamine, and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) came to be favored among most drug users. Cocaine remained on the sidelines of illicit drug use until the late 1970s when the once commonplace drug began to regain its popularity. Cocaine became a fashionable choice among wealthier substance abusers because it was more expensive than other street drugs. The American elite’s newfound desire for the drug fueled a significant increase in cocaine trafficking in South America.

The lucrative nature of cocaine trafficking only increased in the 1980s as a cheaper, smokable form of cocaine referred to as “crack” became wildly popular in American cities. Surging sales of traditional cocaine in its powder form and crack cocaine led to the rise of numerous powerful and violent South American drug cartels. This was particularly true in Columbia, which quickly emerged as the world’s largest cocaine-producing country. Chief among the cocaine trafficking organizations that took hold in Columbia during this time was the notorious Medellín cartel.

Overview

The rise of the Medellín cartel began with the emergence of Pablo Escobar as one of the top Columbian drug traffickers. When the cocaine trade exploded in the late 1970s, Escobar and others in the country took advantage of the fact that Columbia was the world’s leading grower of coca plants. Escobar got his start in the drug trafficking business by smuggling coca paste into Columbia from Peru, refining it into pure cocaine, and shipping the end product to America. Once he got the coca paste—which is the unrefined version of coca leaves—into Columbia, Escobar personally refined it. He then used a team of drug mules to smuggle his cocaine into the United States. Escobar’s operation, which was based out of his home city of Medellín, quickly grew into a full-scale drug cartel.

The Medellín cartel reached new heights when Escobar later organized a new trafficking scheme with fellow cartel members Carlos Lehder and George Jung. Lehder and Jung were experts in flight trafficking and came up with a plan for smuggling cocaine into the United States by using small biplanes to fly to South Florida from the Bahamas. This system allowed Escobar and the Medellín cartel to develop perhaps the most profitable drug smuggling ring in history and establish a seemingly impenetrable stranglehold on the global cocaine trade.

Another key player in the Medellín cartel was Escobar’s cousin Gustavo de Jesus Gaviria Rivero. Rivero was responsible for developing and maintaining the trade routes the cartel utilized and for quietly running the entire operation as Escobar became a more recognizable public figure. Rivero also took the lead in developing alternative smuggling methods when authorities began to crack down on the cartel’s business. In addition to hiding cocaine in shipments of legal goods, Rivero also came up with the idea of mixing cocaine into products like wine, cocoa powder, and blue jeans and enlisting American chemists to extract the drug in the United States.

In short order, the Medellín cartel’s cocaine smuggling operation became an incredible financial success. Estimates suggest that the cartel took in around $100 million per day at its peak. As its profits soared, so too did the violence, intimidation, and corrupt dealings the Medellín cartel engaged in to maintain its place as Columbia’s most powerful organized crime outfit. Cartel members paid a vast number of police officials, judges, politicians, and other authority figures to look the other way and allow the drug trade to continue operating smoothly. Those who refused to cooperate were often dealt with swiftly. It is believed that the Medellín cartel may have killed as many as 4,000 people while it was active, including numerous police officers, journalists, judges, and government officials. The cartel was also responsible for the murder of Columbian presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán in 1989.

With so much violence and a quickly escalating drug crisis in the United States, it was only a matter of time before the law caught up with the Medellín cartel. For a number of years, law enforcement officials from Columbia, the United States, and Canada worked together to bring down the Medellín empire. Their efforts came to a head when Escobar was killed while trying to flee from authorities in Medellín on December 2, 1993. His death marked the beginning of the end for the Medellín cartel and effectively closed the books on the world’s most successful cocaine smuggling operation.

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