Medellin cartel

Medellin cartel

This is a Colombian terrorist institution that is involved in drug trafficking, criminology activities in addition to other unlawful activities. This organization comes from Medellin city, the founder been Pablo Escobar. The drug peddlers worked all of the 1970s and 1980s in Bolivia, Panama Colombia, and Central America among other countries. At the peak of their working, Medellin Cartels sneaked large amount of cocaine every week to countries all over the globe, and this made them generate a profit of US$60 million on day profits according to wall street journal. The vast market was in the United States that over 70% of cocaine found the market there. The organization aimed to sell drugs, mainly cocaine, and to engage in warfighting against the state and opposition to extradition. This body also was involved in murder, kidnapping, and money laundry, and this made them a criminal group known. Its main working center was Medellin, and it’s this city that the United States Drug Control Administration (DEA) named this organization Medellin (Moncada, 2016).

During the year of 1975, Pablo Escobar began growing his cocaine operation. He could fly a plane alone from Colombia and Panama so that to sneak his cocaine into the United States. In 1976, Escobar, among other members of his team, got arrested, and they were got with 18 kg of white paste coming back to Medellin with a massive load they brought from Ecuador. Before that, Escobar made attempts to pay the judges who were leading the proceedings of the case against him. After a couple of months, the allegation was overturned. This marked the start of him working with those in power, using corruption to attain his goals (Doyle, 2016).

After a while, there was an increasing demand for cocaine in America, and Escobar arranged for a lot of smuggling shipments and supply networks in South Florida. The Medellin cartel’s huge net worth and power made them give corruption to government and legal officials, and authorized officials and managed to buy superior weapons for their protection. From 1978_1982 cay became the Caribbean’s important drug peddling hub for the Medellin Cartels. Escobar was not only the leader of this organization; he was able to be raised on the ladder and became the wealthiest criminal in Columbia.

The more prominent seller of the drug smuggling Griselda Blanco supplied cocaine for the brokers in New York and finally Miami, expanding a crime connected to a level of about 10 kilos by day.   The Medellin cartel was prominent in selling drugs, especially cocaine, and they knew globally. In the year 1982, cocaine overtook coffee as the main Colombian export, and non-governmental organizations were introduced to fight away guerrillas who were in an attempt to redistribute their local peasants, forcefully adopted their lands to indigenous peasants. On the early of 1982 the group of Medellin cartel, the Colombian security team, the U.S based corporation and the productive cattle ranchers meet together in a number of meetings in Puerto Boyaca and made a paramilitary body by the name Muerte a Secuesstradore ( “Death to Kidnappers” MAS) to protect the value and interest of their economy.

In the year 1983, the Asociacion Campesina de Ganaderos y Agricultores Del Magdalena Medio  (“Association of Middle Magdalena Ranchers and Farmers” ACDEGAM) was formed to deal with the logistics and public relations of the body and to give a legal front to different paramilitary groups. ACDEGAM  had the purpose of preventing the formation of labor policies and caused fear to anyone who gets participated in organizing labor rights. In 1985 the drug peddlers Juan Matta_Ballesteros, Pablo Escobar among other members such as Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, started pumping huge funds into the organization to pay for equipment, weapons. This organization had computers that were used for communication working with the state telecommunication office. They hired British and other military trainers to coach them.

On the early 1984, the government of Colombia broke a war with Medellin cartel, and they were lucky to destroy one of the vast production complexes of the drugs known as “Tranquilandia.” On an act of revenge, the drug barons killed the minister of Justice Rodrigo Lara Bonilla. The killing of the minister put Belisario Betancur, the president of that time, on pressure. It gave a lot of Pressure against the narcos who decide to run to exile to Panama. This brought the moment of negotiation for peace. All these proceedings were going on well only on the notice of the information that got to press that leading to the occurrence of unprecedented scandal that brought to and the negotiations attempts. After some months, Pablo and his group came back to Colombia, where they began an increase of terrorist activities to put pressure on the Andean nation government to lead the talks on the to persevere of the unlawful activities.

During the years of the 1980s, there was also the war between the Medellin cartels and the Cali Cartel, which originated from the fight of the Rodriguez Orejuela brothers who bought cocaine to the Medellin Cartel. At the time this war got the momentum, they were throwing flyers to football playgrounds from the flying airplanes, and the famous phrase was, “we prefer a grave in Colombia than a dungeon in the united states.” Popeye, who was Pablo Escobar Gaviria Hitman, gave the information that the two cartels emerged by Jorge Luis Ochoa and Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela being forced to go to Colombia from Spain in 1986 and this lead to the prosecution of the two a term of one year and a half. While in prison, Jorge Luis Ochoa manages to break and escape out of jail; this leads to the United States pressing hard on the government of Colombia to extradite Rodriguez Orejuela, who was supposed to pay a millionaire sum in corruption just to be set free.

As a way of bringing fear, the cartels carried out thousands of killings all over the nation. Escobar and his team had declared that anyone who does not support them is a danger of losing life together with their families. There is a group of people who give an approximate that 3500 people lost their lives during this period of assassinations. This was the inclusion of 500 security officers in Medellin, but the number of those who were killed is difficult to prove as a result of judiciary control in Colombia. The Medellin cartel was the one answerable for the inhumane killing of the writer of the newspaper EI Espectador Guillermo Cano, together with the presidential aspirant Luis Carlos Galan who had shown the signs of the fight with the terrorist organization. On top of the torture, they also killed judges, mayors, and anybody who tried to prevent their plans( Geraldo et.al2015).

The implementation of an extradition treaty in the two countries Colombia and the United States, lead to a threat to this drug smuggling organization. It gave right Colombia to extradite to the Us, and the suspected drug peddles from Colombia to be arrested and prosecuted in the US due to the criminal acts they face. This became considerable trouble to the cartels since they had minimal access to power control in the US, and their trials could easily lead to their prosecution. The supporters of this treaty were the Colombian Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara and many Colombian Supreme Court judges. These lead to cartels applying the “bend or break” method to their supporters and giving bribes and violence even giving death threats to Supreme Court judges to prohibit that treaty which their demands ignored. Escobar and the members called for Los Extraditables to pressure the government by committing violent actions.

At the time the US leadership was informed of “questionable activities,” the body was rank under Federal Drug Task Force surveillance. The truth was obtained, put together, and handed over to the grand jury, leading to indictments, arrests, and prosecution for those charged in America. Although a small number of Colombian peddlers were raided in custody due to these operations that have been carried out to arrest those involved. The majority of Colombians wanted similar to those mentioned in this indictment were in Colombia, or they had escaped before they were caught. Moreover, in 1993 majority of the cartels had been prosecuted and some shot to death by the Colombian National Police in assistance by a special unit of the military.

The final of Escobar’s team to be killed was Juan Diego Arcila Henao, just after being set free from a Colombian prison in 2002 and went to hide in Venezuela to escape the vengeance of “Los Pepes.” There is a wide believe that Los Pepes was the main instrument for the killing of the cartel’s families for the previous 17 years. There is no clear evidence to prove if the Colombian and United States authorities were among these killings.

The Medellin Cartel came to an end; there was a declaration of war which was made by the Colombian state, boosted by the direct involvement of the United States which put a price on does leading the country and pleaded for them to be allowed to be judged in their country of origin. Secondly, the cartels worked without limitation by the help of giving bribes, threats to the government leaders, and charity kind willing donations to neighboring communities. This went beyond community by also financing political campaigns of those to be elected to be in offices at various posts of the government, which is the reason that security teams are taking measures to block their penetration into government. The third way is that the government is breaking the links with those collaborating with these cartels, therefore, destroying their distribution routes and finally the Cali Cartel’s forms the group Los PEPES(persecuted by Pablo Escobar combined with the  government and started destroying the infrastructure of Medellin and to kill those they had worked together( Mobley et al.et al. 2019).

The Medellin cartel has shown the consequences of cartels on both the economy and politics of a nation. Drug trafficking destroys the economy like it destroys coffee and also brings kills in a society just as Colombia severed on Medellin cartels. Drug smuggling is a factor that brings violent in cities and countries just as this organization ruined Medellin city. Medellin has unwanted consequences like killings and kidnapping, which is a negative effect of drug smuggling.

References

Doyle, C. (2016). Explaining patterns of urban violence in Medellin, Colombia. Laws, 5(1), 3.

Fernando, J., & ATEHORTÚA, V. (2017). Barrio Women and Energopower in Medellín, Colombia. Journal of Latin American Studies, 49(2), 355-382.

Giraldo-Ramírez, J., & Preciado-Restrepo, A. (2015). Medellín, from the theater of war to security laboratory. Stability: International Journal of Security and Development, 4(1).

Kline, H. F. (2018). Colombia: Is Guerrilla Violence Near its End?. In Latin American Politics and Development (pp. 169-194). Routledge.

Mobley, B. W., & Ray, T. (2019). The Cali Cartel and Counterintelligence. International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, 32(1), 30-53.

Moncada, E. (2016). Urban violence, political economy, and territorial control: Insights from Medellín. Latin American Research Review, 51(4), 225-248.

Nagy, N. Z. (2018). The Medellín and the Cali Cartel: the effects of the drug industry on the state sovereignty (Doctoral dissertation).