Mid-1980's Colombian Drug Cartel

Supposedly 90% of all U.S. dollars in circulation, including the $13,304,844,056 dollars spent by the U.S. to date in the War on Drugs have trace amounts of cocaine on them. Of the $13,304,844,056, $9 billion in foreign aid has been endowed to Colombia, where nearly 100% of the cocaine that is imported to the U.S. originates. The U.S. is as addicted to coke as coke is to it. The ongoing Colombian conflict between the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), and the government of Colombia has been raging for nearly 52 years. Yet, the 1990-2015 era of the conflict is the most notable due to the mass proliferation of cocaine. After the cartels receded from preeminence in Colombia, the nation

Mexican Drug Cartels have been a problem for many years. The cartels are an organized crime organization and they don’t just deal drugs; they commit murders too. The Cartels origins are traced back to the Columbian Cali and Medellin mega-cartels who were responsible for the majority of drug trafficking into the United States. Crime has existed for many years but it surfaced more when Pablo Escobar was popular. Pablo Escobar was one the main transporters for cocaine throughout Mexico and the United States coming straight out of Columbia. Law enforcement tried to stop the drug trade but Escobar formed a relationship with Mexico-based traffickers who smuggled drugs into the United States. Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo also known as “The Godfather” of the cartels. Seeing how he established the Guadalajara Cartel, which is recognized as the first Mexican Cartel, and were the first to link up with Escobar and started the transportation of cocaine

Back in the 1980s, Pablo Escobar was the biggest cocaine trafficker in the world. On a good day, from Columbia, Escobar would smuggle about 15 tons of cocaine into the United States. He used a variety of ways to sneak his product into the country, but the most straightforward of which was through American-based airlines. When he first started smuggling cocaine, Escobar would have his mother sew five kilos into the lining of a jacket, then one of his sicarios (hitmen) would wear the jacket onto a flight to the United States and walk right through the security. Eventually, Escobar would smuggle up to five tons a day into this

Drug trafficking reached its height in Colombia around 1982. They were importing foreign exchange estimating to range between $800 million and $2 billion. Colombia reached its highest peak of economic success, allowing for the countries development of communities, parks, etc. However, the cartels were not satisfied and began to set up coca

February 1, 1985 a United States Drug Enforcement Agency (will be known as the DEA for the remainder of the paper) Special Agent Enrique Camarena was abducted in Guadalajara Mexico close to the US Consulate. A witness stated that he was forced into the rear seat of a light-colored compact car in front of the Camelot restaurant where he was meeting his wife for lunch. A few days later pilot Captain Alfredo Zavala was also abducted from a car near the Guadalajara Airport. “The veteran agent, along with his pilot, Capt. Alfredo Zavala, had been viciously tortured by the bosses of a Mexican drug cartel fearful that he had uncovered a multimillion-dollar smuggling operation tied to top officers in the Mexican army, along with Mexican police and

Pablo Escobar was born on December 1, 1949 into a lower-middle class family, young Pablo grew up in the Medellín suburb of Envigado. As a young man, "he was driven and ambitious, telling friends and family that he wanted to be President of Colombia some day. " (Christopher W. Minster) His elder brother, Roberto, reported him as a good brother, who was kind, friendly and intelligent and someone who would achieve greatness. Escobar's drive unfortunately began to find the wrong outlets and he was soon involved in small-time hustling with his gang in the streets of Medellin. There are unproven rumours that, while still at school, Escobar would steal tombstones from the local graveyards, sandblast off the names and sell them to Panamanian smugglers.. Doing whatever he could to make money, by the age of 20, Escobar was dealing cannabis, skilled at stealing cars and starting to build a name for himself in the Colombian criminal underworld. (Pablo Escobar Gavira-Archivos, 2000) Pablo was introduced to crime at a very young age. One must look at the society's state and how he got involved into crime. It could be argued that if Pablo was in a better environment his kindness and ambitions could of lead him to great things instead of becoming a drug lord. Escobar was born with ambitions and dreams

“The Sinaloa Cartel was founded by Jaime Hererra Nevares, Ernesto Fonseca Carillo, Eduardo Fernandez, Jorge Escobar, Pedro Aviles Perez, Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, and Hector Luis Palma” (Beith, 2011, p. 68). The Sinaloa Cartel is a culmination of different Mexican drug organizations. Herrera was in charge of an organization that exported heroine from Mexico through Chicago using what is known as the “heroin highway” (Beith, 2011). Eventually the Herrera organization teamed up with Ernesto Fonseca and Jorge Escobar who were key figures in the Sinaloan drug world. The Mexican government launched Operation Condor which forced

Another dimension to the predicament in Colombia is the drug problem. Colombia is the largest producer and provider of cocaine in the world. This problem, however, is not separate to the armed conflict. In the recent past decades, control over the drug business in Colombia has shifted from drug cartel organizations such as the notorious Medellin Cartel, to both the

South America: The article "Brits Behind Bars: Cocaine Smugglers," was published on telegraph.co.uk on August 10, 2015 by Jane Shilling. Over the past few years, more arrests have occurred for cocaine smuggling which makes Peru now one of the largest producers of cocaine. Smugglers have now gained more access to drug trades, though drug mules who have their own way of smuggling. The mules are persuasive and gain other smugglers trust to carry the bricks of cocaine, and then use a spray to keep sniffer dogs from catching them. But thankfully, two smugglers were spotted by Maria, an anti-narcotics profiler, who found the £1 million of cocaine they were carrying.

The United States has one of the most profitable drug markets in the world. “As such, it attracts the most ruthless, sophisticated, and aggressive drug traffickers” The United States has such a demand for illegal drugs such as cocaine, heroin, marijuana, MDMA, and methamphetamine, that traffickers will do about anything to sneak in the drugs into the country. The majority of the drugs are brought into the country from the border between Mexico and the U.S.A. These drugs are supplied mainly from Mexico, and Colombia. According to the U.S Drug Enforcement Agency, the price of a kilogram of cocaine ranges from $13,000 to $25,000. That is about 2.2 pounds of cocaine. With that kind of profit, we can for sure know that as long as there is demand

However, it seemed as if an even bigger problem for the DEA would be to find the source of the drugs and eliminate the drug trade. The focus moved to Colombia, the base of many sophisticated drug trafficking organizations. The notorious Pablo Escobar became one of the world’s leading drug traffickers. Violence and corruption erupted in Colombia during this era. During the Medellin Massacre, the Columbian mafia killed forty people in one weekend after authorities seized about six hundred kilos of cocaine. This event truly solidified the power and success of the drug mafias in Colombia. What did this mean for America? It only heightened the amount of drug trafficking. Anxiety grew in the hearts of Americans who feared that the new drug epidemic would also bring about brutal violence in their country. However violence only contributed partially to the problem. Organizations based in America grew to power off of the drug trading business. This did not just include mobsters but people like Larry Lavin. Lavin, an Ivy-league educated dentist, became the head of a major drug trafficking business. Those involved in his heist also included teachers, lawyers, and businessmen. Situations similar to these further validated America’s fear of violence and corruption being associated with drugs. The

When the government stepped in and started to enforce the active drug laws the violence increasing and dramatically increased. The cartels were not willing to lose all there profits due to the government.

During the early 1990’s Colombia being one of the biggest exporters of narcotics in history, led by Pablo Escobar, who had a wide range of organized crime affiliations throughout Latin America. Pablo Escobar was a Colombian drug lord and he smuggled narcotics all the way to South Florida as when authorities tried to capture him. One of Pablo Escobar’s most important alliances was that of the Mexican-based traffickers. Escobar knew that this was an important trade route because of its geography and how it would be easier to smuggle the narcotics into the United States. This allowed a smuggling partnership between both countries and Mexico was to eventually lead their own drug based trafficking system with the help of Pablo Escobar. From the distributed drugs, cartels would take a certain amount of profit, and would use that money to bribe Mexican officials. By bribing Mexican officials it was insured that if smugglers were to be arrested they would either be let go, the case would be dropped or taking action against a rival smuggling group by giving away information about the rival’s plan to carry

The drug dealers have captured a great deal of power in Colombia, and have adopted the position of the government in many instances. The drug trade has ruined the image of Colombia, and has caused the world to forget about the other goods produced in Colombia, like coffee, flowers, oil and gas for instance. As the website put out by the Colombian Government Trade Bureau entitled “Colombia Trade News” states,

For many years in Medellin a civil war had occurred costing many lives between both sides of the parties concerning government and guerilla groups, later to become the Medellin Cartel (Fukuyama and Colby 2011). The war had begun and had been prolonged due to the weakness of Colombia’s national government who only commanded a small army and police all around Colombia (Fukuyama et al. 2011). It was by this that the beginning of The Medellin Cartel was able to start strong and continue a successful business. In the book Kings of Cocaine an Astonishing True Story of Murder, Money, and Corruption, authors Guy Gugliotta and Jeff Leen (Gugliotta and Leen 1989) name the founders of what can