The Cocaine King: Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel By Lenny Flank Tuesday Jul 28, 2015 · 3:00 PM EST In 1990, one of the richest men on the planet was Pablo Escobar. To some, he was a ruthless drug lord who murdered thousands of people. To others, he was a Robin Hood who gave millions of dollars to poor neighborhoods in Colombia. Members of the DEA and Colombian police pose with the dead body of Pablo Escobar (Photo from DEA) In the mid 1970's, the recreational drug of choice in the United States was marijuana. Much of this was grown in Mexico or South America and then smuggled into the US, and much of this illegal smuggling was done by Cuban exiles living in Florida. In those times, security at airports was minimal, and it was a fairly simple matter for drug smugglers to hire flight attendants or passengers as "mules", who would travel to Columbia or Bolivia, fill their suitcases with marijuana, and bring it back to the US. In the late 1970's, however, the rules of the game began to change, as increasing security made it more difficult for the mules to move their product. In 1977, two convicted drug smugglers who had just been released from Federal prison, Colombian Carlos Lehder Rivas and American George Jung, hatched a new plan: instead of relying on mules to spirit in small amounts of pot at a time, they would obtain their own light aircraft, fly them to the production fields in South America, and fly back to the US fully loaded and unsuspected, to land at surreptitious grass airfields in Florida for unloading. Part of the reason for the Lehder network's success would be its contractual relationship with a pair of Colombian producers, Jorge Luis Ochoa Vasquez and his partner Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria, based near the town of Medellin, Colombia. And the network's fortunes increased dramatically when, in the late 1970's, Ochoa and Escobar began to supplement, and then virtually replace, their marijuana with a new product, one that was low-cost, high-profit, and would quickly become enormously popular in the US--cocaine. By 1980, virtually every high society figure in the US, from Hollywood to Wall Street, had his or her own personal cocaine dealer, and most of it was coming from the Medellin Cartel. Pablo Escobar had been born in December 1949 in a little town called Rio Negro, the son of a schoolteacher. Although he was accepted to the provincial university, he was unable to afford to stay, and dropped out in 1966 and drifted into car theft and then the marijuana-growing businesses, eventually partnering with Jorge Ochoa. Flush with cash from marijuana crops, they expanded quickly into the new cocaine business, buying up all the local coca crops by paying local farmers up to twice the going rate. By 1978, Escobar and Ochoa monopolized most of the cocaine production in Medellin, and the Medellin cartel controlled most of the cocaine going to the huge .

1. The Cocaine King: Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel
By Lenny Flank
Tuesday Jul 28, 2015 · 3:00 PM EST
In 1990, one of the richest men on the planet was Pablo
Escobar. To some, he was a ruthless
drug lord who murdered thousands of people. To others, he was
a Robin Hood who gave
millions of dollars to poor neighborhoods in Colombia.
Members of the DEA and Colombian police pose
with the dead body of Pablo Escobar (Photo from
DEA)
In the mid 1970's, the recreational drug of choice in
the United States was marijuana. Much of this was
grown in Mexico or South America and then
smuggled into the US, and much of this illegal
smuggling was done by Cuban exiles living in Florida. In those
times, security at airports was

2. minimal, and it was a fairly simple matter for drug smugglers to
hire flight attendants or
passengers as "mules", who would travel to Columbia or
Bolivia, fill their suitcases with
marijuana, and bring it back to the US.
In the late 1970's, however, the rules of the game began to
change, as increasing security made it
more difficult for the mules to move their product. In 1977, two
convicted drug smugglers who
had just been released from Federal prison, Colombian Carlos
Lehder Rivas and American
George Jung, hatched a new plan: instead of relying on mules to
spirit in small amounts of pot at
a time, they would obtain their own light aircraft, fly them to
the production fields in South
America, and fly back to the US fully loaded and unsuspected,
to land at surreptitious grass
airfields in Florida for unloading.
Part of the reason for the Lehder network's success would be its
contractual relationship with a
pair of Colombian producers, Jorge Luis Ochoa Vasquez and his
partner Pablo Emilio Escobar
Gaviria, based near the town of Medellin, Colombia. And the
network's fortunes increased

3. dramatically when, in the late 1970's, Ochoa and Escobar began
to supplement, and then
virtually replace, their marijuana with a new product, one that
was low-cost, high-profit, and
would quickly become enormously popular in the US--cocaine.
By 1980, virtually every high
society figure in the US, from Hollywood to Wall Street, had
his or her own personal cocaine
dealer, and most of it was coming from the Medellin Cartel.
Pablo Escobar had been born in December 1949 in a little town
called Rio Negro, the son of a
schoolteacher. Although he was accepted to the provincial
university, he was unable to afford to
stay, and dropped out in 1966 and drifted into car theft and then
the marijuana-growing
businesses, eventually partnering with Jorge Ochoa. Flush with
cash from marijuana crops, they
expanded quickly into the new cocaine business, buying up all
the local coca crops by paying
local farmers up to twice the going rate. By 1978, Escobar and
Ochoa monopolized most of the
cocaine production in Medellin, and the Medellin cartel
controlled most of the cocaine going to

4. the huge North American market. A Cuban mule might be able
to deliver 5 or 10 kilos of pot or
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Cocaine-King-Pablo-Escobar-and-the-Medellin-Cartel
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cocaine at a time; a single light airplane from Colombia could
carry 300 kilos, worth over $15
million in the US. With one trip per week, Escobar and Ochoa
were making over $1 billion a
year in profits. Within a few years, the Cuban networks had
virtually disappeared.
But it was not simply the greater economic efficiency of the
Medellins that allowed them to
dominate the trade: it was Escobar's talent for undiluted
violence. Between 1978 and 1981, a
period that became known as "The Cocaine Wars", the
Medellins sent dozens of hired guns to
the US to eliminate the Cubans as well as other rival South
American groups. Like Chicago in
the 20s, gang wars became an almost daily occurrence, and
hundreds were killed.
When the smoke cleared in 1982, the Medellin Cartel was the
undisputed master of the American

5. cocaine trade. There was so much cocaine flowing from
Colombia into the US that the tiny grass
airfields in Florida were not enough to handle the traffic, and
Lehder bought himself a private
island in the Bahamas, Norman's Cay, which was transformed
into one of the busiest unofficial
airports in the Carribean. As the amount shipped to the US
continued to grow, the cartel began
new ways of smuggling the product in, including freighters
anchored in international waters that
unloaded cocaine into small speedboats which then dashed in to
the Florida shore. Later,
miniature submarines would be used to evade the Coast Guard.
By 1982, Escobar and the
Medellins were sending two tons of coke every week to Florida,
for annual profits over $5
billion.
Soon, the Medellins had graduated to hiring US pilots to fly
DC-3 and DC-6 airplanes, packed
with 3 tons of cocaine, to Lehder's base in Norman's Cay. When
United Airlines went bankrupt,
Escobar bought 13 of their Boeing 727's, stripped out the seats,
and carried 11 tons of cocaine in
each. The US DEA at this point didn't know about the Medellin

6. cartel's production assets, but
they did know that an enormous amount of cocaine was going
through the Bahamas, and
diplomatically pressured the government there to do something
about it. In September 1983
Lehder was forced to leave the Bahamas, but soon found
another haven in Panama, under the
protection of strongman Manuel Noriega. By 1984 there was so
much cocaine flowing into the
US that the bloated supply drove down the price, to less than
$16,000 a kilo. Nevertheless,
because of the huge amounts, the Medellin cartel was still
netting billions a year; according to
legend, they were spending $2500 each month just for rubber
bands, to bundle their bricks of
cash. About half of all the cocaine going into the US, from Peru
and Bolivia as well as
Colombia, was going through the Medellin Cartel. Pablo
Escobar's personal worth was at least
$3 billion, making him the richest man in Colombia. By 1989,
with an estimated $24 billion,
Escobar was named by Forbes magazine as the seventh richest
person in the world.
As ruthless as he was in producing his fortune, Escobar was

7. generous in spending it. Although he
lived in a sprawling 5,000 acre mansion with a private zoo (with
hippos, tigers, lions and zebras)
and six swimming pools, he painted himself as a man of the
people and a friend of the
downtrodden, and often paid for soccer stadiums and schools for
poor villages. The cartel
employed over 750,000 people in Medellin; the cocaine
processing centers were cities in
themselves, with their own schools, churches and hospitals.
Escobar even managed to get
himself elected to the Colombian Legislature.
His cartel was already more powerful than the national
government. Escobar's ruthless policy
towards judges, police and political officials was one he called
"Silver or Lead": he first offered
generous bribes (the silver), and if that was refused, Escobar
simply had them shot (the lead).
Throughout the 80's, the Medellins killed thousands of police,
judges and politicians, including
even Presidential candidates.
Escobar's biggest fear, though, was of being extradited to the

8. US to face charges, where he had
no political influence and his bribery attempts would likely not
work. As US pressure on
Colombia increased, Escobar first bribed politicians in Bogata
to end the extradition treaty with
the US (offering at one point to pay off the country's entire $13
billion in foreign debts if the
government agreed not to extradite him), then in 1991
volunteered to submit to arrest in
Colombia if he were not extradited, offering to pay for the
construction of his own prison. At the
same time, Escobar turned the streets of Colombia into a killing
ground, shooting and bombing
police, judges, journalists, and bystanders. The Colombian
government, to end the violence,
agreed to Escobar's terms: he was "imprisoned" in a grand
mansion in the Medellin jungle that
American law enforcement officials referred to contemptuously
as "Club Medellin". Not
surprisingly, Escobar continued to run the cartel from his
private prison, named "La Catedral".
But things began to fall apart for Pablo Escobar in 1992, when
he had four members of the rival
Cali Cartel brought to his prison and executed them there. The

9. President of Colombia ordered the
army to move in and grab Escobar to relocate him to a real
prison and, very likely, extradite him
to the US. Instead, Escobar escaped before the troops could get
there, and went on the run. With
every law enforcement group on Colombia looking for him (and
with the US quietly sending
DEA and Special Forces teams to help), Escobar had no chance.
(He was also faced with a
secretive paramilitary group calling itself "Los PEPE's", or
"People Persecuted by Pablo
Escobar", who used Escobar's own methods against him by
ruthlessly hunting down and killing
most of his friends, contacts and associates. Rumor has long
held that Los PEPE's were financed
and supported both by the US Government and by the Cali
Cartel.)
In December 1993, Escobar was traced by US forces to an
apartment hideout in Medellin, where
he was killed by Colombian police as he tried to run away
across a rooftop.
The Medellin Cartel, meanwhile, had already lost its dominant
position, as Mexican cartels
began to monopolize the drug flow into the United States.