Pablo Escobar and the Rodríguez Orejuela brothers marked some of the most violent years in Colombian history, with ‘toads’, massacres and bomb attacks, in the middle of which the rest of the country was caught
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Pablo Escobar, leader of the Medellin cartel, and Miguel and Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela, of the Cali Cartel. Infobae
On the morning of this Wednesday, June 1 The former drug lord Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela, leader of the Cali Cartel, one of the criminal groups that caused some of the most painful events that have marked the country’s history, passed away. Along with his brother Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela, they founded the drug cartel, based in the Colombian Pacific, camouflaged as a family business and also remembered for being the main competition and enemy of its counterpart. , the Medellin Cartel.
Skirt fights and the fight for drug trafficking routes are some of the theories for which it is believed that the cartels started a war that left the entire country in the middle; However, what triggered the fight between the Rodríguez Orejuela brothers and Pablo Escobar is still unknown; Now, with Gilberto and Pablo dead, it is a story that only Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela knows.
It is known that, until a certain moment, the Cali and Medellín cartels, although they were competitors, managed their businesses independently, without confrontation; While Escobar sent tons of cocaine to Miami, the Rodríguez Orejuelas, according to the DEA, provided four out of every five grams of drugs sold in New York.
The War of cartels left behind some of the most violent years in Colombian history, in the 1980s and 1990s. The first event that exposed the differences between the country’s drug cartels was the assassination of the then Minister of Justice, Rodrigo Lara Bonilla on April 30, 1984. The important political official was assassinated under the orders of Pablo Escobar Gaviria, whom he had exposed.
Lara Bonilla was the first to denounce Escobar’s links with drug trafficking, when he was in Congress.
Although Lara Bonilla became a ‘stone in the shoe’ for the country’s drug lords, the Rodríguez Orejuelas thought that assassinating the politician would only bring more problems to the leaders of those organizations, which is why they disassociated themselves from the plan to attack the then minister.
That same year, in Spain, Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela and Jorge Luis Ochoa Vásquez, a member of the Medellín Cartel, they were detained by the authorities for their ties to drug trafficking. Although both had a request for extradition from the United States, they were never sent there and both spent a short time in a Colombian jail. But the struggle of the cartels for control of traffic in New York, which was increasingly becoming a richer territory for them and that the Rodríguez Orejuela considered as their own, intensified..
Although there was an alleged cordial relationship between Ochoa and the brothers, on a visit that the member of the Medellin Cartel made to Cali, he was captured by the authorities of that city after meeting with the leaders of the Medellin cartel there. From the organization commanded by Pablo Escobar, it was always ensured that this arrest was given by a notice from the Rodríguez Orejuela to the authorities; In addition, days before, several kilos of drugs from the Medellín Cartel had been intercepted in Miami.
The differences between Cali and Medellín became increasingly evident, leaving the country with the most violent years remembered for the bombs and attacks on different emblematic places in those cities and other places in the country, such as the capital. One of the first attacks was on the Monaco building, in Medellín and owned by Pablo Escobar, where he lived with his family.
On January 13, 1988, the property fell due to the detonation of 700 kilos of dynamite in front of the building, an event that left 10 injured and three dead. Although the Cali Cartel claimed not to be related to the attack, Pablo Escobar justified his subsequent actions against his competition by pointing out that the attack on his home had triggered a war .
(EFE)
Escobar’s anger was not long in coming, although he was not at home, his children and his wife “Tata” Henao were, and it was learned that his daughter Manuela was seriously affected in her hearing, burst product. Thus began the revenge of the leader of the Medellin Cartel. Around that same time, Escobar decided to set up an entire intelligence service to spy on the Rodríguez Orejuelas. In a raid they carried out on one of their farms in El Poblado, the authorities found photos of the brothers, their homes, relatives, and contact numbers in Cali.
That is why the year 1989 is considered one of the most violent, since at that time the strongest attacks among drug gangs took place. After what happened in the Mónaco building, there were several attacks against businesses and properties belonging to the Cali cartel, such as several La Rebaja drug chains and the Colombian Radial Group.
The first attack in response by Escobar took place, paradoxically, in Medellín and not in Cali, when several gunmen entered a La Rebaja drug chain in the capital of Antioquia and opened fire on the workers, leaving one of them dead. The Police managed to kill one of the thugs sent by Escobar, but that was only the beginning of the shooting that August 18.
Later, in another area of the city, gave another confrontation with firearms, described by the city authorities as a fight between the two cartels. The next day, Rogelio Ochoa Franco, from the Medellín Cartel, was found dead with several wounds caused by firearms.
Then the Medellín criminal group responded by attacking the Grupo Radia Colombiano, causing a fire at the headquarters of a radio station that was part of that groupand that he belonged to the Cali Cartel. This happened at the same time that a shipment of two tons of cocaine was intercepted in New York and Hernando Grajales Rizo, an alleged collaborator of the Rodríguez Orejuela family in that city, was arrested.
Video: The legacy of the Patron, how was the world map of cocaine trafficking after the death of Pablo Escobar? (File DEF)
However, the espionage was not just an action of the Medellín Cartel, the Rodríguez Orejuela brothers did the same and sent five retired soldiers who worked for them to Medellín. What the capos from Cali did not count on was that Pablo Escobar would discover the infiltrators and kidnap them to put pressure on them. Although the brothers proposed a truce to the paisa capo, he would only accept if they gave him a millionaire indemnity for what happened with the Mónaco building and gave him Pacho Herrera, one of his main collaborators; peace did not happen because in Cali they refused to hand over their ally.
So, Escobar murdered the five spiesand some time later he did a attack on Herrera, in Valle del Cauca, with several assassins who entered one of his farms. Although the attack left 17 people died on the land of the Cali Cartel, Herrera came out unharmed.
The war calmed down with the surrender of Pablo Escobar and his arrival at La Catedral prison; however, the Rodríguez Orejuelas planned a bombing of the paisa capo in prison, but the plan failed when all the information was leaked. When the ‘Patrón del Mal’ was released from prison, although his criminal organization was still going strong, the Cali Cartel had taken the opportunity to ally with ‘Los Pepes’, a paramilitary group that sought to put an end to drug traffickers.
It was Escobar’s death that ended the harsh war between the cartels, because with his death what was left of the Medellin Cartel came to an end, thus the Cali cartel came to have control majority drug trafficker in the country, said that did not last long either because the ex-military Jorge Salcedo Cabrera, who at the time helped them with the plan against Escobar in La Catedral, decided to speak with the authorities and caused the subsequent dismantling of the criminal group.