by Austin Galt
As for Vargas, he was kidnapped by the FARC in 1986 and in return for his release he agreed to supply the guerrillas with weapons and communication equipment as well as information about people to be kidnapped. However, his alliance with the FARC ended in 1988 when the guerrillas discovered he had set up some paramilitary training camps in Putumayo. They attacked his laboratories, killing 40 of his men and stealing over 6 tons of processed cocaine.
Vargas was arrested several times in the 1980s but always managed to get himself freed. He wasn’t so fortunate after being captured in 1993 while gambling at a casino in Cartagena. He was sentenced to 19 years in jail for drug trafficking and another 26 years for murder. He survived an assassination attempt in jail in 1997 when a bomb exploded near him, although it did kill Rodríguez Gacha’s trusted sicario who murdered Patriotic Union leader Jaime Pardo. The author of the attack was believed to be an imprisoned Norte del Valle Cartel leader who Vargas was warring with over disputed lands. Prison authorities also uncovered a plot to kill him with poisoned food.
Also in 1997, Vargas was accused of planning the assassination of politician Horacio Serpa, who had been the interior minister in the Samper administration and was then running for president. The assassination plot was exposed before it could be carried out. Despite this and his record, Leonidas Vargas was released early due to good behaviour in 2001 and he immediately fled the country. After evidence pointed towards Vargas as the owner of 400 kilograms of cocaine, which was decommissioned by police in Honduras in 2004, the Colombian authorities began confiscating his properties and he once again became one of the country’s most wanted fugitives.
Rodríguez Gacha brought new trafficking routes to the organisation such as those through Mexico where he was close to Miguel Félix Gallardo, the leader of the Guadalajara Cartel. Rodríguez Gacha was also responsible for setting up a route through Nicaragua using the American pilot Barry Seal, who, unbeknownst to the cartel, began working for the DEA and CIA.
Seal ran drugs for the Medellín Cartel to his base at Mena airport in Arkansas before being caught. After that, he turned informant and had a secret camera hidden in his airplane that recorded him, along with Rodríguez Gacha, Escobar and Jorge Ochoa as well as Sandinista soldiers, loading cocaine onto the cargo plane. Both the Medellín Cartel and Nicaraguan government had been caught red-handed dealing in drugs, which led to the Iran–Contra Affair.
It was also Barry Seal who brought Benjamín Herrera to the attention of US authorities, leading to his downfall. Seal would pay for his treachery a couple of years later. Max Mermelstein, a Florida-based cartel operative, testified that he had been offered $1 million to kidnap Seal and return him to Colombia, or $500,000 to kill him. Seal was eventually taken out in early 1986 as he sat in his car in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. His killers were arrested as they tried to leave the state and subsequently sentenced to life in prison.
Mermelstein was an associate of Griselda Blanco, known as ‘La Madrina’ or ‘The Godmother’. She grew up in Medellín but moved to the United Sates in the 1970s, first settling in New York before setting up operations in Miami. Blanco was the main instigator of the Miami drug wars of the late 1970s and early 1980s which included the infamous shooting at the Dadeland Mall in 1979. Her reckless use of violence earned both her and her enemies, exiled Cuban drug traffickers, the nickname ‘Cocaine Cowboys’. It eventually became too much for even her and she fled to California in 1984. The following year she was arrested and stayed in jail until her release in 2004 when she was deported back to Colombia. After dropping off the radar, she hit the news one more time in 2012 when she was murdered by a sicario after leaving a butcher shop in the Belén neighbourhood in Medellín.
Towards the end of his life, Rodríguez Gacha tried to take over the lucrative emerald mining business by assassinating his old boss, Gilberto Molina, and many of his associates during a party held at Molina’s farm. It was all in vain, though, as later that year he would himself be killed. The Cali Cartel had an operative, known as ‘El Navegante’ or ‘The Navigator’, who infiltrated his security apparatus and helped lead authorities to him. It was this same operative who helped authorities capture Rodríguez Gacha’s partner, Leonidas Vargas, a few years later.
In December 1989, The Mexican was spotted in Cartagena meeting with his son Fredy. Afterwards they fled to a property further down the Caribbean coast in Tolú where a shoot-out ensued. Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha and his son, along with five of his men, were killed by machine-gun fire from one of two helicopters in pursuit. That is the official version anyway. An unofficial version has Rodriguez Gacha, upon realising there was no escape, committing suicide by blowing his own head off with a grenade.
Rodríguez Gacha was the first Medellín Cartel leader to die. Escobar was next.
After being sent to La Catedral, Pablo Escobar put Gustavo Upegui in charge of his financial affairs on the outside. The Escobar and Upegui families had grown up together, living across the road from each other in Envigado. Gustavo and Pablo used to ride bikes and play football together, and when Pablo began construction on Hacienda Napoles it was his childhood friend who handled the logistical and administrative tasks of the operation. Pablo would then get Upegui to put his skills to use and run the Oficina de Envigado or Envigado Office which handled the Medellín Cartel’s financial affairs.
Like other gangsters, Gustavo Upegui invested in his own football team, founding the Envigado football club in 1989. He liked searching for young players exhibiting a lot of talent. One such player was James Rodríguez who would go on to play for Colombia and the famed Real Madrid club. In 2003, Upegui noticed the 11-year-old Rodríguez play in a junior tournament in Medellín. He immediately made a deal with his parents to move them to Medellín, set them up with jobs and put them in a nice apartment. James Rodríguez made his professional debut for Envigado in 2006, the same year Upegui was assassinated in a mafia power play. Rodríguez left shortly after the death of his boss, but his stepfather later stated, ‘the only one to believe in us was Don Gustavo Upegui’. The club remained in the hands of the Upegui clan and entered the infamous Clinton List in 2014.
While residing in his luxurious prison compound, Escobar continued his drug-trafficking activities as if nothing had happened. However, not being able to move about freely meant he could not keep as close an eye as he would have liked on his operation. Paranoia began to set in and he suspected he was not receiving his due share of profits from some key members of the organisation. Fernando Galeano, Gerardo Moncada and Fidel Castaño were summoned to La Catedral by Escobar. Galeano and Moncado arrived at the prison but Castaño decided to stay away for whatever reason. Escobar accused the two men of being disloyal and withholding money from him and duly had both executed.
News of the murders reached the government, forcing them to act. Escobar was warned that he was about to be transferred to a jail in Bogotá, so he decided his time at La Catedral was up and left on his own terms. He had instructed the builder of the prison to leave a small part of the wall unsecured in case he needed to escape. Naturally, his hand-picked prison guards didn’t obstruct his departure.
The Colombian National Police had already formed the Bloque de Búsqueda or Search Bloc and they were given official help by the US Joint Special Operations Command. The Search Bloc was also given unofficial help by the Cali Cartel and Los Pepes – the abbreviated name of Los Perseguidos por Pablo Escobar or People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar. Added to that, 12 important Medellín Cartel members agreed to collaborate with government authorities and provide them with information on Escobar’s operations in return for amnesty. They were dubbed ‘Los Doce del Patíbulo’ which effectively translates as ‘The Dirty Dozen’.
The Cali Cartel had already declared war on the Medellín Cartel in 1988 when they exploded a car bomb at the entrance to Escobar’s family compound, the Mónaco building, an eight-storey building located in El Poblado. The top two floors were reserved for his immediate family, while his guards l
ived downstairs. The bombing left Pablo’s daughter Manuela deaf in one ear, while his fleet of classic cars parked in the garage were destroyed.
The attack was planned by Pacho Herrera, and Escobar returned fire in 1990 targeting Pacho for assassination at a friendly football match being played on one of his properties on the outskirts of Cali. Pacho was in attendance with about 60 other people, mostly mafia henchmen and their families. Just after the sun had set and with 15 minutes left to play, 20 heavily armed men dressed as policemen opened fire on the crowd with submachine guns. The bloodbath left more than a dozen people dead but Pacho was able to escape the carnage.
Another plot involved using British mercenaries, who the Cali Cartel had brought in to attack the Hacienda Napoles, but it failed at the last moment when the helicopter experienced technical difficulties and crashed. They had also put in motion a plan to drop a bomb on La Catedral but backed out of it after their purchase of four bombs in El Salvador was exposed.
The Cali Cartel helped to fund Los Pepes which was founded by Fidel Castaño and his younger brother Carlos. Los Pepes provided key intelligence to the Search Bloc, while waging their own ruthless campaign attacking the structure of Escobar’s organisation. They bombed his properties and took out his support base by killing people associated with him, such as his lawyers and accountants. The idea and modus operandi of Los Pepes was copied and later used against the Cali Cartel. Mucali, which is the abbreviation for Muerte al Cartel de Cali or Death to the Cali Cartel, was made up of some remnants of Pablo Escobar’s organisation but it never had the same impact as Los Pepes.
Escobar, under attack from all sides, made a last-ditch effort to fight back. He had several car bombs detonated in Bogotá in the first half of 1993, the most lethal of which occurred on 30 January when one exploded in the downtown area, killing 25 people and leaving 75 injured. The second-most lethal attack was on 16 April when a car bomb exploded in the upscale area near Parque 93, killing 11 people and leaving about 200 injured.
Pablo grew despondent while on the run and became resigned to the fact that it was all over. Gone were the mansions and several rings of security men. There was no coming back now. On 2 December 1993, a day after his 44th birthday, Pablo Escobar was talking to his son by phone from a house located in the suburb of Los Olivos, a middle-class neighbourhood in western Medellín, when the Search Bloc and Los Pepes zeroed in on him. He was shot on the roof of the house, while attempting to flee. It was a bullet to the ear that ended his life.
The question remains as to who fired the fatal shot. It was widely regarded that an approaching police officer finished Escobar off, while others have put forward the theory that a US Delta Force sniper took him out with a precision shot. Both of these versions are doubtful. One very valid scenario is that a member of Los Pepes killed him. Pablo’s son has claimed he committed suicide and this is another plausible scenario. It was the end of an era, but his memory lives on larger than life to this day.
In 2012, Escobar’s life was brought to the small screen in Colombia. Pablo Escobar: El Patrón del Mal (Pablo Escobar: The Boss of Evil) became the highest-rating television show ever in Colombia. Interestingly, the show was produced by the children of a couple of Escobar’s victims – Camilo Cano and Juana Uribe. Camilo Cano’s father was Guillermo Cano, who was the publisher of the El Espectador newspaper which ran negative articles about Pablo Escobar. He was murdered in 1986, while Escobar blew up the newspaper’s offices a few years later. Juana Uribe was the niece of Luis Galán and daughter of Maruja Pachón who was kidnapped by the cartel.
One of Lily’s relatives, who was involved in the Antioquian political scene in the 1980s, met Pablo after he entered politics and was even a guest at Hacienda Napoles in its heyday. I asked him what Pablo was like on a personal level.
‘A friendly and charming man,’ he replied.
‘So, the type of guy you would invite over for a barbeque?’ I pushed for more information.
‘Sure.’
This was only one side of the man, of course. Pablo Escobar had two sides. The other side was a murderous megalomaniac.
Pablo Escobar, the man, could not have been summed up any better than the title of the book written by his mistress, the Colombian television anchor Virginia Vallejo – Amando a Pablo, Odiando a Escobar (Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar). Pablo was a nice and caring man who loved his family. Escobar was a completely different animal, who ruthlessly killed anyone who got in his way, including innocent bystanders.
The downfall of the Medellín Cartel, which at its peak had been responsible for around 80 percent of the world’s cocaine supply, allowed the next generation of traffickers to rise up, and the Medellín that I found myself in had entered a new phase. The city’s underworld was now controlled by the right-wing paramilitary commander, Don Berna.
15
RIGHT-WING PARAMILITARIES PART 1
It was lucky for Diego Murillo that he didn’t accompany his boss, Fernando Galeano, to La Catedral when summoned by Pablo Escobar. He would likely have been chopped up and incinerated too. He was doubly lucky that he was escorting Galeano’s mistress to the beauty salon at the time Escobar despatched his sicarios to finish off the job by taking out the rest of the Galeano and Moncada clans.
Murillo was one of the few survivors and subsequently went underground. Many years later, he recalled Escobar calling him. ‘With total calm, that filled me with terror, he said, “This is an economic coup. I don’t want publicity. If you want to work with me, I will respect your life. I need you to deliver to me Rafaelito Galeano”.’ Murillo refused to hand over the remaining brother.
Don Berna, as Diego Murillo is known, began his criminal career as a left-wing guerrilla with the EPL. The fact that he ended up as a right-wing paramilitary leader was probably testament to the fact that it was crime in general that really interested him. He wasn’t the only person to use the guerrilla movement as a vehicle for his own criminal agenda.
Berna, who originated from Tuluá in Valle del Cauca, saw a brighter horizon for himself in Medellín and joined the Galeano crime family in the early 1980s, eventually becoming its head of security. It was an unlikely rise considering his boss was a hardline right-winger with a deep-seated hatred for communist guerrillas. He proved his allegiance to his new master by guiding Galeano’s hitmen to the location of an important EPL leader. The guerrilla leader was licked at his favourite ice-cream parlour.
The EPL replied with an attack on one of Galeano’s businesses and Berna was shot 17 times. He miraculously survived but suffered enormous damage to his leg, requiring him to get a prosthetic one. After recovering, and with a reputation on the up and up, he eventually forced the guerrillas out of Medellín. It has remained a right-wing bastion ever since.
Angered by Escobar’s merciless treatment of his boss, Berna teamed up with Fidel and Carlos Castaño to form Los Pepes. In concert with the Search Bloc, he and his crew located Escobar as he spoke to his son for the final time. Don Berna has claimed it was his brother Rodolfo, known as ‘Semilla’ or ‘Seed’, who took down Escobar as he attempted to flee across the roof. The police there advised them to leave before the press showed up, which they did, and the Search Bloc took all the credit for Escobar’s downfall.
With Escobar’s death, a power vacuum developed within Medellín’s criminal underworld. Don Berna stepped in to fill the breach.
Berna took over the Oficina de Envigado which was the mafia collection system previously under Escobar’s control, although Gustavo Upegui stayed on in his managerial role. Its name is derived from the actual office set up in Envigado’s City Hall by then mayor Jorge Mesa, a known emissary of Pablo Escobar, and which was used for the municipality’s security purposes. Back then there was no higher power than Escobar and he essentially used the office for the collection of his own debts and dues.
As Medellín’s top crime boss, Don Berna exerted influence over the country’s most lethal band of assassins, La Terraza or The Terrace. The
Oficina de Envigado and La Terraza went hand in hand. Should anyone refuse to pay their debts or dues to the Oficina, then La Terraza would be called in and the debtor would be eliminated. He also threatened the city’s various criminal factions, letting them know that failure to align themselves under the Oficina’s banner would have fatal consequences. Those who defied him would likely face La Terraza.
The services of La Terraza were also available to another major player – Carlos Castaño known as ‘El Comandante’ or ‘The Commander’. Don Berna had maintained his connection with his old Los Pepes counterpart who was gaining notoriety on the national stage.
Carlos was born in the town of Amalfi, located in north-eastern Antioquia. He was one of 12 children who helped to farm the family’s land. Carlos, along with two of his brothers, Fidel and José Vicente, would take the same general path in life. Their father had been kidnapped by the FARC in 1981, and after the family was unable to come up with the exorbitant ransom he was killed as a result of a savage beating. The brothers set out to avenge his death.
Fidel, who had already made some good money from drug trafficking after meeting Pablo Escobar in the late 1970s, and Carlos, who was still a teenager, spent the next year battling the guerrillas alongside the army. They then set up their own vigilante group Los Tangueros, named after their ranch Las Tangas.
Within a short while, as their reputations grew, many ranchers and businessmen pleaded for their protection against the FARC, who were running rampant across the region. Los Tangueros cut a swath through northern Antioquia and into Córdoba state, pushing the guerrillas out of many areas. Fidel was fearless in battle and gained the nickname ‘Rambo’.
Fidel set up another couple of paramilitary units to cater to the increased demand. One group was called Los Magnificos after the Colombian name for the American television show, The A-Team. The other group was called Muerte a Revolucionarios del Noreste (MRN) or Death to Revolutionaries of the Northeast. Funding came from local farmers and businessmen as well as the Medellín Cartel.
