- José Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha
José Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha (May 1947 -December 15 ,1989 ), also known by the nickname "El Mexicano", was aColombian drug lord who was one of the leaders of the notoriousMedellín Cartel along with the Ochoa brothers andPablo Escobar . At the height of his criminal career Rodríguez was acknowledged as one of the world's most successfuldrug dealers . In 1988,Forbes Magazine included him in their annual list of the world's billionaires. [U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment"Information Technologies for the Control of Money Laundering" OTA-ITC-630, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, September 1995]Early years
José Gonzalo Rodríguez was born in May 1947 in the small Colombian town of
Pacho ,Cundinamarca Department . He came from a poor family of modest big farmers, and it is said that his formal education did not extend beyond grade school. As a youth he developed a fearsome reputation while employed as a hired killer for a gangster trying to gain control of Colombia's lucrativeemerald mines. In the early 1970s,, Rodríguez migrated toBogotá and linked up with Verónica Rivera de Vargas, a pioneering drug trafficker who became the first queen of cocaine by murdering the family of her main rival. ['Drug Kingpin 'El Mexicano' Is Violent Empire-Builder : 40-Year-Old a Symbol of Cocaine Wealth'. "The Washington Post",November 14 ,1987 ]Rise of the Medellín cartel
After moving to
Medellín in 1976, Rodríguez joined with theOchoa family, Pablo Escobar, andCarlos Lehder in establishing an alliance that eventually strengthened into what would become known as theMedellín Cartel . The traffickers cooperated in the manufacturing, distribution and marketing of cocaine. During the late 1970s, Rodríguez advanced in the organizational hierarchy, pioneering new trafficking routes throughMexico and into theUnited States , primarilyLos Angeles, California andHouston, Texas . This, coupled with his infatuation with Mexican popular culture, earned him the nickname "El Mexicano" (theMexican ). He owned a string of ranches in the Pacho area with Mexican inspired names such asCuernavaca ,Chihuahua ,Sonora andMazatlán . When he was an owner of theBogotá Football Club theMillonarios ,, he hired a Mexicanmariachi band to perform for the crowd. According to the US Justice Department, Rodríguez directed cocaine trafficking operations throughPanama and the West Coast (California ) of the United States. It is claimed that he helped design aNicaraguan trafficking operation that employed pilotBarry Seal (who was murdered onFebruary 19 after agreeing to testify against the Medellín cartel). Rodríguez based much of his operations from Bogotá and other areas in the Cundinamarca region.Assassination of Colombian Minister of Justice Fuels the Extradition Controversy
On
April 30 ,1984 , ColombianMinister of Justice Rodrigo Lara, who had crusaded against the Medellin cartel, wasassassinated by a gang of motorcycle thugs. In response, PresidentBelisario Betancur , who had previously opposed extradition, makes an announcement that "we will extradite Colombians". Carlos Lehder is the first to be put on the list. The crackdown forces the Ochoas, Escobar and Rodríguez to flee toPanama for several months. A few months later, Escobar is indicted for Lara's murder and Rodríguez is named as amaterial witness . In an attempt to handle the situation, Escobar, Rodríguez and the Ochoa brothers met with the former Colombian president Alfonso López in the Hotel Marriott inPanama City . The negotiation failed after news of it leaked to the press, provoking the open opposition of the United States to any impunity deal. [Alonso Salazar J, La Parábola de Pablo: Auge y caída de un gran capo del narcotráfico ("Santafé de Bogotá: Editorial Planeta", 2001), pp. 129-31.]Cartel Linked Paramilitary Groups
Paramilitary groups (or self-defense groups, "autodefensas" as they are frequently referred to in Colombia), were created with the support of landowners and cattle ranchers who had been under pressure from the guerrillas as well as from groups affiliated with narcotics traffickers such as theMuerte a Secuestradores movement (MAS – Death to Kidnappers). As made clear in a 2004 judgment of the Inter-American court of Human Rights, [See the Judgement of the Court ofJuly 5 ,2004 in the Case of 19 Merchants, paragraphs, 84a-84d] numerous independent reports and from what the paramilitaries themselves have said, in at least some cases they were given support by the state itself. [In the speech, the Magdalena Medio commander present at the Congress of the Republic onJuly 28 ,2004 , he said: “we went to Base Calderón, now the Barbula battalion, we stated what we wished to do and they helped us with 8 shotguns and munitions…and then onFebruary 18 ,1978 the now Peasant Self Defence of the Magdalena Medio Antioqueno were both.”] The top leaders of the Medellín cartel created private armies to guarantee their own security and protect the property they had acquired. According to "The Washington Post", in the mid-1980s, Rodríguez andPablo Escobar bought huge tracts of land theMagdalena Department (as well asPuerto Boyacá ,Rionegro and theLlanos ) which they used to transform their self-defense groups from poorly trained peasant militias into sophisticated fighting forces. [ Doug Farah, "Massacres Imperil U.S. Aid to Colombia Paramilitary Groups Linked to Army, "The Washington Post",January 31 ,1999 , A01] By the late 1980s Medellin traffickers controlled 40 percent of the land in the Middle Magdalena, according to a Colombian military estimate, and also funded most of the paramilitary operations in the region.Throughout the 1980s Rodríguez helped catalyze the Medellín cartel's explosive rise to power by financing the importation and adoption of expensive foreign technology and expertise. According to the report by the
Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad (Colombia's Administrative Security Department), between December 1987 and May 1988 Rodríguez hiredIsraeli and Britishmercenaries to train teams of assassins at remote training camps in Colombia. Yair Klein, a retired Israeli lieutenant colonel, acknowledged having led a team of instructors inPuerto Boyacá in early 1988. [Colombian Security Alleges Mercenary Aid to Cartels.August 29 ,1989 , "Washington Post Foreign Service"] . It is not clear whether Klein’s mercenary activities in Colombia coincided with those of a group of British mercenaries who had allegedly trained paramlitary squads for the cocaine cartels. [Tony Thompson, ‘High-tech Crime of the Future Will be all Mod Cons’, "The Observer",October 3 ,1999 , "The Omega Foundation" (Manchester, UK) carried out a study of new security technologies for the Scientific and Technological Options Assessment Panel at the request of the Committee on Civil Liberties and Internal Affairs of European Parliament in January 1998]The United States and the War on Drugs
By 1989, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) estimated that 80 percent of
cocaine consumed in theUnited States was imported from Colombia by the Medellín cartel and it’s rival, theCali Cartel . The newly elected administration of PresidentGeorge H.W. Bush was under considerable pressure to combat the increasing drug usage and drug-related violence plaguing scores of American cities. Much of the government strategy concentrated on restricting drug supply by extraditing Colombian cartel leaders to the United States forprosecution . OnAugust 21 ,1989 ,Attorney General Dick Thornburgh released a list of the twelve Colombian drug kingpins (commonly referred to as the "dirty dozen") most wanted by the United States and said the names would be shared with the Colombian government andInterpol . The list included Pablo Escobar, Jorge Luis Ochoa, and José Gonzalo Rodríguez,, the leading members of the Medellín cartel.Financial Crackdown
President Bush declared
money laundering a critical target in the war on drugs, allocating $15 million to launch a counteroffensive. Only hours after Bush unveiled his antidrug offensive in September 1989, a federal task force began taking shape. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN) was designed to zero in on money launderers withcomputer programs capable of spotting suspicious movements of electronic money. OnDecember 6 ,1989 , Attorney General Dick Thornburgh announced that authorities had frozen accounts in five countries holding $61.8 million belonging to Rodriguez Gacha. According to the Justice Department, the money represented long-term high-yieldstocks and investments and was held in bank accounts inEngland ,Switzerland ,Austria ,Luxembourg and theUnited States . An additional $20 million of Gacha’s drug money was suddenly transferred to Panama, where it was protected from American authorities. [Jonathan Beaty and Richard Hornik, 'A Torrent of Dirty Dollars', "TIME Magazine ", PostedJune 24 ,2001 ]Rodríguez Gacha's Final Years
During 1989, Rodríguez became involved in an intense and violent power struggle over control of Colombia’s
emerald mines, which are considered some of the richest in the world. OnFebruary 27 ,1989 , Rodríguez directed a group of 25 gunmen to kill emerald magnateGilberto Molina , who was previously considered among his close associates, along with sixteen other individuals at a party in Molina's home. "El Mexicano" was later charged inColombia and the United States for his involvement in a number of killings, including the assassination of the president of the leftistPatriotic Union party, Jaime Pardo Leal onOctober 12 ,1988 in retaliation for guerrilla attacks on drug traffickers in the eastern plains area known as the "llanos orientales." [Drug Kingpin 'El Mexicano' Is Violent Empire-Builder: 40-Year-Old a Symbol of Cocaine Wealth,November 14 ,1987 , "The Washington Post "] Both Pablo Escobar and Rodríguez were implicated in the slaying of popular presidential candidateLuis Carlos Galán onAugust 18 ,1989 , who was considered likely to be elected Colombia's next president.Government Crackdown and Narcoterrorism
In response to a wave of drug-related assassinations, Colombian
President Virgilio Barco launched an all-out offensive on the cocaine cartels and re-established extraditions with the United States. At first, the Colombian public overwhelmingly backed Barco's crackdown, which was announced hours after the assassination of Galán onAugust 19 . The government made quick and unprecedented strides against the traffickers - seizing expensive homes,ranches , airfields, cocaine processing labs and large amounts of cash and drugs. Authorities conducted raids throughout the country and made thousands of arrests. The Medellin cartel responded by declaring "war" on the government,, and over the next four months, bombings became an almost daily occurrence and scores of people died.By October 1989, public support for the crackdown was beginning to wane and the government decided to focus it’s attention on capturing either Pablo Escobar or Rodríguez. However, both men managed to stay one step ahead of law enforcement and continued to finance a campaign of retaliatory
terrorism which claimed the lives of hundreds of politicians, judges and peasants. Colombian authorities said that Rodriguez Gacha andPablo Escobar planned theDecember 8 ,1989 bombing of the federal investigative police headquarters in Bogotá which killed 63 people and injured an estimated 1,000. The two men were also accused of involvement in theNovember 27 ,1983 bombing of a Colombian domesticjetliner outside Bogotá that killed all 107 people aboard.Death
The Colombian Government finally caught a break from an unlikely source when Rodríguez Gacha's son Fredy Rodriguez Celades (b. 1972) unwittingly led more than 1,000
Colombian National Police and Colombian Marines to his father. Fredy was arrested during an army raid of one of Rodriguez Gacha's ranches north of Bogotá. His alleged crime, possession of illegal weapons, was relatively minor, but police held Fredy longer than most unindicted prisoners, hoping to put pressure on Rodríguez.When no signs of fatherly concern emerged, the police released Fredy and waited. Just as they anticipated, Fredy eventually headed for his father, unaware that police were tailing him. Police spotted José Gonzalo Rodríguez in Cartagena and followed the fleeing drug lord to a small ranch in
Tolu . On Friday,December 15 ,1989 , Fredy, Gilberto Rendon (the alleged No. 8 man in the Medellín cartel) and a bodyguard were killed in a bloody shootout with Colombian police. José Gonzalo Rodríguez and three others died as they attempted to escape into the fields between Tolú and nearby Coveñas.Funeral
Thousands of mourners thronged the streets of the town of
Pacho for Rodriguez Gacha's funeral on Sunday,December 17 ,1989 . Residents of Pacho said he donated money to renovate buildings, and some viewed him as a public benefactor. About 3,000 people surrounded thecemetery because access to the funeral was limited to relatives. A newspaper estimated the number of mourners as high as 15,000. ['Hometown Mourns Colombian Drug Dealer'.December 19 ,1989 "The New York Times "]ee also
*
Pablo Escobar
*Medellín Cartel
*War on Drugs Notes
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