Word: escobar
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...cocaine trade in Colombia took off in the late 1970s when crime bosses entered the business. Until then, their profits had largely come from smuggling cars, liquor and electronic appliances into the country and sneaking cattle, emeralds and coffee out. Then, it seems, Pablo Escobar Gaviria, an entrepreneur whom Colombian bankers describe as "a self-taught administrator with a genius for organization," convinced Smuggler Fabio Ochoa of the profits to be earned from cocaine. The two took over the domestic industry and sent murderous local toughs, now known as cocaine cowboys, to seize control of the U.S. wholesale market...
...American history. Overseeing the business as if they were heads of a multinational firm, the coqueros transformed a once chaotic industry into a vertically integrated consortium. For the transportation of drugs, they used well-established smuggling pipelines; for their distribution, a North American syndicate stretching from Miami to Vancouver. Escobar united the coqueros into a cartel and even organized a fund to serve as a kind of insurance in the event of raids or losses. The drug dons were also shrewd enough to invest their profits in diversified holdings: they now own extensive real estate in Florida, half...
Although Betancur's assault caused the drug kings to lie low for a while, they were by no means cowed. Within a month of the Lara murder, Entrepreneur Escobar and a few colleagues, claiming to represent a group of coqueros controlling 80% of the drug market, met first with Alfonso Lopez Michelsen, a former Colombian President, and then with Attorney General Carlos Jimenez Gomez in Panama City to offer the Colombian government a deal: in exchange for total amnesty, they said, they would dismantle their illicit empires and repatriate $5 billion into Colombia's troubled economy. The government replied ; that...
...figures in the cocaine business continue to elude the authorities. Washington has stationed 16 antinarcotics agents in Colombia and hopes to budget a record $9.2 million for its Colombian campaign in fiscal 1985. By comparison, Drug King Escobar is said to command a personal army of more than 2,000 retainers and a fortune estimated at more than $2 billion. Escobar, who is suspected of having taken out the contract on Lara's life and is wanted in the U.S. on charges of smuggling ten tons of cocaine into the country, at one time faced just one charge in Colombia...
...Escobar allegedly paved the way in the late 1970s for the Colombians' ever growing stake in the U.S. narcotics traffic by unleashing the "Cocaine Cowboys," a squad of brutal, ruthless killers. "The Colombian mafia like to hit you where you hurt most, especially your family," explains Lucho Arango, 29, a Bogotá office worker whose family ran afoul of the mafia. According to Psychologist Gonzalo Amador, mafia enforcers will kill their enemies' wives, children, servants and family friends. They have even been known to kill the family parrot "to keep it from talking," he says...