Word: gaviria
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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With its crusade against the Medellin cocaine cartel coming up short, the Colombian government decided to raise the ante. Two months ago, officials offered $625,000 for information leading to the capture of either of the country's two most infamous traffickers: Pablo Escobar Gaviria, 39, and Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, 42. Late last week police scored their greatest single victory in their four-month-old war on drugs by trapping and killing one of the two: the notoriously brutish billionaire Rodriguez Gacha. And it didn't cost a cent in reward money...
President Virgilio Barco Vargas' four-month-old war against his country's top narcos -- Gacha, Pablo Escobar Gaviria and the three brothers of Medellin's Ochoa family -- has not gone as well as he or the nation had hoped. Since Mob hit men assassinated presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan in August and ignited Barco's offensive, the leaders of Colombia's coke cartels have gone into hiding, forfeiting posh estates and bank accounts; some law- enforcement officials believe that the drug princes have even undergone plastic surgery. Nevertheless, Gacha and company remain immensely powerful, with their pipeline...
...leaders of the powerful Medellin cocaine cartel have become folk heroes for their ability to escape the relentless pursuit of government security forces. Last week Pablo Escobar Gaviria, 39, a leader of the drug ring that controls 80% of the cocaine entering the U.S., pulled off one of the most impressive getaways. In an operation code named Against the Fortress, some 600 police and army troops raided a ranch 70 miles outside Medellin, but Escobar managed to elude them...
...moment, the authorities are undaunted. At midweek Colombian television began running 30-second commercials featuring mug shots of Rodriguez Gacha and Medellin cartel leader Pablo Escobar Gaviria, and offering 100 million pesos -- about $250,000 -- for information leading to their arrest...
...raids hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of drug kingpins' property. Included were 143 fixed-wing planes and helicopters believed to be used to smuggle drugs to the U.S., a number of yachts, and the mansions and ranches of the most prominent lords of the Medellin cartel: Pablo Escobar Gaviria and Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha. Colombian television showed viewers some indications of the drug lords' obscenely lavish life-styles. One of Rodriguez Gacha's spreads north of Bogota boasts several swimming pools, an artificial lake and a two-acre flower garden. Another Rodriguez Gacha mansion, inside Bogota, features a crystal...