![]() ![]() The cartel made so much money - a kilo of cocaine cost about $1,000 to make but could be sold for up to $70,000 in the U.S. Once the jeans arrived in the U.S., chemists pulled the drug out of the denim. The smugglers even went as far as soaking cocaine into blue jeans. According to the Wall Street Journal, it was also mixed into Guatemalan fruit pulp, Ecuadorian cocoa, Chilean wine, and Peruvian dried fish. Cocaine was stuffed into refrigerators and televisions. Instead of flying cocaine north, Gaviria used legitimate cargo ships carrying appliances. When one of the cartel’s main trade routes - through the Bahamas to Florida - was disrupted, Gaviria didn’t panic. “Gustavo was more specialized in business,” Cruz said. Gaviria handled a different side of things. Anyone who disobeyed Escobar’s orders was intimidated by violence. ![]() His charisma helped inspire his army of sicarios or hitmen. Gustavo Duncan Cruz, a political science professor at EAFIT University in Medellín, explained that Pablo Escobar focused on the violence of the cocaine trade. The cousins had different strengths, which they utilized in different ways. Pablo Escobar’s cousin was the “brains of the cartel,” according to former DEA officer Javier Peña, who tracked Escobar from 1988 until the drug lord’s death in 1993. But Gaviria handled the finances and exportation of cocaine behind the scenes. When the ’80s hit - the era of discotheques and Wall Street binges - Escobar, Gaviria, and their Medellín Cartel were ready.Įscobar was the undisputed leader of the operation. He began smuggling coca paste into Colombia, where he had it refined, then sent north with “mules” to be sold in the United States. In Colombia, Gustavo Gaviria and Pablo Escobar were prepared to meet it.Įscobar had already sensed an opportunity in the early 1970s, when the cocaine market moved north from Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. YouTube Pablo Escobar, far right, sits with a group of his close Medellín “family” members.īy the 1980s, demand for cocaine in the United States had skyrocketed. So who was Gustavo Gaviria, Pablo Escobar’s cousin and the shadowy figure behind much of the Medellín Cartel’s success? The Family Ties Between Gustavo Gaviria And Pablo Escobar But behind the scenes, Gaviria reportedly oversaw the financial side of the empire - at a time when the cartel could pull in $4 billion per year. And Pablo Escobar attracted plenty of attention as the main “boss” of the operation. “He knew all about the labs, where to get the chemicals, the transportation routes, the distribution hubs throughout the United States and Europe.”įrom 1976 to 1993, the Medellín Cartel ruled the cocaine business. “ we really wanted to take alive because he was the true brains,” said Scott Murphy, a former DEA officer who investigated the Medellín Cartel in its final years. But while “El Patrón” was the kingpin of the Medellín Cartel, Pablo Escobar’s cousin Gustavo Gaviria was arguably the real mastermind. Unlike Escobar, Gaviria stayed out of the spotlight.Įver since Pablo Escobar’s death in 1993, the Colombian drug lord has inspired TV shows like Narcos, movies like Paradise Lost, and books like Kings of Cocaine. Pablo Escobar, dubbed the "King of Cocaine," was the founder and head of Colombia's Medellin Cartel and died in a shootout in 1993.Wikimedia Commons Pablo Escobar’s cousin Gustavo Gaviria (left) in an undated photo. They would adulterate the product before distributing them to various clans and criminal groups. The group had a number of farms and houses in various locations in the region, mainly in rural areas, where they used to hide the drug shipments. Months later, the agents discovered that this criminal network had most of its infrastructure in Toledo. Investigations leading to the arrests began last March, when the police detected that the man had made contact with known heroin traffickers on the outskirts of Madrid. The main suspect was said to be closely linked to a global drug ring directed by a Turkish citizen from Istanbul, known as "The Paralytic." Drugs diluted at rural locations The operation was one of the largest seizures in recent years, with police confiscating some 55 kilograms (over 120 pounds) of heroin. Officers raided eight properties in the cities of Madrid, Toledo and Caceres and arrested nine other people - seven men and three women. He would then distribute it to parts of central and western Spain, according to the police. Referred to by investigators as the "Spanish Pablo Escobar of heroin," the ringleader had his base in the central city of Toledo and made "large imports" from the Netherlands. ![]() Spanish police on Sunday said they had arrested the leading figure in heroin smuggling to the country, smashing the organization he led for years.
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