Medellin Cartel's War Against the Colombian State
The Medellín cartel declared war on the Colombian state in 1989 and killed a presidential candidate, a judge, a police chief and 550 policemen. Pablo Escobar's organisation had by then taken control of most of the cocaine reaching the United States, and its central political demand was simple: no extradition. The Colombian constitution permitted extradition to the United States by treaty, and the cartel's slogan was that its members preferred a grave in Colombia to a cell in the north. The campaign of 1989 and 1990 was terrorism on a national scale. Luis Carlos Galán, the leading candidate for the presidency and an opponent of the cartel, was shot at a rally in August 1989; an airliner was bombed in November with 107 people aboard in an attempt to kill a candidate who was not on it; a truck bomb destroyed the security police headquarters in Bogotá, killing about seventy and injuring hundreds. Some 4,000 people are attributed to the war. The state's answer combined a police search bloc with a constitutional bargain: the assembly of 1991 prohibited extradition, and Escobar surrendered to a prison he had built himself and continued to run the business from it. He walked out in 1992 when the government tried to move him. He was tracked down in Medellín in December 1993 by a combination of police, American technical assistance and a rival paramilitary group, and shot on a rooftop. The prohibition on extradition lasted until 1997 and the trade did not stop for a day. What the war destroyed was one organisation, and the Cali cartel and then a set of smaller networks took the business over within months of Escobar's death.
- Year: 1989 CE
- Category: Military
