Case study and macro-level overview 1 Case study overview

Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria (‘Escobar’) died in 1993, over two decades ago, yet in recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in him and events surrounding his life, including numerous movies, network series, documentaries and books (see Appendix 1). Perhaps the rise and fall of Escobar and the so-called Medellín Cartel is perfect for a Hollywood script, or perhaps enough time has since passed for Colombia to simply reflect and remember. It was during the cocaine boom, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, that Escobar rose from being a petty thief to the boss of the Medellín Cartel and became one of the most powerful and richest men in Colombia. He came from virtually nothing to build an empire, albeit an illicit one, and control a country (Gugliotta & Leen 1989; Strong 1995; Clawson & Lee 1998; Bowden 2002). At the height of his empire, he was named in Forbes’ international billionaires list, with an average estimated net wealth of US $3 billion for seven years running, from 1987 to the year of his death (Forbes n.d.). Unlike

most criminals, however, who like to remain in the shadows, Escobar not only desired illicit wealth, but he desired fame and power. Above all, he desired political power and the adoration of the Colombian people (Gugliotta & Leen 1989; Strong 1995; Clawson & Lee 1998; Bowden 2002). In 1982, Escobar ran for and won congressional office as an alternate, but shortly after, he was denounced by the Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla (‘Lara’) as a drug trafficker and dismissed from government a year later. Escobar’s decisive action in 1984 to have Lara assassinated started an open and violent conflict with the state. At this time, when terrorist tactics were not enough, some of the Medellín Cartel associates, together with other traffickers, created their own terrorist group Los Extraditables (The Extraditables) (Strong 1995; Bowden 2002). Allegiances and alliances also formed between Escobar and/or the Medellín Cartel with local paramilitary groups, guerrilla groups and other local Colombian traffickers and cartels, including the Cali Cartel, together with other international criminal groups and individuals based locally and overseas (Strong 1995; Bowden 2002). Escobar’s penchant for violence, however, increasingly over time, began to alienate and eventually erode some of these allegiances and alliances, notably the Cali Cartel (Gugliotta & Leen 1989; Strong 1995; Clawson & Lee 1998; Bowden 2002). Before his death, Escobar was responsible for numerous terrorist acts, assassinations and kidnappings, including the murder of thousands of innocent civilians. In 1993, a decade of open cartel-state violence ended with Escobar’s death. He was shot on a roof top in Medellín attempting to escape at the hands of state forces led by Colonel Hugo Martinez (‘Colonel Martinez’). In the aftermath, the Medellín Cartel disbanded, with the Cali Cartel reaping the rewards, until its own demise a few years later. Following the demise of the two main cartels, criminals became less overt and the drug trade less organised and fractured, although the drug trade continued (Clawson & Lee 1998; Bowden 2002). More importantly, it signalled the end to Escobar’s reign of terror and violence in Colombia, and the end to Medellín being the murder capital of the world (Bowden 2002).

In studying Escobar and the Medellín Cartel, the literature reveals a tendency to focus on one or more aspects of the drug trade, or criminal structures and/or activities, rather than a holistic study of the conditions that allowed them to emerge in the first place. One notable exception is by the economist Francisco Thoumi, who has studied the Andean drug trade in detail. While Thoumi (2003; 2014) considers a more holistic and multi-disciplinary approach to the problem,

including a study of the conditions that gave rise to the cartels, Thoumi does not offer any discussion on complexity, which would lend itself to his work.

Using the new complexity model as described in Chapter 5, this case study attempts to separate fact from Hollywood fiction and contribute to the answer on why and how Escobar and the Medellín Cartel evolved, including their nature and strength, and what shaped their behaviour. In doing so, the model attempts to look at Escobar and the Medellín Cartel differently and provide novel insights, by exploring the whole ‘eco-system’ that allowed Escobar and the Medellín Cartel to flourish, including the formation of allegiances and alliances, all of which played a role in their rise and fall.

6.1.2 Macro-level overview

At a macro-level, the Medellín Cartel as an organised crime group, is the complex system under study. Of note, as most authors agree, while the group is commonly referred to as the Medellín Cartel (and also referred to as such in this thesis for ease of reference), in reality, the group was not a cartel in the economic sense; it was more like a syndicate or collective of individuals and organisations, each with their own separate businesses and operations, that combined to promote a common interest and shared needs (Strong 1995; Clawson & Lee 1998; Bowden 2002; Thoumi 2003; 2014; Reuter 2014).

In this chapter, the macro-level steps will be applied to the Medellín Cartel to look at the dynamics of the system as a whole. In the next chapter, the micro-level steps will be applied to the behaviour of Escobar, as an individual actor in the system, and the behaviour of the Medellín Cartel as the system itself, together with a summary of the overall complexity model case study findings.

Of note, while it is acknowledged that a key focus of the case study surrounds organised crime, as will be seen later in this chapter, the case study also offers a rich source of material in terrorism and the crime-terror nexus to test and apply the new complexity model, given i) the presence of terrorism and the crime-terror nexus in the criminal structures and activities of Escobar and the Medellín Cartel; and ii) the formation of a number of allegiances and alliances, including a terrorist group and two vigilante groups, all of which play a central role in the rise and fall of the Medellín Cartel. To begin, the macro-level steps one to four are summarised and applied in sections 6.2 to 6.5 below:

1. Data sets: generate the macro-level data sets of the Medellín Cartel, using