Up next in 10
HOOK LINE:In 1984, police raided a jungle complex and found $1.2 billion in cocaine sitting unguarded—this is the story of how that empire was built.
CONTENT OVERVIEW:This isn't just a story about drugs; it's a deep dive into the geopolitical alchemy that turned a group of car thieves into the world's first Narco-State. We are opening the classified files on the Medellín and Cali cartels, tracing their evolution from the "innocent" smuggling days of Norman's Cay to the industrial-scale terror of the Avianca bombing. We analyze the logistics, the finances, and the blood pacts that changed criminal history forever.
TEASE:You’ll learn the truth about the kidnapping that forced the cartels to unionize, the "KGB" tactics used by the Cali godfathers to own New York, and the specific logistical genius of Carlos Lehder's private island. We also uncover the dark reality of "Los Pepes" and who really fired the shot on that Medellín rooftop.
CREDIBILITY:Compiled from declassified DEA reports, Colombian National Police archives, and historical accounts of the period between 1978 and 1993.
CTA:If you want the full, cinematic story of the groups behind these secrets, check out our 100-episode master series on our main channel, Global Mafia Universe. The link is in the description. Go deep.
ENGAGEMENT:Was the Cali Cartel's "corporate" approach more dangerous than Medellín's "terror" approach? Let us know in the comments.
Latin Cartels — S01 E01 : Medellín & Cali: The Birth of Cartels
HASHTAGS:#Narcos #PabloEscobar #CaliCartel #TrueCrime #History #Underworld #Documentary #ColdCase #Medellin #CartelHistory
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0:00
[Music]
0:00
All right, welcome everyone to Latin
0:02
Cartels season 1 episode 1. I'm Daniel
0:04
and today we're diving into the absolute
0:06
beginning, the genesis of what would
0:08
become the most notorious criminal
0:10
empires the world has ever seen. Medí
0:12
and Cali. You know, Jesse Lily, when we
0:15
talk about cartels, people often think
0:17
of some guy on a street corner or maybe
0:19
a small disorganized gang, but the true
0:22
scale, the sheer audacity of these
0:24
operations, it was something else
0:26
entirely.
0:27
Yeah, I think that's the general
0:28
perception, right? like a bunch of rough
0:30
guys, maybe a few shootouts. You don't
0:32
think Fortune 500 company or
0:34
geopolitical shift when you hear drug
0:36
cartel.
0:37
Exactly. And that's what we want to
0:39
unravel today. Because what happened in
0:41
Colombia in the8s wasn't just crime. It
0:45
was a fundamental shift in how organized
0:47
crime operated globally. It turned a
0:50
nation into a narco state. And that's a
0:52
heavy concept.
0:54
It really is. Let me set the scene for
0:56
you. Imagine it's March 1984, deep in
0:59
the Kakata jungles of Colombia. You can
1:01
almost smell the burning kerosene mixing
1:04
with the Amazon's damp, earthy rot. Then
1:07
14 helicopters like mechanical locusts
1:10
descend on this complex. It's huge, the
1:13
size of a small city, not a village, not
1:15
some hut, an industrial plant. And when
1:18
the Colombian National Police kick down
1:20
the doors of lab number four, they're
1:22
not just finding a few bags of paste.
1:24
Oh, I remember reading about this.
1:25
Tranquilia, right?
1:27
That's the one. They found 13.8 metric
1:31
tons of refined cocaine just sitting
1:33
there unguarded. Think about that. 13.8
1:38
metric tons. Street value. A
1:41
mind-boggling $1.2 billion. In a single
1:45
weekend, the world realized they weren't
1:47
fighting criminals. They were fighting a
1:49
superpower. But here's the kicker. The
1:52
cocaine itself wasn't the scariest part,
1:54
as insane as that sounds.
1:58
No, it was the administrative side of
2:00
things, wasn't it? The sheer
2:01
organization that blew everyone away.
2:03
Precisely the paperwork found in the
2:05
office, ledgers, payrolls, manifests
2:08
that track flights into Florida like
2:09
they were Delta Airlines. This wasn't a
2:12
gang. It was a Fortune 500 company, but
2:14
armed with surfaceto-air missiles. For
2:17
years, people were told a story about
2:19
cowboys and bandits. They were told it
2:21
was about drugs. It wasn't. It was about
2:23
logistics. It was about leverage. It was
2:26
about a group of men who looked at the
2:27
United States border and saw a
2:29
suggestion, not a law.
2:30
That's such a chilling line. Saw a
2:33
suggestion, not a law. It really puts
2:35
into perspective how they viewed the
2:37
world. They weren't just breaking rules.
2:39
They were operating under their own
2:41
rules.
2:42
And the fact that they ran it like a
2:44
legitimate business with ledgers and
2:46
payrolls, it just elevates it beyond
2:48
typical organized crime. It shows a
2:50
level of sophistication that was unheard
2:52
of at the time. It really changed the
2:54
game.
2:54
Absolutely. You know the names, Escobar,
2:57
ooa, ora, but most people don't know the
3:00
mechanics. They don't know how they
3:02
turned a simple plant leaf into an
3:03
economy that actually dwarfed companies
3:05
like General Motors. We're not talking
3:07
about street corners today. We are
3:09
talking about the geopolitical shift
3:11
that turned Colombia into the world's
3:13
first narco state. We're opening the
3:15
files on the blood packs, the island
3:17
takeovers, and the corporate espionage
3:19
that built the Medí and Cali cartels.
3:22
And to really grasp this, we need to go
3:24
back to the very beginning.
3:25
And the beginning wasn't a drug deal,
3:27
was it? It was something entirely
3:29
different.
3:30
That's right, Jesse. Most people think
3:31
the cartels started with a drug deal.
3:33
They didn't. They started with a
3:35
kidnapping. And I'm not talking about
3:37
some low-level thug snatching a rival.
3:39
I'm talking about a mistake that unified
3:41
the underworld. Before 1981, these
3:44
traffickers were fractured,
3:45
disorganized. They were wolves fighting
3:48
over the same carcass. You know, each
3:50
trying to get their peace.
3:51
A classic divide and conquer scenario
3:53
almost. Each group was too busy fighting
3:55
each other to be a real threat on a
3:56
larger scale.
3:58
Exactly. Then a Marxist gerilla group
4:01
called M19 got greedy. They snatched the
4:04
sister of the OOA brothers and they
4:06
demanded a ransom.
4:07
Wow, that sounds like a spectacularly
4:10
bad idea. Even for a gorilla group,
4:11
it was it was the single worst tactical
4:14
error in criminal history. Because it
4:16
didn't just piss off the ooas, it
4:18
terrified every single smuggler in the
4:20
country. If the gorillas could touch the
4:22
ooas, who were already powerful, then
4:24
nobody was safe. So they called a
4:26
meeting. And this wasn't in some back
4:28
alley. This was at a massive hienda. 223
4:32
drug lords attended.
4:33
22. That's like a criminal convention.
4:36
Just imagine the egos in that room.
4:39
Oh, absolutely. And each one of them put
4:41
down money, 2 million pesos each, 10
4:43
men, weapons, intelligence. They created
4:46
a private army overnight. They called it
4:48
mass muerte a sequestra, death to
4:52
kidnappers. So basically, these
4:54
disperate criminal elements who were
4:55
previously at each other's throats
4:57
unified because they realized there was
4:59
a common enemy and a common threat.
5:01
That's intense.
5:03
It's the moment the game changed. This
5:05
is when they realized that if they
5:07
pulled their resources, they were
5:09
stronger than the government, stronger
5:10
than the gorillas, stronger than the
5:12
DEA. They learned that organization
5:15
wasn't just a good idea, it was the
5:17
ultimate weapon.
5:18
Exactly. And what I'm about to show you,
5:21
what we're going to talk about today,
5:22
are the seven critical files that
5:24
document this transformation from
5:26
disorganized crime to a global empire.
5:29
First up is the logistical nightmare
5:31
that became the gold standard for
5:32
smuggling. And this brings us to a
5:34
character named Carlos later.
5:36
Later, he was quite a character, right?
5:38
Not your typical gangster.
5:39
Not at all. Carlos Later wasn't your
5:42
typical heavy. He was this neo-Nazi
5:44
admirer of John Lennon, which is a wild
5:47
combination right there. But he
5:49
understood one thing better than anyone
5:51
else. Aviation. While everyone else was
5:54
stuffing suitcases or swallowing
5:56
condoms, later was looking at maps of
5:58
the Bahamas. And he saw this tiny rock
6:01
called Norman's K. Norman's K. It wasn't
6:04
just an island to him, was it? It was a
6:06
strategic asset.
6:07
That's it. He saw it as a stationary
6:09
aircraft carrier sitting perfectly just
6:11
200 miles off the coast of Florida.
6:13
Later didn't just visit the island. He
6:15
bought it. He evicted the residents,
6:17
extended the runway to 3,000 ft. He
6:20
installed radar systems that were more
6:21
advanced than what they had at Nassau
6:23
International Airport. By 1979, Norman's
6:26
K wasn't part of the Bahamas. It was
6:28
sovereign narco territory. That's
6:31
absolutely insane. He bought an entire
6:33
island and turned it into his own
6:35
personal drug hub. The audacity really
6:38
unbelievable, right? Planes would fly up
6:40
from Colombia, refuel at Norman's, and
6:43
then just hop into Georgia or Florida,
6:45
completely under the radar deck. This
6:47
wasn't smuggling anymore, Jesse, Lily.
6:49
This was a pipeline. We're talking about
6:51
300 kilos per flight, five flights a
6:54
day. The cash flow was so intense that
6:56
later literally had to build silos to
6:58
store it. Not safes, silos.
7:01
Silos for money. That's a mental image
7:03
that truly captures the scale. And it's
7:05
not just about the money, but the sheer
7:07
logistical efficiency he achieved. He
7:09
eliminated so many risks and bottlenecks
7:11
that other smugglers were facing.
7:13
And I read somewhere that the rotting
7:14
vegetation on the island actually began
7:17
to smell like money because the humidity
7:19
was eating the bills faster than they
7:21
could launder them. That's just wild.
7:23
It's true. It's a testament to the sheer
7:25
volume. This was the proof of concept.
7:28
later showed the Medí boys that you
7:30
didn't need to hide. You just needed to
7:32
own the infrastructure. But that's
7:34
nothing compared to what comes next.
7:36
Number two on our list is the corporate
7:37
takeover executed by the gentlemen of
7:40
Cali.
7:40
Ah, the Cali cartel. They were a
7:42
completely different beast from Medí,
7:44
weren't they?
7:45
Night and day. While Medí was buying
7:47
islands and making all sorts of noise,
7:50
the Rodriguez Ora brothers of Cali were
7:52
quietly buying banks. Gilberto Rodriguez
7:55
Ora known as the chess player looked at
7:58
Medí and saw a liability. He saw
8:01
violence as a tax on business. Why shoot
8:03
a judge when you can just buy him? Why
8:06
fight the system when you can become the
8:07
system?
8:08
That's a very pragmatic, almost
8:10
corporate approach to crime. It sounds
8:12
like they were thinking long-term, not
8:14
just immediate gratification or power
8:16
grabs.
8:16
They absolutely were. Cali didn't run
8:18
their operation like a cartel. They ran
8:20
it like the KGB. They hired former
8:23
intelligence officers to bug the phone
8:24
lines of the American embassy in Bogota.
8:27
They had files on every politician,
8:29
every police captain, every judge in the
8:31
via delcala. They knew your mistress's
8:33
name. They knew where your kids went to
8:35
school. They knew your mortgage debt.
8:37
Information as power. That's their game.
8:39
That's terrifying. Knowing that level of
8:42
detail about someone means you have
8:43
absolute leverage over them. It's so
8:45
much more insidious than brute force.
8:47
And their operational structure was
8:49
equally sophisticated. They operated on
8:51
a cell structure. The transportation
8:53
team didn't know the distribution team.
8:55
The moneyaunderers didn't know the
8:56
suppliers. So if the DEA busted a cell
8:59
in Queens, New York, the damage stopped
9:01
there. It was compartmentalized,
9:03
professional, sterile. In the early 80s,
9:06
while Pablo was getting all the
9:07
headlines, Cali was quietly capturing
9:10
80% of the New York market.
9:11
80%. That's staggering. And they
9:14
patented the smurfing technique, right?
9:16
Oh, yeah. The smurfing. Thousands of
9:18
small deposits under the $10,000
9:20
reporting limit washing billions right
9:23
under the nose of the IRS. It's like a
9:25
financial hydra. You cut off one head,
9:27
two more pop up. Precisely. Medí wanted
9:30
to be loved or at least feared openly.
9:33
Cali wanted to be rich and invisible.
9:35
Two very different philosophies, both
9:37
incredibly effective for a time.
9:39
And as we go deeper, it just gets
9:41
darker. Next, we have the Hienda
9:43
Nopoulos summit. This is where the ego
9:46
began to really eclipse the business for
9:48
Medí. Pablo Escobar bought 7,000 acres
9:51
in the Magdalena Medio. He built a zoo.
9:54
He flew in hippos from Africa. He built
9:57
a bull ring. But the centerpiece, the
9:59
actual nerve center was the airirstrip.
10:01
The stories about Napoulos are
10:03
legendary. It sounds like something out
10:05
of a movie with all the exotic animals
10:07
and the opulence.
10:08
It was. And it was here amidst the
10:10
exotic animals and the man-made lakes
10:12
that the ethos of the Medí cartel really
10:14
solidified. It was a culture of total
10:16
impunity. They hosted politicians here.
10:19
They hosted soccer teams. They hosted
10:21
beauty queens. This wasn't a hideout. It
10:23
was a royal court. Escobar even parked
10:26
the first Piper Cub airplane he ever
10:28
used to run Coke right on top of the
10:30
entrance gate. A monument to the crime.
10:32
A monument. That's a powerful image. It
10:35
was a signal to the Colombian elite. I
10:37
have more money than you. I have more
10:39
power than you. And I am not hiding. It
10:42
was an open challenge to the
10:43
establishment.
10:44
That kind of hubris, it almost feels
10:46
like a Greek tragedy waiting to happen.
10:48
That level of flaunting power rarely
10:50
ends well.
10:51
And you're right, Jesse. This hubris is
10:52
what eventually killed them. But for a
10:54
solid 5 years, Nopoulos was the capital
10:56
of the underworld. Deals were cut by the
10:59
pool that determined the street price of
11:00
cocaine in Miami, London, and Los
11:03
Angeles. If you were a trafficker in
11:05
1982, an invitation to Nopoulos was like
11:08
an invitation to the White House. It
11:09
meant you had made it. It also meant you
11:12
belonged to Pablo. And once you belong
11:13
to Pablo, you never left.
11:15
It cemented his position not just as a
11:17
drug lord, but as a quasi sovereign
11:20
entity within Colombia. The reach and
11:22
influence he commanded from that estate
11:24
were truly unprecedented.
11:26
And this is where things get truly
11:28
dangerous. Let's talk about Tranulandia
11:30
again. I mentioned it at the start, that
11:32
initial raid, but you need to understand
11:34
the full scale, the full implications of
11:36
it. March 1984, the DEA and Colombian
11:40
National Police raid this complex. They
11:43
found 19 laboratories. Think about that.
11:46
19, not one, not two, 19 industrial
11:50
scale labs. They found dormitories for
11:52
hundreds of workers. They found a school
11:54
for the workers children. They found a
11:56
library. A school? A library? That's not
11:59
a drug lab. That's a small
12:00
self-sustaining city deep in the jungle.
12:03
All dedicated to one thing.
12:04
Exactly. A city carved out of the
12:07
jungle, dedicated to one thing,
12:09
processing cocoa paste from Peru and
12:11
Bolivia into pure hydrochloride. The
12:14
raid seized nearly 14 tons of product.
12:17
To put that in perspective, the entire
12:19
annual seizure rate for the US DEA the
12:22
year prior was less than that. One
12:24
single raid yielded more than the entire
12:27
US federal agency could find in a year.
12:29
And it proved that the cartel had
12:30
vertically integrated. They weren't just
12:32
middlemen anymore. They controlled the
12:34
source, the processing, and the
12:36
distribution. They owned the entire
12:38
supply chain from Coco Leaf to the
12:40
streets of America. And they found the
12:42
receipts. The pilots were being paid up
12:44
to $500,000 per flight. The chemicals
12:47
were being imported by the ton from
12:48
legitimate industrial suppliers in
12:50
Chicago and Germany. Tranquilia was not
12:53
just a symbol of their power, it was
12:54
proof of their industrial scale. The
12:57
raid was a huge victory for the police,
12:59
but it was a disaster for the peace
13:01
because the raid was orchestrated by one
13:03
man, the Minister of Justice, Rodrigo
13:05
Larabonia.
13:06
And the cartel took it personally,
13:08
didn't they? That's when things really
13:10
escalated.
13:11
They absolutely did. This wasn't an
13:13
accident. This was a message. Number
13:15
five on our list is the assassination
13:17
that started the war. April 30, 1984.
13:21
Rodrigo Larabonia is being driven home
13:23
in his Mercedes. He had been
13:25
relentlessly exposing Escobar's criminal
13:27
connections in Congress. He was the one
13:29
man refusing to take the silver, so he
13:31
had to take the lead. Two men on a
13:33
motorcycle pulled up alongside his car
13:35
in Bogota traffic. A submachine gun
13:38
emptied a magazine into the back seat.
13:40
This was the turning point. Before this,
13:42
the cartel was a nuisance, albeit a
13:44
powerful one. After this, they were
13:46
terrorists. They had publicly attacked
13:48
the state
13:48
and the Colombian state declared war.
13:51
They approved the extradition treaty
13:53
with the United States, which was the
13:55
one thing the Narcos feared above all
13:57
else. Better a grave in Colombia than a
13:59
jail cell in the United States. That was
14:02
their motto, right?
14:03
That was the motto, and they meant it.
14:05
Escobar responded by forming the
14:06
Extraditables, a group of traffickers
14:08
who pledged to burn the country to the
14:10
ground before they would ever wear an
14:12
orange jumpsuit in Florida. They started
14:14
kidnapping journalists. They started
14:16
bombing drugstores. The business model
14:18
shifted from profit maximization to
14:20
survival through terror. It became an
14:22
existential fight for them. The stakes
14:24
were so high that all notions of
14:25
business were thrown out the window in
14:27
favor of pure unadulterated terror to
14:30
intimidate the government.
14:31
Think that's dark? Keep watching because
14:33
it somehow gets worse. November 27th,
14:36
1989. Avianka flight 203. This is the
14:40
moment the Medí cartel truly lost its
14:42
soul. Escobar wanted to kill a
14:45
presidential candidate, Cesar Gidia. His
14:48
intelligence, flawed as it turned out,
14:50
said Gavira would be on that flight. So
14:52
they planted a bomb under seat 15F.
14:55
Oh god, the plane explosion. I remember
14:57
that story. It's just horrific.
14:59
Barabusha, the plane exploded over
15:01
Sawatcha. 107 people died instantly.
15:04
Three people on the ground were killed
15:05
by falling debris. But here is the
15:07
kicker, the truly gut-wrenching part.
15:10
Gveria wasn't on the plane. His security
15:12
chief had told him not to fly. 110
15:15
innocents slaughtered for a mistake.
15:17
That's when public opinion really turned
15:19
against Escobar. Until then, some poor
15:22
Colombians saw him as a Robin Hood
15:24
figure because he built houses and
15:25
soccer fields. But you don't blow up a
15:28
commercial airliner if you're a man of
15:29
the people. This act brought the full
15:31
weight of the American intelligence
15:33
apparatus down on Medí. Delta Force,
15:36
Centra Spike, the NSA, they all turned
15:39
their eyes to the Valley of Abuah.
15:41
It's a complete shift from a criminal
15:43
problem to an international terrorist
15:45
threat. That changes everything about
15:47
how they were hunted.
15:48
It absolutely does. And hold that
15:50
thought because number seven on our list
15:52
changes everything again. The final file
15:54
is Los Pepes. People persecuted by Pablo
15:57
Escobar. This is the dirty secret the
15:59
governments don't like to talk about.
16:01
The police couldn't catch Pablo. He was
16:03
too slippery. He had too many spies, too
16:06
many people on his payroll.
16:07
So they had to fight fire with fire or
16:10
something even hotter.
16:11
That's it. So the Cali cartel, the
16:13
Castano brothers, who were
16:14
paramilitaries and elements of the
16:16
police, they formed a death squad. They
16:18
didn't try to arrest Pablo's guys. They
16:20
hunted them. They killed his lawyers.
16:22
They killed his bankers. They killed his
16:24
stable boys. They even burned down his
16:27
mother's house. They systematically
16:29
dismantled his support network using the
16:31
exact same terror tactics he had
16:33
invented. That's horrifying, but also in
16:35
a twisted way, it makes sense. If you're
16:37
fighting someone who operates outside
16:39
all rules, you can't adhere to them
16:41
either. It's a morally ambiguous
16:43
victory.
16:43
It worked though. It broke him. He was
16:46
isolated, his network destroyed, his
16:48
family in constant danger. It was the
16:51
only way to get to him.
16:52
It did work. On December 2nd, 1993, a
16:55
fat bearded man in a blue t-shirt was
16:57
cornered on a rooftop in a middle-ass
16:59
neighborhood of Medí. He wasn't
17:01
surrounded by an army. He was alone with
17:03
a bodyguard. He tried to run across the
17:06
tiles. Three bullets, one in the leg,
17:08
one in the back, one through the ear.
17:10
The king was dead. But the kingdom
17:12
didn't fall. It just changed management.
17:15
That's the chilling part, isn't it? The
17:16
individual falls, but the system he
17:18
helped create. The mechanics of it just
17:20
keeps going.
17:21
When you look at these seven files, you
17:23
see a pattern. The violence of Medí was
17:25
flashy. It was loud. It distracted the
17:28
world. But while everyone was watching
17:30
the burning cars, the Cali cartel was
17:32
quietly taking over the routes. They
17:34
learned. They adapted. They realized
17:37
that in the global economy of narcotics,
17:39
anonymity is the most expensive luxury.
17:42
We like to think that killing Escobar
17:44
ended the era. It didn't. It just
17:46
privatized it. The monopoly was broken
17:48
and a thousand smaller, more vicious
17:50
baby cartels were born from the ashes.
17:53
The methods developed in the 80s, the
17:55
subs, the smurfing, the bribery are
17:58
still the industry standard today. The
18:00
names change, the product changes, but
18:02
the logistics, the logistics are
18:04
eternal. And that's the real takeaway. I
18:06
think it wasn't about one man or one
18:08
group. It was about an operational
18:10
blueprint that once established was
18:12
incredibly difficult to dismantle. It
18:14
just evolves.
18:15
It's a testament to the adaptability of
18:17
criminal enterprises when presented with
18:19
immense profit opportunities and weak
18:21
governance. The cartels didn't just deal
18:23
drugs. They built an economic model.
18:25
Exactly. And that model continues to
18:28
influence the global underworld to this
18:29
very day. So, if you want the full
18:31
cinematic story of the groups behind
18:33
these secrets and to dive even deeper
18:35
into how these empires rose and fell, be
18:38
sure to check out our 100 episode master
18:40
series on our main channel, Global Mafia
18:42
Universe. The link is in the
18:44
description. Go deep.