Medellin Cartel

The Medellín Cartel was a Colombian drug trafficking organization based in Medellín, Colombia, that dominated the international cocaine trade during the late 1970s and 1980s. The cartel's massive increase in cocaine production and smuggling drove down wholesale prices in the United States, creating the conditions for the Crack Cocaine explosion in American inner cities.

Revolutionizing Cocaine Smuggling

By early 1982, the Medellín cartel had perfected its logistics using special airplanes, radar avoidance techniques, and specially designed speedboats to bring in unheard-of amounts of cocaine, mostly through the Bahamas. The sheer scale of operations was revealed in March 1982 when Customs agents in Miami searched an airplane owned by a tiny Colombian air cargo company that had flown in from Medellín. Workers were unloading dozens of boxes labeled "jeans," but when an inspector stuck a screwdriver into one, white powder came pouring out. The seizure topped out at 3,906 pounds, nearly four times the previous U.S. cocaine seizure record. Authors Guy Gugliotta and Jeff Leen wrote in Kings of Cocaine that it was the DEA's "first look at the shadow of the beast." Key architect of the cartel's smuggling revolution was Carlos Lehder.¹

Impact on U.S. Drug Prices

As the cartel's massive loads got through, wholesale cocaine prices in the U.S. began dropping. Between 1979 and 1982, kilo prices fell from around $75,000 to around $60,000. But retail prices remained high (gram prices fell only slightly, from $321 to $259) meaning the cartel's increased supply enriched importers and top-level dealers far more than it made cocaine accessible to low-income users. That gap would later be closed by the invention of crack.¹

Connection to the Contra Network

Barry Seal was one of the biggest cocaine and marijuana importers in the southern United States, flying loads directly for the Medellín cartel while simultaneously working as a Central Intelligence Agency and DEA contract agent. Seal moved to Mena, Arkansas in 1982 and ran drugs and weapons through Intermountain Regional Airport.² Danilo Blandón told CIA inspectors that he had been to Colombia with Ronald Lister and observed Lister negotiating drug deals with the Colombians.³ Norwin Meneses was believed to be the Cali Drug Cartel's representative in Nicaragua, and his organization operated in parallel to the Medellín cartel's distribution networks.⁴

Arms-for-Drugs Allegations

During the 1980s, the U.S. Justice Department received at least three reports from reliable informants detailing arms-for-drugs swaps involving the Medellín cartel, the Contras, and elements of the U.S. government. Colombian trafficker Allen Raul Rudd told Justice Department officials in 1988 that cartel boss Pablo Escobar claimed the cartel had made a deal with Vice President George H.W. Bush to supply American weapons to the Contras in exchange for free passage for cocaine deliveries to the United States. Escobar claimed there were "photographs of the planes containing the guns being unloaded in Columbia" and a picture of Bush posing with Medellín cartel leader Jorge Ochoa in front of suitcases full of money. By 1993 Escobar was dead and Ochoa was in jail; the photos were never heard from again.⁵

Former Meneses aide Enrique Miranda testified that Marcos Aguado boasted of flying weapons from the Salvadoran military to the Colombian cartels - claims Miranda doubted until a Salvadoran Air Force colonel and associates were arrested in 1992 for selling bombs and high explosives to Colombian drug dealers.⁵