Beyond The Horizon
ICYMI: The Death Of Gilberto Rodriguez
Brothers Gilberto and Miguel Rodriguez were the bosses of one of the most lucrative and powerful drug cartels of all time. So powerful in fact, that they rivaled Escobar and even outlived him. But even the most powerful drug traffickers can't stay in power forever and that was the case for Gilberto who was arrested and then extradited to the United States.
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to contact me:
bobbycapucci@protonmail.com
source:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/leader-now-defunct-colombian-drug-cartel-dies-us-85109635
- Duration:
- 16m
- Broadcast on:
- 08 Jul 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
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Well, Gilberto Rodriguez, the boss of the Cali cartel, has died in the custody of the United States government. Now, this man was one of the only people who had the ability to stand up the Pablo Escobar in the 80s and the 90s. In fact, him and the Cali cartel played a role in bringing Pablo Escobar down. Everybody got together in the whole entire country pretty much to get rid of Pablo Escobar. Well, as soon as Pablo was gone, the Cali cartel moved right into that vacuum and they were really taking charge of the whole entire cocaine market. But of course, the government of Columbia and the United States, with Pablo Escobar out of the way, they turned their attention to the Cali cartel. And it wasn't long before the Cali cartel, like Pablo's cartel in Medellin, fell before the might of the Colombian military and the United States Drug Enforcement Agency. Well, what came in the wake of that? A bunch of splinter groups, a bunch of groups that are just as violent, hell, maybe even more violent, and we have more cocaine coming to market than we have ever had. So, you know, the whole decapitation strategy has always been kind of weak to me. It doesn't really address the issue and that issue, my friends, is addiction. We could kill all the cartel leaders in the world and more people will step up to take their places if people are still doing the drugs. So that's what we have to focus on, right? Not going after all of these cartel leaders and now don't get me wrong, when they commit crimes and they have to be brought to justice. That's one thing, but don't act like going after these cartel leaders is the be-all end-all because it's not and we've seen it time and time again. And when you have a guy like Gilberto Rodriguez who gets arrested and you have a cartel like the Cali cartel that gets destroyed, you would think that would take a huge chunk out of the cocaine market, but it doesn't because, like usual, people fill in those gaps, they fill in the space in the vacuum and you have a violent struggle as people try and establish dominance. But when Gilberto Rodriguez was running things in the Cali cartel, him, his brother, Paco Herrera, they were called the gentlemen of Cali because while Pablo went about it in a brutal manner, the Cali cartel went a different way. Now, of course, they were still brutal, but they had a lot of connections politically. They had a lot of connections with businessmen and they were more of the, let's try and act like we're going straight kind of group. But that was all just part of a carefully created image that they had for themselves so that, you know, they'd be accepted within the political structure, within business groups. They tried to make it so they weren't seen as brutal as Pablo Escobar, but the reality was behind the scenes they were just as brutal, just as deadly. Today, we have an article from ABC News and The Headline. Leader of now-defunct Colombian drug cartel dies in U.S. jail. This article was authored by Joshua Goodman. Gilberto Rodriguez, an elderly leader of the former Cali cartel that smuggled vast amounts of cocaine from Colombia to the United States in the 1980s and the 1990s, has died in a U.S. prison, his lawyer said, Wednesday. And if you're interested in this story, you should check out the show Narcos. It gives you a nice overview about what went down here. Obviously, it's just a TV show. It's not 100% accurate, but it introduces you to some of the bigger players that were involved in all of this. And there were some characters that were running around with the Cali cartel, guys like Pacio Herrera, who were just absolute psychopaths, basically. And these were the guys that were enforcing things for the Cali godfathers. And while they had that appearance of being, you know, more sophisticated, businessman, educated, the reality was behind the scenes they were brutal as hell. In 2020, a judge had denied Rodriguez, who was in his 80s, early release on compassionate grounds from a prison in Butner, North Carolina. His attorney, David O. Marcus, had said at the time that the former drug kingpin was suffering a range of health problems. And you'll remember David Marcus from the Galain Maxwell trial. He was one of the lawyers that was brought in basically like as a PR guy. And he wrote the op-ed and was going back and forth a little bit. And then he got slapped by the judge for running his mouth. So you would think that Gilberto Rodriguez would be able to find a better legal representation than Oscar David Marcus, but I guess not. We were very sad to learn about his passing last night. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family at this time. Marcus said Wednesday. God has a new chess partner, the lawyer said, referring to Rodriguez reputation for outsmarting his enemies and rivals, for which he earned the nickname, the chess player. While Pablo Escobar was brutal and came straight forward with most of his plans and plots, the Cali cartel was working behind the scenes and they were working in the shadows. That was their approach to things, keep things on the low and you know, try and get things moving in that manner. There were a lot like the mafia, whereas they were mainly about business. That's what their whole goal was to go straight eventually as well. And they were working towards that when they ended up having the whole entire cartel fall down around their ears. Rodriguez and his brother Miguel built a huge criminal empire that succeeded the Medellin cartel once run by drug lord Pablo Escobar. Both operations used violence and killings extensively for intimidation and enforcement. Look, it's the drug game. That's how it goes. If you're going to be in the drug game, you're going to be using intimidation. You're going to be using everything in your power to intimidate and to have your arrivals fear you. So in Colombia, when you're talking about the drug game, you had Sicario's going back and forth between the Cali cartel, the Medellin cartel, and they were clipping people at a huge rate down there. They were in a serious, serious war. The Rodriguez brothers were captured in 1995 and imprisoned in Colombia. At that point, Colombian law prohibited the extradition of its nationals. But under pressure from the US, Colombia lifted that ban in 1997. And this ban of extradition was a huge point of contention between Colombia and America. Now, obviously, America wanted these drug lords extradited to America so they would face real justice. They knew that if these drug lords were able to stay in Colombia, that they would be able to pretty much set the terms of their confinement in jail. In fact, it was so bad with Pablo Escobar that he built his own jail. And not only that, the jail was guarded by people in his employ. So when the federal authorities would come to that jail that Pablo was at, they'd have to get like checked in and the whole thing. It was insane how much power this guy had. And the godfathers of the Cali cartels certainly had that kind of power as well. So the American government, they really pressured Colombia to get that extradition law back in effect, because the Colombian government had gotten rid of it after Pablo Escobar. There was a lot of pressure on them by their own citizens, by, you know, people within the government to not extradite people to the United States of America. So they got it off the books, but after Gilberto and Miguel were arrested, it was a whole different ball game, right? Colombia understood that they couldn't keep these guys in prison in Colombia for risk of something going south, them getting, you know, bailed out as far as somebody coming in and breaking them out, or, you know, whatever it might be causing chaos within the system, they just couldn't have it. So with the pressure from the United States, they decided to extradite. The brothers were found to have been continuing to traffic from prison and criminal charges were filed in Miami and New York. In 2004, Gilberto was extradited. Miguel was extradited the next year. So these guys, even while they were in prison in the United States, in prison in general, of course, they're still running the operation. We all know it's not that difficult. Look at what the Mexican mafia does from behind bars. Look at the way the Aryan Brotherhood runs things from behind bars. So there's ways to do it. You just have to have the infrastructure set up. And when you're Gilberto Rodriguez or Miguel Rodriguez, and you have money coming out of your ears, it's pretty easy to set that infrastructure up, even if that's from jail cell in the United States of America. Under a 2006 plea deal that the brothers reached with federal prosecutors in Miami, more than two dozen family members were removed from a U.S. Treasury Department list, designating them as part of the Cali Cartel. That spared some of them from prosecution, for obstruction of justice, or money laundering, and also allowed legitimate family businesses in Colombia to continue operating. So the American government gave way here. They were like, you know what? If you quit your bullshit, we'll take your family members off this list. You guys will be able to continue operating in Colombia with your legit businesses, but you can't sell drugs from the United States prison system anymore. And after they agreed to the terms, well, the United States took those people off of that list and didn't pressure Colombia to go after these businesses that they were running allegedly legitimately. So that was what prompted them to get on board here, because it's a give and take situation. And even while these guys were locked up, they had some wiggle room when it comes to negotiations because they were so powerful, even from prison, they could have put word out on the street and had their saccarios going ham. Because not everybody had lost loyalty to these guys, just like still to this day, you can find people who have loyalty to Pablo Escobar. So these guys, even though they were diminished as far as power goes, they still could have unleashed hell. Gilberto Rodriguez' prison release date had been scheduled for February 9th, 2030. His younger brother is serving his sentence at a Pennsylvania prison. Perhaps the biggest legacy of the Rodriguez brothers was their ability to quietly corrupt Colombia's politics, delivering shoeboxes of cash to our Ernesto Samper's campaign prior to his 1994 election as president and buying off much of Congress. And that's the way they went about it. They did it by paying people off, bribing politicians, bribing local officials so that they would have favorable terms when either A, people in their organization were arrested, or B, they were looking to set up legitimate front businesses. So they went about it a different way than Pablo. Pablo, it was either you take the money or you get the lead. And there was no negotiating and people understood that Pablo wasn't a businessman. Pablo was a drug dealer, a narco traffic conti. That's what he was. The Rodriguez brothers were that there's no doubt, but they were businessmen as well. And they really wanted to go legit at some point. That was their goal. New ranks of narco's quickly replaced the Kali cartel leaders after their arrest and extradition. Many of those successors became leaders of far right military bands that the US placed on its international terror group list in 2001. Look, Colombia is littered with all kinds of groups. You have all sorts of far right groups, far left groups, and everything in between. And all of them are involved in the narco game. Once you got rid of the Kali cartel, once you got rid of the Medellin cartel, these little groups, they moved in. And now you have these guerrilla groups who are mainly pushing the the blow now. You have so many of these ex-fark members, M19 and the rest of them who have moved over from there, you know, raising hell for the government, if you will. And now they're in that narco game, supplying the cartels in Mexico, supplying other people around the world, and making a bunch of money while doing it. So the Colombian government, the American government, they all thought that after Pablo and after the Kali cartel was gone, that they'd be able to get a handle on the cocaine business and the cocaine industry. Well, we know that's not the case, and we know it's never going to be the case, because the way that they're going about it is all wrong. You're never going to stop these drugs from being grown, and you're never going to stop them from being trafficked. Until we start dealing with the problems of addiction on our side of the border, then everything else that's happening is going to continue, because as long as people want these drugs, people are going to make them, and then people are going to bring them into the country. So as far as I'm concerned, we need to focus on what's really important, and that's getting people off of these drugs, because no matter how many of these cartel leaders you take down, another one just pops up and takes his place. If you'd like to contact me, you can do that at bobbykapucci@protonmail.com. That's B-O, B-B-Y, C-A-P-U, C-C-I at protonmail.com. You can also find me on Twitter at B-O, B-B-Y, underscore, C-A-P-U, C-C-I. The link that I discussed can be found in the description box. All right, folks, I'll be back later on with a little bit more. Hope everybody is having a good