Another war without winners: Business as usual for drug dealers, despite cartel takedown

By Ron Chepesiuk | Special to the Vermont Guardian

Posted May 27, 2005

BOGOTA — The trial of the most powerful drug traffickers ever extradited to the United States is scheduled to begin Monday in Miami. Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, 66, whose criminal brilliance earned him the nickname “Chess Player,” and his brother Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela, 61, were extradited from Colombia in December and March respectively. The brothers were reputedly the co-founders of the Cali Cartel, arguably history’s richest, most powerful crime syndicate.

How rich? The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) estimates that at the height of its power the Cali Cartel was making $5 billion to $8 billion in drug profits. How powerful? In the early 1990s, U.S. government officials feared that the cartel could turn Colombia into a narco-democracy, meaning Colombia’s democratically elected government was on the verge of being infiltrated and corrupted by drug money.

The DEA has called the takedown of the Cali Cartel “the most significant enforcement action taken against organized crime since the Appalachian summit in 1957,” which revealed the existence of the Italian American Mafia. Washington is touting the takedown and the extraditions as major victories in its “war on drugs,” but for the criminal entrepreneurs who smuggle and distribute the illicit drugs, it’s been business as usual.

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