Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

COLOMBIAN COCAINE CARTELS • 113cocaine, and then smuggling and distributing the finished productwithin the United States according to the specialties of each organization.Each family was made up of related family groups, as wellas neighbors, childhood buddies, and long-established friends. Thoseinvolved in the actual production and distribution of cocaine wereorganized into cellular groups to protect the others. The cocainecartels employ over one million people in the Andean nations ofColombia, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia and in Brazil. The biggestbuyers of coca leaf are cartels, who buy up most of the crop, offeringthe local farmers 3 to 15 times the legal price set by the government.About 55 percent of the coca leaf required by the cartel comes fromPeru and Bolivia.With their $2 billion-a-year cash flow from the United States, thedrug lords have been able to spend lavishly within Colombia at noharm to their own wealth and have gained reputations as providersfor poor neighborhoods, employers of unemployed (and unemployable)young men of the slums, and benefactors of both communitiesand churches. In its battle for legitimacy with these cartels, theColombian government has been unable or unwilling to providemany of the basic amenities and social services required by a modernizingnation. By means of this “narco-philanthropy,” the cartelshave co-opted parts of the state, civil society, and even the church.This narco-philanthropy is merely one tactic in an overall strategy ofstate co-optation. There have been three parts to this strategy. First,murder: The Medellín cartel has specialized in the use of murder andviolence to further its goals. Its antileftist paramilitary force, Muertea Secuestradores, has in turn created over 180 urban death squadsand execution squads to deal with those instances of honest andbrave judges and police officers who have resisted the blandishmentsor threats of the cartel. Often these killings have been conducted inbroad daylight in front of scores of witnesses to broadcast the eventas much as possible, using extremely gruesome methods, such asdismemberment by power chainsaws. Apart from politically motivatedassassinations, the MAS terror forces also specialized in debtcollection and lab security.A few of the more spectacular operations of the cartels are citedhere: In 1984 Justice Minister Lara Bonilla was assassinated by cartelhit men. In 1986 the head of the Anti-Narcotics Police was killed aswell as the anticartel editor of the Bogotá daily El Espectador, for