Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela

Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela

Gilberto "El Ajedrecista" Rodríguez Orejuela (born January 30, 1939 in Mariquita , Tolima ) is a former Colombian drug dealer . In the 1970s he founded the Cali cartel with his younger brother Miguel Ángel "El Señor" and with José "El Chepe" Santacruz Londoño , which at the height of its power controlled 80 percent of Colombian cocaine exports to the United States of America . Gilberto got his nickname "El Ajedrecista" ( the chess player ) because he was said to always plan one step ahead.

Life

Early years

Little is known about Gilberto's childhood or that of his brother Miguel. Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela was born on January 30, 1939 in Mariquita (Tolima) as the son of Carlos Rodríguez and Ana Rita Orejuela into a family that lived in poor conditions. Gilberto's father was a craftsman and painter and his mother a housewife. The family moved to Cali together during the 1940s .

Criminal career

The petty criminals Rodríguez-Orejuela-Brothers drew attention to themselves as adolescents with scams like trickery. As young adults during the 1960s, they worked in the fields of extortion, robbery and kidnapping under the name Los Chemas and later began smuggling small amounts of undistilled cocaine paste from Peru and Bolivia together with José Santacruz Londoño .

In the 1970s, Gilberto, Miguel and José Santacruz founded the Cali cartel and were mainly involved in the marijuana trade. Because of the higher profit and the lower use of materials, the decision was made to export cocaine in the mid-1970s. Mid-1970s, as the Medellin Cartel drug trafficking in Miami monopolized, Santa Cruz built for drug sales in Manhattan ( New York City on). Around this time, Hélmer "Pacho" Herrera became a partner in the cartel. The Cali cartel used the methods of modern corporate governance and was less violent than the rival Medellín cartel. While the Medellín cartel engaged in a brutal campaign of violence against the Colombian government, the Cali cartel grew and relied on bribery rather than violence.

The brothers' organization now controlled the nationwide pharmacy chain Drogas La Rebaja , a network of radio stations called El Grupo Radial Colombiano , a pharmaceutical laboratory, a bank in Panama and another bank in Colombia with politicians on their supervisory boards. They also sponsored the Colombian football club América de Cali , which Gilberto's brother Miguel managed for a time.

War with Pablo Escobar

In the late 1980s, Pablo Escobar , the leader of the Medellín cartel, declared war on the country because Colombia was about to extradite him to the United States. He tried to prevent this by all means and also attacked the growing Cali cartel after it had grown in the shadow of his war. Pablo had around 20 pharmacies of the Rodríguez Orejuela brothers burned down in Medellín. He tried to kidnap Gilberto's son Fernando Rodríguez Mondragón and planted a bomb on Miguel's house. In response, the brothers hired Jorge Salcedo as head of security for the cartel, who assembled a group of mercenaries to fight Escobar. Through the brothers' ingenious espionage network, they received various information about Pablo and passed it on to the " Bloque de Busqueda " ( German: wanted bloc ), which the government had set on Pablo , in order to corner him. Thus, the Rodríguez-Orejuela brothers were heavily involved in Pablo's downfall.

arrest

Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela after his capture (1995)

After the end of the Medellín cartel in the early 1990s, the Colombian authorities turned to the Cali cartel. The campaign began in the spring of 1995, and in April the Colombian police set a reward of $ 1.25 million for helping one of the Cali bosses to be captured. On June 9, 1995, Gilberto, accompanied by his ex-wife Aura Rocío Restrepo, was captured by the wanted block in a house in the north of Cali and flown directly by helicopter to the national police headquarters in Bogotá . Just a month later, on July 4th, José Santacruz was also arrested in a restaurant in Bogotá. Miguel Ángel was also arrested in Cali by the wanted man's block on August 6, 1995 in the apartment of an ex-wife where he was hiding from the authorities. His arrest was the result of the betrayal of security chief Jorge Salcedo. On September 1, 1996 “Pacho” Herrera also surrendered to the authorities. Thus, the end of the Cali cartel was sealed.

They were not extradited to the United States because the criminal offenses charged with the Rodríguez Orejuela brothers were committed prior to December 16, 1997, when extradition of nationals was still prohibited. New trials were opened during her detention and the United States requested the extradition of the brothers.

Gilberto was extradited to the US on September 26, 2004 and his brother Miguel on March 11, 2005. The brothers both pleaded guilty to drug smuggling and money laundering in a Miami court after reaching an agreement with the US authorities, and declared that they were all guilty of all of them To forego assets if proceedings against 28 of their family members are stopped. In September 2006, they were sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Women and children

Gilberto had four children named Fernando, María Alexandra, Humberto and Jaime with his first wife Mariela Mondragón Avila. In addition to this marriage, he and his lover Nelly Herrera had their son Jorge. His son Andrés was also born as a result of another extramarital relationship. He later met Gladys Miriam Ramírez Libreros and married her. Gladys Miriam already had a daughter and later adopted the young José Alejandro with Gilberto. In 1987 Gilberto met a new lover; the 20 year old college student named Aura Rocío Restrepo. Aura stated that Gilberto adopted a child again in 1994; a girl named Rodríguez Ramírez. He is also said to have had a fifth relationship with a lover whom little is known about.

Movie and TV

• Representation in the series Narcos , by Damián Alcázar .
• The second episode of the Netflix crime documentary series, Drug Lords , is about the Rodríguez Orejuela brothers.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} El Tiempo - A LA SOMBRA DE EL AJEDRECISTA
2. ↑ Neue Zürcher Zeitung - How the federal government helped in the rise of the Narcos of Cali
3. ^ Spiegel Online - Colombia: We are bringing the dead
4. ^ TIME - Cover Stories: New Kings of Coke
5. ^ The New York Times - Colombian Drug Lord Captured In Police Raid in His Hometown
6. ↑ El Pais - La policía mata al number 3 del 'cartel de Cali'
7. ↑ DEA - Surrender of Last Cali Mafia Leader ( Memento of the original from September 11, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
8. ↑ World - Colombian drug lords land billion dollar deal with US government
9. ^ Neue Zürcher Zeitung - Long prison sentence in the USA for the bosses of the Cali cartel
10. ↑ El Tiempo - DE MENSAJERO A GRAN CAPO
11. ↑ El Tiempo - Las mujeres del clan Rodríguez Orejuela
12. ^ InSight Crime - Tough Love for Latin America's Drug Barons and Beauty Queens