Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela
Miguel Ángel "El Señor" Rodríguez Orejuela (born August 15, 1943 in Mariquita , Tolima ) is a former Colombian drug dealer . In the 1970s, he founded the Cali cartel with his older brother Gilberto José "El Ajedrecista" and with José "El Chepe" Santacruz Londoño , which controlled 80 percent of Colombian cocaine exports to the United States of America at the height of its power . During his criminal life he was also known by the nicknames and aliases "El Señor", Róbinson Pineda, Patricia, Patricio, Patty, Pat, Manuel, Manolo, Miki and Mauro.
Life
Early years
Not much is known about Miguel's childhood. Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Orejuela was born on August 15, 1943 in Mariquita (Tolima) as the son of Carlos Rodríguez and Ana Rita Orejuela into a family with six children who lived in poor conditions. Miguel'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 .
During the early 1960s, Miguel married his lover Gladys Abadía, who gave birth to their son William Rodríguez Abadía in 1964. In 1969 Miguel traveled to Panama and married Amparo Arbeláez Pardo, with whom he later had three children: María Fernanda, Juan Miguel and Carolina.
In the 1970s, Miguel, Gilberto 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.
In 1978, Miguel married Fabiola Moreno Galindo, with whom he had three children: Miguel Andre, Juan Pablo and Estefanía.
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 Miguel temporarily managed. Miguel married in 1980, the beauty queen Martha Lucía Echeverry, the 1974 in Valle del Cauca as Miss Colombia was crowned. They got to know each other through PR work that she did for the association.
War with Pablo
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 Miguel's nephew or Gilberto's son Fernando Rodríguez Mondragón and put a bomb in 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. So they were heavily involved in Pablo's demise.
arrest
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. On June 9, 1995, Gilberto was captured by the Bloque de Busqueda in Cali and a month later, on July 4, José Santacruz was also arrested in a restaurant in Bogotá . Miguel Ángel was also arrested in Cali by the Bloque de Busqueda 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. Miguel was sentenced to more than 15 years in Colombia in 1998, which was reduced for his good behavior.
Although due for release in 2002, he remained in custody on retrial trials that the United States requested for his extradition.
Miguel's brother Gilberto was extradited to the United States on September 26, 2004, and Miguel himself 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 to forego all assets if the proceedings against 28 of their family members are stopped. In September 2006, they were sentenced to 30 years in prison.
To date, Miguel serving his sentence in prison Federal Correctional Institution in Edgefield ( South Carolina ). His regular discharge is scheduled for February 21, 2030.
Movie and TV
- Representation in the series Narcos , by Francisco Denis .
- The second episode of the Netflix crime documentary series, Drug Lords , is about the Rodríguez Orejuela brothers.
- In the fifth episode of the Narcos: Mexico series , Miguel was again played by Francisco Denis.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c El Tiempo - A LA SOMBRA DE EL AJEDRECISTA
- ↑ Neue Zürcher Zeitung - How the federal government helped in the rise of the Narcos of Cali
- ^ Spiegel Online - Colombia: We are bringing the dead
- ↑ El Tiempo - Las mujeres del clan Rodríguez Orejuela
- ^ TIME - Cover Stories: New Kings of Coke
- ↑ El Pais - La maldición de ser Miss en Latinoamérica
- ^ InSight Crime - Tough Love for Latin America's Drug Barons and Beauty Queens
- ↑ El Pais - La policía mata al number 3 del 'cartel de Cali'
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ World - Colombian drug lords land billion dollar deal with US government
- ^ Neue Zürcher Zeitung - Long prison sentence in the USA for the bosses of the Cali cartel
- ^ Bureau of Prisons: Inmate ID Number 14022-059
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Rodríguez Orejuela, Miguel |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Rodríguez Orejuela, Miguel Ángel (full name); El Señor (nickname) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Colombian drug trafficker |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 15, 1943 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Mariquita , Tolima |