Medellín Cartel

The Medellín Cartel was an organized network of drug suppliers and smugglers originating in the city of Medellín, Colombia. The drug cartel operated in Bolivia, Colombia, Honduras, Peru, the United States, as well as Canada and Europe throughout the 1970s and 1980s. It was founded and run by Ochoa Vázquez brothers Jorge Luis, Juan David, and Fabio, together with Pablo Escobar and José Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha. By 1993, the highly effective resistance group, Los Pepes (or PEPES), controlled by the Cali Cartel, and the Colombian government, in collaboration with the Cali Cartel, right-wing paramilitary groups, and the United States government, had successfully dismantled the Medellín Cartel by imprisoning or assassinating its members.