<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="58" > Colombian drug lords arrested</h1>
Today there was a news item that caught my attention, about the arrest of another Colombian drug lord, Dairo Antonio Ursuga, colombia's biggest drug lord in recent years, known as "Otonier", the leader of the "Gulf Gang", mainly engaged in cocaine smuggling routes. Between 2003 and 2014, 73 metric tons of cocaine were smuggled into the United States through countries such as Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama and Honduras.
It is reported that Ursuga had been targeted before he was arrested, but he had an 8-layer protection system provided by about 1200 armed groups, and he hid in the jungle of the tropical rainforest, and changed his hiding place many times, making it very difficult to capture. However, in the end, joint strikes in Colombia, the United States and other countries were still arrested.
After the Attack began with the United States and the United Kingdom providing intelligence and determining the hiding place, Colombia dispatched more than 500 soldiers, including special forces, and 22 helicopters, and finally subdued it.
The arrest of Ursuga is Colombia's biggest crackdown on drug trafficking this century. The only hit can be matched by the fall of Pablo Escobar, the drug lord of the 1990s. And Pablo Escobar is the boss of the Medellín drug cartel.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="59" > the past of the Medellín drug cartel</h1>
We are unfamiliar with Pablo Escobar when it comes to Pablo Escobar, mainly the names of foreigners, but we must have heard of the Medellín drug cartel to some extent.
The Medellín drug cartel is one of the world's largest terrorist organizations that gradually formed in Colombia in the 1970s. Initially the group specialized in smuggling Emeralds, which are abundant in Colombia, and then smuggled marijuana. As the international drug market expanded, they further developed into cocaine smuggling. They buy coca leaves from Colombian, Bolivian and Peruvian farmers and Brazilian middlemen, and import ether, an important raw material for cocaine processing, from the United States and Europe.
By the early 1980s, the Medellín Group had hundreds of millions of dollars of wealth, controlled more than 10 percent of the country's land, and had a powerful private army of nearly 10,000 gunmen, armed with the most advanced weapons in the world. From 1982 to 1988, the heyday of the Medellín Group, it became the world's cocaine smuggling empire, with an annual drug trade volume of $60 billion to $80 billion. 80% of drugs are sold to the United States and Europe.
The world's "king of cocaine", Pablo Escobar, the number one drug addict of the Medellín Group, personally owned five or six billion dollars of illegal property, and was one of the world's top ten richest people at that time.
Pablo Escobar was eventually killed in 1993 by Colombia, and with his demise, the Medellín drug cartel he had created declined rapidly. Although the Medellín drug cartel declined, Colombian drug trafficking did not subside. While the government was entangled with the Medellín drug cartel, another drug cartel called Cali rose up. This has to say why colombia, the "drug kingdom", has flourished for half a century and has not declined.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="39" > "drug kingdom" Colombia</h1>
When it comes to the distribution of drugs in the world, there is a "golden triangle" in the east and a "white triangle" in the west, and the "golden triangle" is not to be said, mainly to talk about the "white triangle". The "White Triangle" is the guide to the drug production areas in the Americas, because the cocaine produced in Colombia, Bolivia and Peru has almost monopolized the drug market in the United States.
The country with the most coca cultivation is Peru, and colombia is the one with the world's largest coca processing industry and first-class production equipment, the most rampant drug trafficking, the most serious social problems, and the "drug kingdom" and "coca empire".
Since the 1970s, colombia's cannabis trade has gradually begun to flourish; since the mid-1980s, cocaine has become the most important export drug, and Colombia has gradually become the world's largest producer of cocaine. At that time, Colombia was known as the center of processing and sales of cocaine, controlling 90% of the world's illegal cocaine trade and 80% of the consumption of cocaine in the United States market; at the end of the 1980s, heroin export trade was rising in Colombia.
With the large number of drug dollars entering the country, the major drug cartels continue to launch violent activities, although the Colombian government has taken various measures to combat drugs, but it has been repeatedly banned, so why colombian drugs have flourished for 50 years. I think there are three reasons for this:
First, the unique natural environment
There are two main aspects of Colombia's natural environment:
One is that the climatic environment and geographical conditions of tropical rainforests provide excellent conditions for large-scale cultivation of raw materials such as cannabis, coca and poppy;
Second, the geographical environment of the tropical rainforest has provided great convenience for Colombia's drug production and drug trafficking activities. Of course, it also makes it very difficult for the government to eliminate drug cartels. The Andes Mountains pass through its territory from north to south, and the domestic terrain is complex, bordering the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the north, and its geographical location is unique.
Second, the backward industrial system and the turbulent social environment
This is the root cause of the difficulty of radically changing the drug environment in Colombia. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Colombia was one of the most backward countries on the South American continent, internally divided, turbulent, and with little foreign trade. After entering the 20th century, the country's economy showed significant growth, the population increased rapidly, and a large-scale rural population was concentrated in the cities.
The urban population has increased, and Colombia has gradually changed from a plantation village society to an urban and urban society, but the rapid urbanization development soon appeared, and the gap between the rich and the poor continued to expand. Colombia's industrial system is not developed to accommodate large-scale employment, so a large number of people are unemployed, inflation is increasing rapidly, the life of the local population is becoming more and more difficult, and poverty makes people desperate to take risks and engage in drugs.
The turbulent political environment in the country has also allowed the development of drugs to be unbridled, and even local armed groups have been involved in drug protection, because drugs are one of the main sources of income.
Third, the impact of the international market
The development of Colombia's drug economy is inseparable from the needs of the foreign market, especially in the United States. The U.S. and European markets have always been the main markets for Colombian drugs, accounting for 80% of the flow. The huge benefits of drugs have led some U.S. companies to provide marijuana seeds directly to poor farmers and then have them sell the cannabis they grow to the United States. If there is a vast market, there will be a continuous supply. Moreover, the United States controls the economic lifeblood of Colombia's resources, energy, and so on. None of this is conducive to Colombia building a sound economic system and becoming an independent country.
In short, Colombia's drug environment is difficult to change in a short period of time, and only by fundamentally changing the industrial system and narrowing the gap between the rich and the poor in society is the king.