A total of 209 people have been killed in bombings and assassinations. 8 man in the Medelln Cartel and who had then control over the network to transport cocaine form the Caribe Coast), four bodyguards and El Navegante. Colombian authorities said that Rodriguez Gacha and Pablo Escobar planned the December 7, 1989 bombing of the federal investigative police headquarters in Bogot which killed 63 people and injured an estimated 1,000. Colombian police returned fire, killing Rodriguez Gacha, his son, and 10 or more cartel bodyguards.. Jos Gonzalo Rodrguez Gacha, also known as The Mexican, was one of the violent kingpins of the Medellin Cartel. President Bush declared money laundering a critical target in the war on drugs, allocating $15 million to launch a counteroffensive. On December 15, 1989, the cops raided a beachside property in Tolu and killed over 15 of his bodyguards. The crackdown forced the Ochoas, Escobar and Rodrguez to flee to Panama for several months. But after seeing that there was no damage to his hands, the cops concluded that would have been impossible. After the murder of Galn, "El Mexicano" had begun to have a less active role in the terrorist attacks of the Medellin cartel.[4]. Bennett said the fugitives resisted police efforts to arrest them, opening fire on Colombian authorities. Rodrguez Gacha based much of his operations from Bogot and other areas in the Cundinamarca region, as well as in the Middle Magdalena region. Mr. Bennett said he had spoken with President Barco over the phone this afternoon and Mr. Barco told him that this operation was important psychologically for the Colombian people. The intelligence gathered led to the uncovering of a vast empire of legal businesses and money-laundering operations, whose limits are still not entirely clear. And he did. In one case, a pair of helicopters owned by Mr. Rodriguez Gacha suddenly popped through a jungle clearing and skimmed away at treetop level as the police were landing. He was charged with importing 1,350 pounds of cocaine into the United States. A judge released Fredy Rodriguez three weeks ago from a Bogota jail, where he had been held for three months. [8] The top leaders of the Medelln Cartel created private armies to guarantee their own security and protect the property they had acquired.
As he started to go up in the ranks among Molina's men, he also became acquainted with drug traffickers. We know this because of the quantity of calls from citizens, from women crying with joy because the head of the most dangerous and forceful terrorist organization on earth has just died.. The records show that by 1976, Rodriguez Gacha had his own emeralds operation and, shortly thereafter, moved into cocaine trafficking, working with Pablo Escobar and other leaders of what was to become the notorious Medellin cocaine cartel. Jonathan Beaty and Richard Hornik, "A Torrent of Dirty Dollars". A judge declared that there was insufficient evidence to continue holding him on a charge of weapons possession. Rodriguez Gacha, his 17-year-old son Fredy and five bodyguards were killed in the shootout 360 miles north of Bogota at a ranch owned by Pablo Escobar, another kingpin in Colombias multibillion-dollar drug empire, national police chief Miguel Gomez Padilla said. Police will know concentrate efforts to capture Escobar, Maza said. Trap Laid 10 Days Ago. Attempts to capture Mr. Rodriguez Gacha and Mr. Escobar had been repeatedly frustrated. BOGOTA, COLOMBIA, DEC. 17 -- The body of Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, the violent billionaire cocaine magnate killed Friday in a shootout with police, was exhumed today from a common grave and taken away by two men claiming to be his brothers, police officials said. After arresting Gachas son Fredy for a minor infraction, the cops released him and waited for him to lead them back to his dad. At the time of his death, Rodrguez Gacha was fighting wars simultaneously against the Colombian government, the Cali cartel, the FARC guerrillas, the DEA, and the emerald businessmen lead by Victor Carranza. It is claimed that he helped design a Nicaraguan trafficking operation that employed pilot Barry Seal (who was murdered on February 19, 1986, after agreeing to testify against the Medelln Cartel). [5] When the M-19 guerrilla kidnapped Martha Nieves Ochoa, the sister of fellow drug lord Jorge Luis Ochoa, the cartel decided to create what would be one of the first far-right paramilitary groups to fight the guerrillas, the "Muerte a Secuestradores" (MAS) [Death to Kidnappers] movement. In addition to wars with the government and peasants, Rodriguez Gacha also fought the rival cocaine cartel in Cali, a southern city, and was involved in a struggle with other gangsters for control of Colombias emerald mines. The police said they had come close in the last two months to catching several members of the Medellin Cartel, including Escobar and Jorge Luis Ochoa, another of the top three leaders. It was Rodrguez who first set up Tranquilandia, one of the largest and best known of the jungle laboratories where more than two thousand people lived and worked making and packaging cocaine. With this new information, the police intercepted his motorboat and placed him on one of the two Colombian military helicopters prepared for the offensive. BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) _ Police who had stalked him for months killed Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, one of the most powerful cocaine barons, in a shootout Friday near Covenas, a port on the Caribbean. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. As pressure grew, Rodriguez Gacha, at times accompanied by Escobar, moved from one property to another, narrowly escaping capture on several occasions. [14], El Mexicano or 'Don Sombrero' was later charged in Colombia and the United States for his involvement in a number of killings, including the assassination of the president of the leftist Patriotic Union party, Jaime Pardo Leal on October 12, 1987 in retaliation for guerrilla attacks on drug traffickers in the eastern plains area known as the "llanos orientales". Some political leaders have begun calling for Mr. Barco's resignation. Jorge Velsquez, alias "El Navegante", an informant placed by the Cali Cartel into Gacha's organisation, revealed to the police that the drug lord was in Cartagena de Indias protected by 25 bodyguards. [3], As he started to prosper in the drug trafficking business, Rodrguez Gacha started to buy larger amounts of land in the Middle Magdalena region in the valley bordering the departments of Antioquia, Boyac, and Santander. The operation to locate Rodriguez Gacha was an intellegence operation of great care, Gen. Carlos Arturo Casadiego, assistant director of the national police, said in an interview with the Caracol radio network. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh recently announced that $61.8 million worth of his assets had been frozen in several nations around the world as a result of a U.S. investigation. The drug war began in August after the assassination of the country's leading presidential candidate. [3] This, coupled with his infatuation with Mexican popular culture, music, and horse culture, and his fondness for foul language, earned him the nicknames El Mexicano (the Mexican) and 'Don Sombrero'. In the back yard of one of Rodriguez Gacha's estates near Pacho, police found a working gallows. December 19, 1989, bombing of the federal investigative police headquarters, "Le decan 'El Mexicano'; fue pionero de alianza de capos [Capos] - 05/01/2014 | Peridico Zcalo", "El otro capo que ensangrent a Colombia", "Ha muerto el zar, el zar ha muerto: el funeral de Vctor Carranza - Las2orillas", "La cacera final contra Rodrguez Gacha", Faceted Application of Subject Terminology, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jos_Gonzalo_Rodrguez_Gacha&oldid=1099013501, Fugitives wanted on organised crime charges, CS1 European Spanish-language sources (es-es), Articles containing explicitly cited English-language text, Articles with unsourced statements from September 2020, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Freddy Gonzalo Rodriguez Celades, Daniel Ray Rodriguez, In the 2013 based on a true story TV series, This page was last edited on 18 July 2022, at 15:39. The gunfight was at a ranch only 70 miles south of Cartagena, the city where Bush is to meet in February with the presidents of Latin Americas three major drug-producing countries - Barco, Alan Garcia of Peru and Jaime Paz Zamora of Bolivia. Mr. Rodriguez Gacha, and Mr. Escobar are suspected of ordering the bombing last month of a plane of the national airline, Avianca, that exploded in the air, killing all 107 people on board, and a car bomb attack on the federal intelligence agency in Bogota that killed more than 60 people and wounded 1,000 others. Freddy's alleged crime, possession of illegal weapons, was relatively minor but police held him longer than most unindicted prisoners, hoping to put pressure on Rodrguez. But he said Rodriguez Gachas death would not end terrorist violence in Colombia. He was then shot in the face, killing him. 
Despite the violence with which he was associated, Mr. Rodriguez Gacha, whose education ended at grade school and who worked as a pig farmer before becoming a smuggler, and Mr. Escobar had become something of folk heroes as they managed to elude the authorities. Candidates backed by Mr. Rodriguez Gacha had recently been elected mayor in five towns in the Magdalena valley. TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. He owned a string of farms in his hometown in the locality of Pacho with Mexican inspired names such as Cuernavaca, Chihuahua, Sonora and Mazatln. Bombings and Shootings. Maza said telephone switchboards at police stations and the presidential palace were flooded with congratulatory calls. The army and military seized dozens of properties belonging to Rodriguez Gacha and other drug lords, who struck back with bombings that terrorized the country. 
Police said the murder was the work of Rodriguez Gacha and others of the Medellin cartel who signed their communiques "the Extraditables" because they are wanted in the United States.
On February 27, 1989, he directed a group of 25 gunmen to kill emerald magnate Gilberto Molina, his former boss, who was previously considered among his close associates, along with sixteen other individuals at a party in Molina's home. [13] Later, he detonated a bomb in the offices of Tecminas in Bogot, which were property of Victor Carranza, the new emerald tsar, whose nephew's murder he also ordered. He also was accused of several massacres of peasants believed to sympathize with leftist guerrillas. A Top Medellin Drug Trafficker Dies in a Shootout in Colombia, https://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/16/world/a-top-medellin-drug-trafficker-dies-in-a-shootout-in-colombia.html, Joseph B. Treaster, Special To the New York Times. The blast, which left a huge crater, killed 63 people and injured an estimated 1,000 people. The Medellin Cartel responded by declaring "war" on the government, and over the next four months, bombings became an almost daily occurrence and scores of people died. Furthermore, he was already in an open war against the FARC guerrilla and he was already in a crusade against the Colombian government and the DEA. In 1984, the two were linked to the murder of justice minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla. Some believe that Gacha killed himself by holding a grenade to his face because the damage was so bad that they had to bring in medical examiners to confirm his identity. Rodriguez Gacha was on the list of a dozen Colombian drug traffickers most wanted by the U.S. Justice Department.
The slaying of Mr. Rodriguez Gacha, who had become a billionaire as a leader of the Medellin cocaine smuggling cartel and was under indictment in the United States on several smuggling charges, is the most striking success in the Colombian Government's war on drug traffickers. As the military leader of the cartel, Rodrguez Gacha was instrumental in many assassinations and other violent actions against the Cali Cartel. Only this week Mr. Barco narrowly defeated an attempt by Congress, which is dominated by his own Liberal Party, to conduct a national referendum on the drug war. There he began to work under Gilberto Molina Moreno, who at the time was called the "star" of emeralds in Boyac, as part of his security, developing a fearsome reputation as a killer. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. He had a flair for style and loved fine horses, luxurious mansions with gold bathroom fixtures, expensive guns and all things Mexican. 2 man in the Medellin cartel, for 70 hours in the Covenas coastal zone before catching up with him. Among those killed in the bombings have been 50 judges, two newspaper publishers and the chief of the narcotics police. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN) was designed to zero in on money launderers with computer programs capable of spotting suspicious movements of electronic money. Together, the two men were believed to have been responsible for hundreds of killings over the last decade, including the assassinations of Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla; Guillermo Cano, the editor of the Bogota daily newspaper El Espectador, and most recently the leading presidential candidate, Luis Carlos Galan. [1], Jos Gonzalo Rodrguez Gacha was born in May 1947 in the small town of Veraguas, near Pacho in the department of Cundinamarca. The Colombian police said the drug trafficker, Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, died in a hail of gunfire along with his 17-year-old son and 15 bodyguards in a rural area near Covenas and Tolu, south of Cartagena on the Caribbean coast. The animosity turned into an open cartel war in 1988, moved mostly by the personal vendetta of Pablo Escobar against Pacho Herrera. While he was well-known to law enforcement officers, police officials say they were surprised by the size of his empire, which began to unravel in August, following a rash of murders culminating with the assassination of Luis Carlos Galan, a leading presidential candidate. By talking through a loudspeaker, the police demanded that Rodrguez Gacha surrender, but Gacha and his men, disguised as farm workers, waited for the police to withdraw. Dozens of judges and lesser-known officials also were gunned down as the cartel learned to buy or eliminate those who stood in its way. On December 6, 1989, Attorney General Dick Thornburgh announced that authorities had frozen accounts in five countries holding $61.8 million belonging to Rodriguez Gacha. Among his victims, according to Colombian authorities, was the president of the leftist Patriotic Union party, Jaime Pardo Leal, assassinated Oct. 12, 1988. Rodriguez Gacha was indicted in July 1988 with six other reputed drug traffickers by a federal grand jury in Miami. 
One of the most violent figures in the world of cocaine smuggling was killed in a shootout this afternoon with Colombian security forces. United States officials would not comment further. In Washington, Justice Department spokeswoman Harri Kramer said Colombian national police called the Drug Enforcement Administration and said of Rodriguez Gacha: Hes gone. He installed a gallows with a dangling hangman's noose on the lawn of one of his ranch houses and etched his initials on bullets he loaded in a silver automatic pistol. Another time, a fleet of four-wheel-drive bush vehicles scattered like flushed quail. Mr. Rodriguez Gacha provided electric lights, running water, bus service and a bullfighting ring in his hometown of Pacho, about 40 miles northwest of Bogota. [9] By the late 1980s Medellin traffickers controlled 40 percent of the land in the Middle Magdalena, according to a Colombian military estimate, and also funded most of the paramilitary operations in the region. When the police arrived there, Gacha fled to Tol by motorboat. Police earlier reported 11 bodyguards among the dead before downgrading that at a news conference to five. The two men were also accused of involvement in the November 27, 1989 bombing of Avianca Flight 203 outside Bogot that killed all 107 people aboard. [10] It is not clear whether Klein's mercenary activities in Colombia coincided with those of a group of British mercenaries who had allegedly trained paramilitary squads for the cocaine cartels.[11]. The bombing was the most brazen by the traffickers, who have mounted dozens of attacks to retaliate for the extradition of 10 drug suspects to the United States. It was a firefight. Kramer said. [16][17], After several unsuccessful attempts to escape from the police, Freddy Gonzalo (armed with a 9mm pistol), Gilberto Rendn and three other bodyguards got off the truck and, while running towards a group of trees, engaged in a shootout with one of the aircraft, during which two of the fugitives were killed by a burst of the helicopter-mounted machine gun. Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. In a nearby bunker was an arsenal of machine guns and grenades, along with Rodriguez Gacha's personal weapon -- a gold-encrusted 9mm pistol with his initials etched on the bullets. In response, President Belisario Betancur, who had previously opposed extradition, made an announcement that "we will extradite Colombians." He was said to be financing right-wing death squads that have killed hundreds of other leftists. The two men also were accused in the Nov. 27 bombing of a Colombian domestic jetliner just outside Bogota that killed all 107 people aboard. At least one police officer was wounded. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. 
He soon became the de facto military leader of the cartel and thanks to his immense riches, he managed to form the largest paramilitary organization in the country, composed of around 1,000 men, all trained and armed, originally devoted to his security but soon becoming an anti-communist army directed particularly against the FARC, and then against the Unin Patritica political party.
Tony Thompson, High-tech Crime of the Future Will be all Mod Cons. But today, according to the police, the two men arrived with an exhumation order and took two coffins away in a truck. He is often said to have been the first to establish cooperation strategies with drug trafficking cartels in Mexico. Much of the government strategy concentrated on restricting drug supply by extraditing Colombian cartel leaders to the United States for prosecution. When no signs of fatherly concern emerged, the police released Freddy and waited. The growth of Rodrguez Gacha's criminal empire had allowed him to increase his fortune but also made him a lot of enemies. According to the report by the Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad (Colombia's Administrative Security Department), between December 1987 and May 1988, Rodrguez hired Israeli and British mercenaries to train teams of assassins at remote training camps in Colombia. ''These men are a real threat to Colombian democracy,'' a senior Government official said the other day in Bogota. At the destination, the drug lord was accompanied by his son Freddy, Gilberto Rendn Hurtado (alias "mano de yuca" the alleged No. According to police records, Rodriguez Gacha left Pacho in 1968 and tended bar in Bogota, where he met and began working with emerald smugglers, reportedly as a hit man. At the height of his criminal career, Rodrguez was acknowledged as one of the world's most successful drug dealers. Yair Klein, a retired Israeli lieutenant colonel, acknowledged having led a team of instructors in Puerto Boyac in early 1988. However, both men managed to stay one step ahead of law enforcement and continued to finance a campaign of retaliatory terrorism which claimed the lives of hundreds of politicians, judges and civilians. His push to join his properties in his hometown in Pacho with his many lands in the middle Magdalena region soon put him in conflict with his old allies in the emerald business, as the emerald region of Muzo was in between. After bringing his red Chevy to a stop, the cops killed Gacha with a headshot. But Friday, after escaping from a police operation near the coastal city of Cartagena by boat on Thursday, Rodriguez Gacha and Freddy were spotted at a rural hideaway and killed in a hail of gunfire from a police helicopter. The two men financed small armies that operated out of the broad Magdalena River valley north of Bogota, protecting their drug operations and the outwardly legitimate ranches and farms that they ran against leftist guerrillas, who sometimes tried to extract taxes from the traffickers.