June 8, 2024 • 29 mins
Where people fight and die in the coca plantations.
In Colombia, Stephen Drill discovers how the international cocaine business starts, and the cost paid by everyone it touches.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Aldo to persadas, yeah, d two person de canto. And
I remember that when I was singing that song, I
raised my hands and I say to my God, I
forgive the person that did me that. And I say
(00:24):
to my God, forgive them and forgive me, because in
this time I need you so much.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
On the first of December nineteen ninety three, a short, plump,
middle aged man is celebrating his forty fourth birthday inside
a house in his home city, a Meddy in Colombia.
There's cake, good wine, and marijuana. The man has a white,
small and graying hair at the sides. He owns several
(01:03):
palatial homes, has been a congressman, and for the last
seven years running, made the world famous Forbes magazine list
of billionaires. But right now he's in hiding. The next afternoon,
the man sits inside waiting for a boy who's been
(01:25):
sent to fetch lunch from a local restaurant. Outside, hundreds
of police and soldiers quietly surround the building, blocking off
the streets and taking up their positions. At two point
fifty one pm, two of the heavily armed cops from
an elite unit of Columbia's National Police approach knock on
(01:46):
the door, and when no one answers, they smash their
way in. Hearing the noise, the man runs upstairs, climbs
out through a window and jumps onto the roof of
the next door building. Despite his wealth, he's barefoot and
dressed in faded jeans and a blue polo shirt. With
(02:08):
the police now closing in from every side, his money
cannot save him. I'm Fiona Hamilton and from the Times,
The Sunday Times and News Corp Australia. This is Cocaine Inc.
(02:29):
Episode two, The Sweet Song. To understand what led to
the death of Ellie Edwards, which you heard in the
last episode, you need to start here directa in Colombia,
(02:55):
where the cocaine trail begins. It's the world's biggest producer,
where that barefoot man fleeing from police across the rooftop
helped turn the cocaine trade from a local smuggling operation
into a global business. Today we're in Bogata, the capital
(03:15):
of Columbia, in the luxurious National Police Social Club in
the city center. There's tall glass windows, manicured grounds with
palm trees, and inside a small chapel, a swimming pool
and a Bowling Alley. It's where some of the city's
cops come to relax. My colleague, News Corp Australia National
(03:37):
correspondent Steven Drill, is sitting at the bar.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Okay ready to go. My name is Stephen. I'm a
journalist from Australia. Can you please tell me your name
and how old you are?
Speaker 1 (03:57):
My name is Jose Fernando Carbajaldrea and twenty seven years old.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
And do you have children?
Speaker 1 (04:05):
No, I'm single.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Single. I've spent years as a reporter covering cocaine busts
and celebrity cocaine scandals, and I've started to wonder where
does this problem come from and do we even really
understand it? So I managed to convince our bean counters
(04:27):
and a nervous HR department to send me halfway across
the world for this podcast, where one of the first
people I meet is Jose, the former policeman. The first
thing I notice is how young he looks, with a
neat beard, pale shirt and dark suit, and unlike what
(04:48):
you might expect for someone who's worked at the center
of global cocaine production, he has an infectious enthusiasm.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
I work in the Mountaine in the forests in the
eradica of the elicit plants, call it cocaine.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
And with eradication, what do you actually do? Is it
like spraying a chemical or cutting them down?
Speaker 1 (05:11):
I will land square that question. In Spanish, Lacacun des.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Jose says the police used to spray weed killer, only
people criticized the damage it was doing to local farmers
and their crops. The Colombian government banned the practice in
twenty fifteen. There was also a concern the chemicals in
the toxic weed killer would get into waterways and cause cancer.
(05:40):
So now the cops go in and physically pull out
the coca plants by hand. Wiping out the coca plants
is one of the main ways governments around the world
have been trying for decades to shut down the cocaine business.
The basic idea is that by sending in cops to
destroy the coca fine yelds, he reduced the supply of cocaine.
(06:03):
Supply goes down, the price goes up, which means that
customers and maybe that's you on the streets of say
London or Sydney, don't buy cocaine because it's so expensive.
To give you an example, there was a cyclone in
Australia about ten years ago.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
The banana industry is worth four hundred million dollars, but
it's been brought to its knees by cyclone Yasi.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
The banana plantations were wiped out. The price of bananas
went to about thirteen bucks a kilo. That's seven pounds
or close to nine US dollars for a bunch of bananas.
I didn't eat one for a year. It's economics one
on one right, Only there's a cost that doesn't get
accounted for it. To check out.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
La mozerra internaoso almente in La Selba.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Then Wastro pays and the Colombian police was sent to
destroy the coca crops. Jose says it was his job
to go ahead of the other officers with a sniffer dog.
Jose and his dog went alone through the forest to
make sure a path was clear for the rest to follow.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
And one day I stepped on i s plus if
a mane and I lost my legs for that.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
He lost his legs. That landmine was left by a
cocaine cartel to protect its harvest, and whoever set it
packed the bomb with nails and glass. They also put
in dogshit to make sure the wound got infected. I've
seen a lot while reporting on crime, but the evil
(07:46):
intent of that decision is hard to get over. Jose
was left lying on the forest floor.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
It was so bad, and I remember that I look
in the sky and I unsquare to my God, God Why?
And the helicopter arrived. Three miners later.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
His fellow cops rade him out under heavy gun fire
from the cartel how Is I was taken to hospital.
Both his legs were amputated. He lay in a coma
for eighteen days. Finally he opened his eyes.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
I remember that the film that I see was my
younger brother. In that moment, I thought, in my family,
I lost my legs, but in any moment, I lost
my dreams. And I fight for my dreams with effort,
(08:56):
with a smile, because I love my country too, and
I think that I should continue service to my country.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Jose says he's fellow police officers are warriors who fought
all day, every day against the drug gangs, losing limbs,
losing their lives, leaving behind their homes and families. And
it's that human cost that doesn't get accounted for. The checkout.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Yes, when I lose my legs, I arrived at the clinic.
I cried so much, but I take a decision so
important for my life.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Despite the cost he paid in the drug war, Jose
says he's come to terms with what happened to him.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
One day, I wake up so sad, and I remember
that I hear a nurse seeing a hitting music. Christian
music is music a Christian Yeah, and there is a
part of the song that I will sing at the people. Yes,
(10:10):
quando test friend al mar heloscatra Visa Germa s on
brey Confe solo love hell mar Romano Nomo see the
transbiene fa on delo Kanto. And I remember that when
(10:35):
I was singing that song, I raise my hands and
I say to my God, I forgive the person that
did me that. And I say to my God, my God,
forgive them and forgive me because I need you in
this time. I need you so much.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
Jose forgave the cocaine gain who set that landmine. Today
he's living in Bogata studying law. I will be a
selling layer. And somehow he's still managing to smile given
what happened to him. You might have thought Jose would
(11:21):
be pretty down on the practice of cops pulling out
cocaine plants, except he.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Isn't reason by Santa if.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
It's a difficult job, but he says it's important, which
is where we get back to what I was talking
about with the bananas. According to economists, by reducing the
supply of the coca crop, you would think it would
drive up the price of cocaine. Jose says something similar
(11:55):
is when I.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Demanda, I ferda, it's.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
All about supply and demand, except, as I was about
to discover in the cocaine business, it doesn't work like
that at all. We finished talking and head out of
the police social club together, Jose walking slowly on his
prosthetic legs.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
God bleeds you, and never forget that the life will
be better with my with our love, maybe is our
message for you.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Afterwards, I joined up with some of Jose's former colleagues
in the National Police, and together we're traveled by helicopter
deep into the Columbian Mountains. The police are armed with
sixteen rifles as we fly over the thick forest, We
land and climb into heavy duty four by fours, then
(13:07):
drive along muddy tracks, heading deeper into the jungle. We're
about one thousand meters above sea level, but among the
mountains there are plateaus where the local farmers have planted fields.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
We walk.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Among the trees. I see neat fields with row after
row of coca plants, with their flat green leaves and
bright red berries, the source of the global cocaine trade.
They're handpicked by local farmers. Only here there's no farmhouse,
just some ramshackle buildings made from timber and corrugated iron sheets.
(13:52):
Leaving the car behind us, we walk closer and standing
there in silence, when suddenly the forest erupts around heavily.
Police charge forward, but this time it's a training rate
on a mock cocaine production lab, but the noise in
(14:14):
the threat of violence feels real. The men pretending to
be cocaine farmers are forced to lie face down, hands
out stretched in the dirt, and the cops as soon
seizing assault rifles, clearing rooms, pulling their suspects off at gunpoint.
It all happens in seconds. What's left is a stack
(14:35):
of brick sized blocks of white powder cocaine lying in
the jungle sun. Watching the police, I see a lot
of bravery, but not a lot of evidence the strategy
is actually working here in Colombia. As acre after acre
of coca plants are destroyed by the police, the farmers
(14:57):
just go out and plant more. And even if half
the harvests are ruined every year by cops, which is
pretty much what happens, the price paid on the street
for cocaine has actually stayed the same or for one
in real terms, over the past thirty years, which is
where we come back to economics. Economics says that that
(15:19):
shouldn't happen. A supply of reduction shouldn't meant a price fall.
The coca farmers should be able to charge more and
the drug cartels should have to pay it. When I
was trying to understand this, I read something by the
Economist Magazines Central America correspondent Tom Wainwright. Picture this, You're
(15:41):
at the supermarket buying a two letter bottle of milk.
It's pretty cheap. In fact, in real terms, the price
of this bottle of milk has fallen over the past
thirty years. Part of the reason it's cheap is because
the big supermarket chains dominate the market. Think Tesco, Sainsbury's, Coals,
(16:03):
Woolies or wal Mart. Those big supermarket chains account for
a huge amount of the food we eat and the
milk we drink, meaning the dairy farmers have a little
choice over who they sell to. That means the supermarkets
can squeeze their suppliers, telling them they're only prepared to
pay so much, keeping down the cost to the customer
(16:26):
while maintaining their own profits and leaving any increase in
the cost of producing the milk itself to be picked
up by the farmer. And while Western farmers might say
they feel like they're being held at gunpoint, the farmers
in Colombia actually are. Those cartels set the prices. Meaning
(16:46):
the whole strategy of destroying the coca plants, something governments
have spent billions on, doesn't work. You see, the amount
of land used to grow coca plants world wide has
roughly trebled touring the past decade. Production is now at
a record level. The crops do get destroyed, but that
(17:08):
just makes it harder for the farmers. It doesn't affect
the cocaine gains that are shipping and selling the drug.
Looking back at what I've seen so far in Colombia,
(17:29):
it's the sheer violence of a drug trade. That stands
out Jose's injuries from a landmine, the police training for
a raid with both sides armed and submachine guns. Who
created this business model? There's really one place to go
to find the answer. From the mountains, I travel north
to Meda Yane, where Papal Escobar helped build the world's
(17:52):
first major drug cartel during the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 5 (17:57):
The Median Catel group of men that in the last
few years has formed a near monopoly on the processing
and sale of cocaine.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
The Median cuts held changed everything in the cocaine business.
They were the first to industrialize the process, shipping and
flying cocaine bus quantities out of the country.
Speaker 5 (18:17):
According to American officials, controlling as much as eighty percent
of the world's supply.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
With that control came huge profits.
Speaker 6 (18:26):
They're talking about a business that probably makes a couple
of billion dollars a year.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
In nineteen eighty one, Time magazine ran a front page
story calling cocaine the drug of choice for millions. A
few years later, Forms magazine put the Median cartel's leader,
Pablo Escobar in its annual list of billionaires. Cocaine Inc.
Speaker 7 (18:48):
A huge international business run by a relatively small band
of smugglers operating out of Columbia. This cocaine cartel, in
many ways, is as sophisticated as a fortune five hundred
up on.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
It, and it was sophisticated just like any other business.
The carta had to manufacture, transport, market and seal its product.
The people running it also became sophisticated just like other
business leaders. They wore the same expensive watchers, went to
the same expensive parties, and had the same expensive problems
(19:22):
as those running legal businesses, like managing their employees, navigating regulation,
finding reliable suppliers, and dealing with their competitors.
Speaker 8 (19:33):
The forty four year old Escobar was accused of waging
a terror ac campaign. Hundreds of people were killed by
Escobar's assassins.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Looked at this way, cocaine might be the ultimate capitalist product.
The businesses that had the most success selling it are dynamic, innovative, ruthless,
loyal only to the pure, unfettered free market.
Speaker 8 (19:58):
Pablo Escobar had been a fugitive more than a year
and a half after escaping from this prison, where police
say he still ran his cool Keene.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Empire until, of course, it ended.
Speaker 8 (20:14):
An elite Colombian police unit killed Pablo Escobar in a shootout,
cornering him here in this house where he had been
hiding in the city of Medaheene.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Escobar was the barefoot man who tried escaping across the
rooftops that Fiona was talking about at the beginning of
this episode. He'd vowed to go down fighting rather than surrender,
and was true to his word, firing at the police
with a nine millimeter pistol in each hand. They shot back,
(20:44):
hitting him twelve times. Escobar fell dead on the terra
cotta tiles. The police post for photos, smiling holding their
guns over his bloodied body. It looks like a trophy
photo taken by a hunting party.
Speaker 8 (21:02):
Colombian authorities say its message to other drug lords is
to surrender or you will be killed.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
But that message didn't seem to get through. In the
year after Escobar's shooting, his cartail broke up into factions,
and so did the control it had over the cocaine
business in maneem I visit a suburb called Communa thirteen.
(21:29):
It's high in the hills on the outskirts of the city,
but near the main highway. A crucial combination for the
cocaine trade. But while the drug bosses make millions, Communit
thirteen is one of the poorest areas of Columbia. Escobar
ruled it as his personal kingdom. Walking through its narrow
streets to get out of the rain, I duck inside
(21:51):
one of the houses and sit down with a local woman,
a gay. We mean, her name is Rhodes. She doesn't
speak much English and I don't speak much Spanish, so
we talked through a translator. Grat yes for letting us
speak in your home.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Audience.
Speaker 6 (22:11):
Nah, huh, come kill woostom.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
We're in a very small room, about two meters by
three meters. It's the kitchen, the bathroom, the living room,
and the bedroom. Rose actually pulls down a chair off
the bunk bed so we can sit down.
Speaker 9 (22:28):
She said, you know, this is my humble house.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
How long have you lived here for?
Speaker 4 (22:32):
Okay?
Speaker 9 (22:33):
As a quanto it she was fourteen years old when
she arrived here, and now she's speak the name do
you know?
Speaker 3 (22:45):
Okay? And so you were here when the drug lords
and the gorillas were in charge, just to walk out
until she said yes. Rose tells me how Commune thirteen
could be a the place even for people with nothing
to do with the drugs trade.
Speaker 9 (23:05):
She said, the gorillas almost killed one of her sons.
The gorillas confusing with somebody else, so they wanted killing
someone who knows her. You know, saw what was happening
to him. So the guy warned her and she went
directly to the place where her kid was, and she
said to the gorillas, No, he's my kid, and you
(23:26):
got to respect him. If you want to kill him,
you have to kill me too.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
Rose stood up to the drug gangs and her son survived.
Neither of them had anything to do with the cocaine business.
But that's how close life and death got In made
n in the nineteen nineties. After Escobar's death, his cartail crumbled.
Other gangs stepped in fighting over the cartail's business, and
(23:54):
while Rose's family managed to escape the violence, plenty of
her neighbors went so lucky. For a time, Menin had
a reputation as the murder capital of the world. Life
in the city has gotten safer, Rose says, looking back,
I ask what she thinks about the drug trade.
Speaker 9 (24:17):
She said, I wish would be gone, because you know,
that's definitely only no good for the kids. So she
would lay, never see that again. I run the streets bad.
It's it's impossible as spite of the columbn economy.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
So yeah, Rose and I don't chat for too long
before I leave and make my way back to my hotel,
to the narrow streets of Mediine. But what she says
days with me. What she said is that the cocaine
business isn't just a criminal enterprise. It's bigger than that,
(24:55):
so big that it's part of the Columbian economy, just
like say in the oil industry or mining, huge multinational
industries with power to change the lives of millions, and
in some cases more powerful than individual governments. I'm still
thinking about it months later.
Speaker 6 (25:20):
Do you speak Spanish, Salido.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Which is how I ended up on a video call
to another person who's witnessed the rise of the cocaine
industry in Colombia. This is doctor Luiz Vales. Today he's
a law professor. He actually teaches Jose, who you remember
from earlier in this episode. It was Jose who suggested
we speak.
Speaker 6 (25:44):
And now did you interpew it here in? He's wonderful
a human being.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
And actually, but before taking up his teaching post, doctor
Vealez was a judge who oversaw the state's investigation into
the drug gang that took over the cocaine trade from
the Median cartel. They were called the Cali Hotel.
Speaker 6 (26:03):
And we're talking about Cali cartel is mean conunction.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
And then the Cali Catel took over after Escobar.
Speaker 6 (26:10):
Yeah, yeah, but it was the first time in Colombia
that the Georgiers had bodygardener. I have the bodygarder.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
The judges. He had bodyguards. He tells me he had
a bulletproof vest and a bulletproof car. His family also
had to have protection.
Speaker 6 (26:28):
My daughter, she was one year old and she had
to go to the kindergarten with the bodyguarden.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
Really, this was the big nineteen nineties. The Cali Hotel
spread throughout Colombian society.
Speaker 6 (26:43):
I saw how drugs money corot the Colombian society. The
point is, drugs trafficking becomes a new form of employment
in one of the most an equality country in the world.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
Let me repay that trafficking became a form of employment
in a poor country. But what's driving that economic engine,
according to doctor Valais, is not supply. It's not the
coca plants growing in the jungle. It's demand, and that
demand is coming from those rich countries where people pay
(27:19):
a fortune for cocaine.
Speaker 6 (27:21):
Columbia is the country that has been the highest course
in the war in the by again drugs.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
He says. Colombia is the country that's paid the highest
price of any in the drug war, or at least
it wasn't ntil recently, because like any modern business, the
cocaine trade is always changing, and when the authorities like
doctor Valez cracked down on it here in Colombia.
Speaker 6 (27:52):
It moved.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
And I.
Speaker 6 (27:56):
Think it's a base for this terrible Mexico.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
Doctor Valez is now working as an advisor to the
government of Mexico. Were countless thousands have been murdered by
the drug gangs.
Speaker 6 (28:13):
Mechico is terrible.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
Mexico is terrible, he says. And that's coming from a
man who had a bodyguard for his one year old daughter.
Hearing that, I know that Mexico is where we must
go next.
Speaker 4 (28:29):
The problems between the different cartels, normally they solved that
through killing people, and unfortunately we have lots of corpse
and we have not been able to identify those people
belong to that, and there are lots of clandestine.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
Grapes That's next time on Cocaine Ink.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Cocaine Inc. Is a joint investigation from the Times for
Sunday Times and News Corp Australia. The reporters are David Collins,
Stephen Drill and me Fiona Hamilton. The series is produced
by Sam Chanterassak. They executive producers are Will Rowe and
Dan Box. Audio production and editing is by Jasper Leak,
(29:24):
with original music by Tom Burchell additional recording by Jason
Edwards and If you want to get in touch with
any questions or thoughts on the series, email Cocaine Inc.
At the Times dot co dot uk.
Aldo to persadas, yeah, d two person de canto. And
I remember that when I was singing that song, I
raised my hands and I say to my God, I
forgive the person that did me that. And I say
(00:24):
to my God, forgive them and forgive me, because in
this time I need you so much.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
On the first of December nineteen ninety three, a short, plump,
middle aged man is celebrating his forty fourth birthday inside
a house in his home city, a Meddy in Colombia.
There's cake, good wine, and marijuana. The man has a white,
small and graying hair at the sides. He owns several
(01:03):
palatial homes, has been a congressman, and for the last
seven years running, made the world famous Forbes magazine list
of billionaires. But right now he's in hiding. The next afternoon,
the man sits inside waiting for a boy who's been
(01:25):
sent to fetch lunch from a local restaurant. Outside, hundreds
of police and soldiers quietly surround the building, blocking off
the streets and taking up their positions. At two point
fifty one pm, two of the heavily armed cops from
an elite unit of Columbia's National Police approach knock on
(01:46):
the door, and when no one answers, they smash their
way in. Hearing the noise, the man runs upstairs, climbs
out through a window and jumps onto the roof of
the next door building. Despite his wealth, he's barefoot and
dressed in faded jeans and a blue polo shirt. With
(02:08):
the police now closing in from every side, his money
cannot save him. I'm Fiona Hamilton and from the Times,
The Sunday Times and News Corp Australia. This is Cocaine Inc.
(02:29):
Episode two, The Sweet Song. To understand what led to
the death of Ellie Edwards, which you heard in the
last episode, you need to start here directa in Colombia,
(02:55):
where the cocaine trail begins. It's the world's biggest producer,
where that barefoot man fleeing from police across the rooftop
helped turn the cocaine trade from a local smuggling operation
into a global business. Today we're in Bogata, the capital
(03:15):
of Columbia, in the luxurious National Police Social Club in
the city center. There's tall glass windows, manicured grounds with
palm trees, and inside a small chapel, a swimming pool
and a Bowling Alley. It's where some of the city's
cops come to relax. My colleague, News Corp Australia National
(03:37):
correspondent Steven Drill, is sitting at the bar.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Okay ready to go. My name is Stephen. I'm a
journalist from Australia. Can you please tell me your name
and how old you are?
Speaker 1 (03:57):
My name is Jose Fernando Carbajaldrea and twenty seven years old.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
And do you have children?
Speaker 1 (04:05):
No, I'm single.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Single. I've spent years as a reporter covering cocaine busts
and celebrity cocaine scandals, and I've started to wonder where
does this problem come from and do we even really
understand it? So I managed to convince our bean counters
(04:27):
and a nervous HR department to send me halfway across
the world for this podcast, where one of the first
people I meet is Jose, the former policeman. The first
thing I notice is how young he looks, with a
neat beard, pale shirt and dark suit, and unlike what
(04:48):
you might expect for someone who's worked at the center
of global cocaine production, he has an infectious enthusiasm.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
I work in the Mountaine in the forests in the
eradica of the elicit plants, call it cocaine.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
And with eradication, what do you actually do? Is it
like spraying a chemical or cutting them down?
Speaker 1 (05:11):
I will land square that question. In Spanish, Lacacun des.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Jose says the police used to spray weed killer, only
people criticized the damage it was doing to local farmers
and their crops. The Colombian government banned the practice in
twenty fifteen. There was also a concern the chemicals in
the toxic weed killer would get into waterways and cause cancer.
(05:40):
So now the cops go in and physically pull out
the coca plants by hand. Wiping out the coca plants
is one of the main ways governments around the world
have been trying for decades to shut down the cocaine business.
The basic idea is that by sending in cops to
destroy the coca fine yelds, he reduced the supply of cocaine.
(06:03):
Supply goes down, the price goes up, which means that
customers and maybe that's you on the streets of say
London or Sydney, don't buy cocaine because it's so expensive.
To give you an example, there was a cyclone in
Australia about ten years ago.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
The banana industry is worth four hundred million dollars, but
it's been brought to its knees by cyclone Yasi.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
The banana plantations were wiped out. The price of bananas
went to about thirteen bucks a kilo. That's seven pounds
or close to nine US dollars for a bunch of bananas.
I didn't eat one for a year. It's economics one
on one right, Only there's a cost that doesn't get
accounted for it. To check out.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
La mozerra internaoso almente in La Selba.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Then Wastro pays and the Colombian police was sent to
destroy the coca crops. Jose says it was his job
to go ahead of the other officers with a sniffer dog.
Jose and his dog went alone through the forest to
make sure a path was clear for the rest to follow.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
And one day I stepped on i s plus if
a mane and I lost my legs for that.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
He lost his legs. That landmine was left by a
cocaine cartel to protect its harvest, and whoever set it
packed the bomb with nails and glass. They also put
in dogshit to make sure the wound got infected. I've
seen a lot while reporting on crime, but the evil
(07:46):
intent of that decision is hard to get over. Jose
was left lying on the forest floor.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
It was so bad, and I remember that I look
in the sky and I unsquare to my God, God Why?
And the helicopter arrived. Three miners later.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
His fellow cops rade him out under heavy gun fire
from the cartel how Is I was taken to hospital.
Both his legs were amputated. He lay in a coma
for eighteen days. Finally he opened his eyes.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
I remember that the film that I see was my
younger brother. In that moment, I thought, in my family,
I lost my legs, but in any moment, I lost
my dreams. And I fight for my dreams with effort,
(08:56):
with a smile, because I love my country too, and
I think that I should continue service to my country.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Jose says he's fellow police officers are warriors who fought
all day, every day against the drug gangs, losing limbs,
losing their lives, leaving behind their homes and families. And
it's that human cost that doesn't get accounted for. The checkout.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Yes, when I lose my legs, I arrived at the clinic.
I cried so much, but I take a decision so
important for my life.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Despite the cost he paid in the drug war, Jose
says he's come to terms with what happened to him.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
One day, I wake up so sad, and I remember
that I hear a nurse seeing a hitting music. Christian
music is music a Christian Yeah, and there is a
part of the song that I will sing at the people. Yes,
(10:10):
quando test friend al mar heloscatra Visa Germa s on
brey Confe solo love hell mar Romano Nomo see the
transbiene fa on delo Kanto. And I remember that when
(10:35):
I was singing that song, I raise my hands and
I say to my God, I forgive the person that
did me that. And I say to my God, my God,
forgive them and forgive me because I need you in
this time. I need you so much.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
Jose forgave the cocaine gain who set that landmine. Today
he's living in Bogata studying law. I will be a
selling layer. And somehow he's still managing to smile given
what happened to him. You might have thought Jose would
(11:21):
be pretty down on the practice of cops pulling out
cocaine plants, except he.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Isn't reason by Santa if.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
It's a difficult job, but he says it's important, which
is where we get back to what I was talking
about with the bananas. According to economists, by reducing the
supply of the coca crop, you would think it would
drive up the price of cocaine. Jose says something similar
(11:55):
is when I.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Demanda, I ferda, it's.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
All about supply and demand, except, as I was about
to discover in the cocaine business, it doesn't work like
that at all. We finished talking and head out of
the police social club together, Jose walking slowly on his
prosthetic legs.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
God bleeds you, and never forget that the life will
be better with my with our love, maybe is our
message for you.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Afterwards, I joined up with some of Jose's former colleagues
in the National Police, and together we're traveled by helicopter
deep into the Columbian Mountains. The police are armed with
sixteen rifles as we fly over the thick forest, We
land and climb into heavy duty four by fours, then
(13:07):
drive along muddy tracks, heading deeper into the jungle. We're
about one thousand meters above sea level, but among the
mountains there are plateaus where the local farmers have planted fields.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
We walk.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Among the trees. I see neat fields with row after
row of coca plants, with their flat green leaves and
bright red berries, the source of the global cocaine trade.
They're handpicked by local farmers. Only here there's no farmhouse,
just some ramshackle buildings made from timber and corrugated iron sheets.
(13:52):
Leaving the car behind us, we walk closer and standing
there in silence, when suddenly the forest erupts around heavily.
Police charge forward, but this time it's a training rate
on a mock cocaine production lab, but the noise in
(14:14):
the threat of violence feels real. The men pretending to
be cocaine farmers are forced to lie face down, hands
out stretched in the dirt, and the cops as soon
seizing assault rifles, clearing rooms, pulling their suspects off at gunpoint.
It all happens in seconds. What's left is a stack
(14:35):
of brick sized blocks of white powder cocaine lying in
the jungle sun. Watching the police, I see a lot
of bravery, but not a lot of evidence the strategy
is actually working here in Colombia. As acre after acre
of coca plants are destroyed by the police, the farmers
(14:57):
just go out and plant more. And even if half
the harvests are ruined every year by cops, which is
pretty much what happens, the price paid on the street
for cocaine has actually stayed the same or for one
in real terms, over the past thirty years, which is
where we come back to economics. Economics says that that
(15:19):
shouldn't happen. A supply of reduction shouldn't meant a price fall.
The coca farmers should be able to charge more and
the drug cartels should have to pay it. When I
was trying to understand this, I read something by the
Economist Magazines Central America correspondent Tom Wainwright. Picture this, You're
(15:41):
at the supermarket buying a two letter bottle of milk.
It's pretty cheap. In fact, in real terms, the price
of this bottle of milk has fallen over the past
thirty years. Part of the reason it's cheap is because
the big supermarket chains dominate the market. Think Tesco, Sainsbury's, Coals,
(16:03):
Woolies or wal Mart. Those big supermarket chains account for
a huge amount of the food we eat and the
milk we drink, meaning the dairy farmers have a little
choice over who they sell to. That means the supermarkets
can squeeze their suppliers, telling them they're only prepared to
pay so much, keeping down the cost to the customer
(16:26):
while maintaining their own profits and leaving any increase in
the cost of producing the milk itself to be picked
up by the farmer. And while Western farmers might say
they feel like they're being held at gunpoint, the farmers
in Colombia actually are. Those cartels set the prices. Meaning
(16:46):
the whole strategy of destroying the coca plants, something governments
have spent billions on, doesn't work. You see, the amount
of land used to grow coca plants world wide has
roughly trebled touring the past decade. Production is now at
a record level. The crops do get destroyed, but that
(17:08):
just makes it harder for the farmers. It doesn't affect
the cocaine gains that are shipping and selling the drug.
Looking back at what I've seen so far in Colombia,
(17:29):
it's the sheer violence of a drug trade. That stands
out Jose's injuries from a landmine, the police training for
a raid with both sides armed and submachine guns. Who
created this business model? There's really one place to go
to find the answer. From the mountains, I travel north
to Meda Yane, where Papal Escobar helped build the world's
(17:52):
first major drug cartel during the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 5 (17:57):
The Median Catel group of men that in the last
few years has formed a near monopoly on the processing
and sale of cocaine.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
The Median cuts held changed everything in the cocaine business.
They were the first to industrialize the process, shipping and
flying cocaine bus quantities out of the country.
Speaker 5 (18:17):
According to American officials, controlling as much as eighty percent
of the world's supply.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
With that control came huge profits.
Speaker 6 (18:26):
They're talking about a business that probably makes a couple
of billion dollars a year.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
In nineteen eighty one, Time magazine ran a front page
story calling cocaine the drug of choice for millions. A
few years later, Forms magazine put the Median cartel's leader,
Pablo Escobar in its annual list of billionaires. Cocaine Inc.
Speaker 7 (18:48):
A huge international business run by a relatively small band
of smugglers operating out of Columbia. This cocaine cartel, in
many ways, is as sophisticated as a fortune five hundred
up on.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
It, and it was sophisticated just like any other business.
The carta had to manufacture, transport, market and seal its product.
The people running it also became sophisticated just like other
business leaders. They wore the same expensive watchers, went to
the same expensive parties, and had the same expensive problems
(19:22):
as those running legal businesses, like managing their employees, navigating regulation,
finding reliable suppliers, and dealing with their competitors.
Speaker 8 (19:33):
The forty four year old Escobar was accused of waging
a terror ac campaign. Hundreds of people were killed by
Escobar's assassins.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Looked at this way, cocaine might be the ultimate capitalist product.
The businesses that had the most success selling it are dynamic, innovative, ruthless,
loyal only to the pure, unfettered free market.
Speaker 8 (19:58):
Pablo Escobar had been a fugitive more than a year
and a half after escaping from this prison, where police
say he still ran his cool Keene.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Empire until, of course, it ended.
Speaker 8 (20:14):
An elite Colombian police unit killed Pablo Escobar in a shootout,
cornering him here in this house where he had been
hiding in the city of Medaheene.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Escobar was the barefoot man who tried escaping across the
rooftops that Fiona was talking about at the beginning of
this episode. He'd vowed to go down fighting rather than surrender,
and was true to his word, firing at the police
with a nine millimeter pistol in each hand. They shot back,
(20:44):
hitting him twelve times. Escobar fell dead on the terra
cotta tiles. The police post for photos, smiling holding their
guns over his bloodied body. It looks like a trophy
photo taken by a hunting party.
Speaker 8 (21:02):
Colombian authorities say its message to other drug lords is
to surrender or you will be killed.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
But that message didn't seem to get through. In the
year after Escobar's shooting, his cartail broke up into factions,
and so did the control it had over the cocaine
business in maneem I visit a suburb called Communa thirteen.
(21:29):
It's high in the hills on the outskirts of the city,
but near the main highway. A crucial combination for the
cocaine trade. But while the drug bosses make millions, Communit
thirteen is one of the poorest areas of Columbia. Escobar
ruled it as his personal kingdom. Walking through its narrow
streets to get out of the rain, I duck inside
(21:51):
one of the houses and sit down with a local woman,
a gay. We mean, her name is Rhodes. She doesn't
speak much English and I don't speak much Spanish, so
we talked through a translator. Grat yes for letting us
speak in your home.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Audience.
Speaker 6 (22:11):
Nah, huh, come kill woostom.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
We're in a very small room, about two meters by
three meters. It's the kitchen, the bathroom, the living room,
and the bedroom. Rose actually pulls down a chair off
the bunk bed so we can sit down.
Speaker 9 (22:28):
She said, you know, this is my humble house.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
How long have you lived here for?
Speaker 4 (22:32):
Okay?
Speaker 9 (22:33):
As a quanto it she was fourteen years old when
she arrived here, and now she's speak the name do
you know?
Speaker 3 (22:45):
Okay? And so you were here when the drug lords
and the gorillas were in charge, just to walk out
until she said yes. Rose tells me how Commune thirteen
could be a the place even for people with nothing
to do with the drugs trade.
Speaker 9 (23:05):
She said, the gorillas almost killed one of her sons.
The gorillas confusing with somebody else, so they wanted killing
someone who knows her. You know, saw what was happening
to him. So the guy warned her and she went
directly to the place where her kid was, and she
said to the gorillas, No, he's my kid, and you
(23:26):
got to respect him. If you want to kill him,
you have to kill me too.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
Rose stood up to the drug gangs and her son survived.
Neither of them had anything to do with the cocaine business.
But that's how close life and death got In made
n in the nineteen nineties. After Escobar's death, his cartail crumbled.
Other gangs stepped in fighting over the cartail's business, and
(23:54):
while Rose's family managed to escape the violence, plenty of
her neighbors went so lucky. For a time, Menin had
a reputation as the murder capital of the world. Life
in the city has gotten safer, Rose says, looking back,
I ask what she thinks about the drug trade.
Speaker 9 (24:17):
She said, I wish would be gone, because you know,
that's definitely only no good for the kids. So she
would lay, never see that again. I run the streets bad.
It's it's impossible as spite of the columbn economy.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
So yeah, Rose and I don't chat for too long
before I leave and make my way back to my hotel,
to the narrow streets of Mediine. But what she says
days with me. What she said is that the cocaine
business isn't just a criminal enterprise. It's bigger than that,
(24:55):
so big that it's part of the Columbian economy, just
like say in the oil industry or mining, huge multinational
industries with power to change the lives of millions, and
in some cases more powerful than individual governments. I'm still
thinking about it months later.
Speaker 6 (25:20):
Do you speak Spanish, Salido.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Which is how I ended up on a video call
to another person who's witnessed the rise of the cocaine
industry in Colombia. This is doctor Luiz Vales. Today he's
a law professor. He actually teaches Jose, who you remember
from earlier in this episode. It was Jose who suggested
we speak.
Speaker 6 (25:44):
And now did you interpew it here in? He's wonderful
a human being.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
And actually, but before taking up his teaching post, doctor
Vealez was a judge who oversaw the state's investigation into
the drug gang that took over the cocaine trade from
the Median cartel. They were called the Cali Hotel.
Speaker 6 (26:03):
And we're talking about Cali cartel is mean conunction.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
And then the Cali Catel took over after Escobar.
Speaker 6 (26:10):
Yeah, yeah, but it was the first time in Colombia
that the Georgiers had bodygardener. I have the bodygarder.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
The judges. He had bodyguards. He tells me he had
a bulletproof vest and a bulletproof car. His family also
had to have protection.
Speaker 6 (26:28):
My daughter, she was one year old and she had
to go to the kindergarten with the bodyguarden.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
Really, this was the big nineteen nineties. The Cali Hotel
spread throughout Colombian society.
Speaker 6 (26:43):
I saw how drugs money corot the Colombian society. The
point is, drugs trafficking becomes a new form of employment
in one of the most an equality country in the world.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
Let me repay that trafficking became a form of employment
in a poor country. But what's driving that economic engine,
according to doctor Valais, is not supply. It's not the
coca plants growing in the jungle. It's demand, and that
demand is coming from those rich countries where people pay
(27:19):
a fortune for cocaine.
Speaker 6 (27:21):
Columbia is the country that has been the highest course
in the war in the by again drugs.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
He says. Colombia is the country that's paid the highest
price of any in the drug war, or at least
it wasn't ntil recently, because like any modern business, the
cocaine trade is always changing, and when the authorities like
doctor Valez cracked down on it here in Colombia.
Speaker 6 (27:52):
It moved.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
And I.
Speaker 6 (27:56):
Think it's a base for this terrible Mexico.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
Doctor Valez is now working as an advisor to the
government of Mexico. Were countless thousands have been murdered by
the drug gangs.
Speaker 6 (28:13):
Mechico is terrible.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
Mexico is terrible, he says. And that's coming from a
man who had a bodyguard for his one year old daughter.
Hearing that, I know that Mexico is where we must
go next.
Speaker 4 (28:29):
The problems between the different cartels, normally they solved that
through killing people, and unfortunately we have lots of corpse
and we have not been able to identify those people
belong to that, and there are lots of clandestine.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
Grapes That's next time on Cocaine Ink.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Cocaine Inc. Is a joint investigation from the Times for
Sunday Times and News Corp Australia. The reporters are David Collins,
Stephen Drill and me Fiona Hamilton. The series is produced
by Sam Chanterassak. They executive producers are Will Rowe and
Dan Box. Audio production and editing is by Jasper Leak,
(29:24):
with original music by Tom Burchell additional recording by Jason
Edwards and If you want to get in touch with
any questions or thoughts on the series, email Cocaine Inc.
At the Times dot co dot uk.
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