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 throughout the 1970s and 1980s in Bolivia, Colombia, Central America, Peru, and the United States, as well as in Canada and Europe. It was founded and run by Ochoa Vázquez brothers Jorge Luis, Juan David, and Fabio, together with Pablo Escobar, George Jung, Carlos Lehder and José Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha. By 1993, the 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 dismantled the Medellín Cartel by imprisoning or assassinating its members.