Colombia: The Cali Connection

Abstract

For the last two decades drug trafficking has been the fastest growth industry in Latin America. Despite the billions of dollars spent in controlling it, and thousands of lives lost, results have been poor and counter‐productive. Hitherto, drug enforcement policies have been flawed by a ‘quick‐fix’ mentality, riddled with contradictions, which chose to ignore the fact that the problem involves consumption not just production, and touches on international banking activities and multinational commerce. The Colombian Cali cartel, reputed to own 80 per cent of the world's cocaine supply, has manipulated the situation to such an extent that even the recent arrest of its head, Gilberto Ore‐juela, ‘The Chess Player’, will do little to topple its stranglehold on the market. The rise of the Cali cartel and subsequent spread of narcoviolence to the USA, may now force the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to reconsider its pre‐war policies in favour of the Colombian Government's increasingly pragmatic strategy. If the USA does not take heed it may yet suffer the fate forecast by Gabriel Garcia Marques for Colombia. ‘We will rot alive in a war that cannot be won and the rest of the world will rot with us.’

Citation

Sarker, R. (1996), "Colombia: The Cali Connection", Journal of Financial Crime, Vol. 3 No. 3, pp. 303-306. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb025728