Rodríguez Gacha based much of his operations from Bogotá and other areas in the Cundinamarca region, as well as in the Middle Magdalena region. 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 Medellín Cartel). Īccording to the US Justice Department, Rodríguez directed cocaine trafficking operations through Panama and the West Coast ( California) of the United States. He owned a string of farms in his hometown in the locality of Pacho with Mexican inspired names such as Cuernavaca, Chihuahua, Sonora and Mazatlán. This, coupled with his infatuation with Mexican popular culture, music, and horse culture, and his fondness for foul language, earned him the nickname El Mexicano (the Mexican). He is often said to have been the first to establish cooperation strategies with drug trafficking cartels in Mexico. During the late 1970s, Rodríguez advanced in the organizational hierarchy, pioneering new trafficking routes through Mexico and into the United States, primarily Los Angeles, California and Houston, Texas. The traffickers cooperated in the manufacturing, distribution and marketing of cocaine. After moving to Medellín in 1976, Rodríguez Gacha associated with the Ochoa family, Pablo Escobar, and Carlos Lehder in establishing an alliance that eventually strengthened into what would become known as the Medellín Cartel. Rise of the Medellín Cartel Īs he started to prosper in the drug trafficking business, Rodríguez Gacha started to buy larger amounts of land in the Middle Magdalena region in the valley bordering the departments of Antioquia, Boyacá, and Santander. Rivera introduced him to Pablo Escobar and to Mexican drug lord, Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo. He moved to Bogotá and became associated up with Verónica Rivera de Vargas, a pioneering drug trafficker who was known as the "queen of cocaine," by murdering the family of her main rival.
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At some point, Rodríguez Gacha decided that the drug business was more profitable and became independent.
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As he started to go up in the ranks among Molina's men, he also became acquainted with drug traffickers. There he began to work under Gilberto Molina Moreno, who at the time was called the "tsar" of emeralds in Boyacá, as part of his security, developing a fearsome reputation as a killer. He left school in the early 1970s and moved to Muzo, Boyacá, the center of the emerald exploitation in Colombia. He came from a poor family of modest pig farmers, and it is said that his formal education did not extend beyond grade school. José Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha was born in May 1947 in the small town of Veraguas, near Pacho in the department of Cundinamarca. 5 Government crackdown and narcoterrorism.