“Plata o plomo”: Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela will ultimately neither die under the bullets nor in the middle of his money. The ex-drug lord, who has long been considered one of the greatest drug dealers of the world after the death of Pablo Escobardied at age 83 in a US prison.
“We mourn the death of Gilberto last night,” his lawyer David Oscar Markus confirmed in an email on Wednesday that did not specify the cause of death. Until his capture in 1995, Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela, nicknamed “the Chess Player”, led the powerful Cali cartel in Colombia with his brother Miguel, 78, also incarcerated in a prison in the United States.
A cartel dismantled in the mid-1990s
His rival organization the Medellin Cartel, led by Pablo Escobar, took over the white powder market after the death of the charismatic “King of the cocaine shot by local police in 1993. According to US authorities, the Cali cartel controlled up to 80% of cocaine trafficking to the United States at its peak. It was dismantled in the mid-1990s.
Sentenced to 15 years in prison in 1995 in Colombia, Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela was released after seven years in detention. Arrested again in 2003, he was imprisoned in Colombia until his extradition to the UNITED STATES in December 2004. He was sentenced with his brother to 30 years in prison each for importing 200 tons of cocaine into the United States. The two brothers finally achieved planetary fame with the series Narcos of Netflixwhich notably featured their rivalry with Pablo Escobar.
A preference for bribes
Gilberto and his brother had made a place for themselves among the economic and political elites in Colombia. Unlike Pablo Escobar, who offered a reward for every policeman killed, the Cali Cartel brothers preferred bribes. The Rodríguez family also controlled America de Cali, the football club with the most victories at the time, as well as horse-breeding businesses and beauty queen contests.
In the last years of his life, “the chess player”, from a modest family, who had started life on his bike as a home delivery man, was seriously ill. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer and colon cancer. He also suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. His family had unsuccessfully tried several remedies so that the drug trafficker could spend his last days in Colombia.