Plan Colombia

This chapter begins with the American and Colombian anti-drug officials that celebrated Pablo Escobar's “decapitation,” as proof that the kingpin strategy was on its way to eradicating cocaine trafficking in Colombia. It mentions that Medellín's drug bosses met to discuss in the neighborhood of Envigado after Escobar's death, from which emerged the so-called Envigado Office lead by Don Berna. It also describes Don Berna as a formidable Medellín drug trafficker and a former member of the Marxist Popular Liberation Army. The chapter refers to the Cali cartel, an association of four billionaires who managed a worldwide cocaine monopoly, controlling everything from production in Peru and Colombia to sales in the suburbs and cities in the United States and around the globe. It emphasizes how the “decapitations” of the Medellín and Cali cartel's atomized cocaine production and trafficking into smaller entities that were much harder to track and interdict, proving that the kingpin strategy was working.