Word: medellin
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...political economy of the drug trade. Says Adam Isaacson, a Colombia analyst at the Washington-based Center for International Policy: "Don Mario had important control over cocaine production and drug trafficking routes, and now they're all up for grabs." (See pictures from the narco underworld in Medellin and beyond...
...after a 2003 accord with the government of President Alvaro Uribe. Those groups had been accused of a variety of crimes, including torture, land-theft and massacre But Don Mario refused to go through with the demobilization agreement, became a fugitive and continued running his drug-trafficking operation. Now Medellin is bracing for the struggle to determine his successor. What follows will be business as usual. "One capo goes down, another takes his place," says an ex-intelligence official...
Experts expect Don Mario's arrest to lead to violence between gangs in the hillsides ringing Medellin. An ex-intelligence official also predicts deadly infighting in the capo's traditional bastions of power, such as the regions of Cordoba, Uraba and Choco. "We will see a war," says the former official. "There are more than 1,000 men guarding a whole lot of money." (Should a drug lord be one of the TIME 100? Vote for the most influential people in the world...
Once one of the cocaine trafficking capitals of the world, Medellin experienced a rare few years of respite and calm after 2003, when thousands of narco-financed paramilitary groups started putting down their arms in exchange for amnesty or reduced sentences. At the same time, however, many observers attribute the reduced levels of violence to the control that another drug lord and paramilitary leader, Diego Fernando Murillo Bejarano, alias "Don Berna," held over the city, suppressing uprisings from other drug gangs. But in May 2008, Don Berna was arrested and extradited to the U.S. and Don Mario sought control over...
...drug leaders often only leads to more violence. When narcotrafficker Wilber Verela, alias "Jabon," was murdered in Venezuela in 2008, seven allegedly related deaths followed the next week in Bogota, intelligence sources said. And after the April 1 arrest of Fabio Edison Gomez, alias "Rinon," the leader of Medellin's main crime organization, 33 people were killed in a week, according to the city's police. The renewed upsurge in violence led to the government dispatching some 500 soldiers and 6,800 police to poor neighborhoods in the city. But major crackdowns do not seem to hamper the drug trade...