Speaker 1: Aldo to persadas, yeah, d two person de canto. And
Speaker 1: I remember that when I was singing that song, I
Speaker 1: raised my hands and I say to my God, I
Speaker 1: forgive the person that did me that. And I say
Speaker 1: to my God, forgive them and forgive me, because in
Speaker 1: this time I need you so much.
Speaker 2: On the first of December nineteen ninety three, a short, plump,
Speaker 2: middle aged man is celebrating his forty fourth birthday inside
Speaker 2: a house in his home city, a Meddy in Colombia.
Speaker 2: There's cake, good wine, and marijuana. The man has a white,
Speaker 2: small and graying hair at the sides. He owns several
Speaker 2: palatial homes, has been a congressman, and for the last
Speaker 2: seven years running, made the world famous Forbes magazine list
Speaker 2: of billionaires. But right now he's in hiding. The next afternoon,
Speaker 2: the man sits inside waiting for a boy who's been
Speaker 2: sent to fetch lunch from a local restaurant. Outside, hundreds
Speaker 2: of police and soldiers quietly surround the building, blocking off
Speaker 2: the streets and taking up their positions. At two point
Speaker 2: fifty one pm, two of the heavily armed cops from
Speaker 2: an elite unit of Columbia's National Police approach knock on
Speaker 2: the door, and when no one answers, they smash their
Speaker 2: way in. Hearing the noise, the man runs upstairs, climbs
Speaker 2: out through a window and jumps onto the roof of
Speaker 2: the next door building. Despite his wealth, he's barefoot and
Speaker 2: dressed in faded jeans and a blue polo shirt. With
Speaker 2: the police now closing in from every side, his money
Speaker 2: cannot save him. I'm Fiona Hamilton and from the Times,
Speaker 2: The Sunday Times and News Corp Australia. This is Cocaine Inc.
Speaker 2: Episode two, The Sweet Song. To understand what led to
Speaker 2: the death of Ellie Edwards, which you heard in the
Speaker 2: last episode, you need to start here directa in Colombia,
Speaker 2: where the cocaine trail begins. It's the world's biggest producer,
Speaker 2: where that barefoot man fleeing from police across the rooftop
Speaker 2: helped turn the cocaine trade from a local smuggling operation
Speaker 2: into a global business. Today we're in Bogata, the capital
Speaker 2: of Columbia, in the luxurious National Police Social Club in
Speaker 2: the city center. There's tall glass windows, manicured grounds with
Speaker 2: palm trees, and inside a small chapel, a swimming pool
Speaker 2: and a Bowling Alley. It's where some of the city's
Speaker 2: cops come to relax. My colleague, News Corp Australia National
Speaker 2: correspondent Steven Drill, is sitting at the bar.
Speaker 3: Okay ready to go. My name is Stephen. I'm a
Speaker 3: journalist from Australia. Can you please tell me your name
Speaker 3: and how old you are?
Speaker 1: My name is Jose Fernando Carbajaldrea and twenty seven years old.
Speaker 3: And do you have children?
Speaker 1: No, I'm single.
Speaker 3: Single. I've spent years as a reporter covering cocaine busts
Speaker 3: and celebrity cocaine scandals, and I've started to wonder where
Speaker 3: does this problem come from and do we even really
Speaker 3: understand it? So I managed to convince our bean counters
Speaker 3: and a nervous HR department to send me halfway across
Speaker 3: the world for this podcast, where one of the first
Speaker 3: people I meet is Jose, the former policeman. The first
Speaker 3: thing I notice is how young he looks, with a
Speaker 3: neat beard, pale shirt and dark suit, and unlike what
Speaker 3: you might expect for someone who's worked at the center
Speaker 3: of global cocaine production, he has an infectious enthusiasm.
Speaker 1: I work in the Mountaine in the forests in the
Speaker 1: eradica of the elicit plants, call it cocaine.
Speaker 3: And with eradication, what do you actually do? Is it
Speaker 3: like spraying a chemical or cutting them down?
Speaker 1: I will land square that question. In Spanish, Lacacun des.
Speaker 3: Jose says the police used to spray weed killer, only
Speaker 3: people criticized the damage it was doing to local farmers
Speaker 3: and their crops. The Colombian government banned the practice in
Speaker 3: twenty fifteen. There was also a concern the chemicals in
Speaker 3: the toxic weed killer would get into waterways and cause cancer.
Speaker 3: So now the cops go in and physically pull out
Speaker 3: the coca plants by hand. Wiping out the coca plants
Speaker 3: is one of the main ways governments around the world
Speaker 3: have been trying for decades to shut down the cocaine business.
Speaker 3: The basic idea is that by sending in cops to
Speaker 3: destroy the coca fine yelds, he reduced the supply of cocaine.
Speaker 3: Supply goes down, the price goes up, which means that
Speaker 3: customers and maybe that's you on the streets of say
Speaker 3: London or Sydney, don't buy cocaine because it's so expensive.
Speaker 3: To give you an example, there was a cyclone in
Speaker 3: Australia about ten years ago.
Speaker 4: The banana industry is worth four hundred million dollars, but
Speaker 4: it's been brought to its knees by cyclone Yasi.
Speaker 3: The banana plantations were wiped out. The price of bananas
Speaker 3: went to about thirteen bucks a kilo. That's seven pounds
Speaker 3: or close to nine US dollars for a bunch of bananas.
Speaker 3: I didn't eat one for a year. It's economics one
Speaker 3: on one right, Only there's a cost that doesn't get
Speaker 3: accounted for it. To check out.
Speaker 1: La mozerra internaoso almente in La Selba.
Speaker 3: Then Wastro pays and the Colombian police was sent to
Speaker 3: destroy the coca crops. Jose says it was his job
Speaker 3: to go ahead of the other officers with a sniffer dog.
Speaker 3: Jose and his dog went alone through the forest to
Speaker 3: make sure a path was clear for the rest to follow.
Speaker 1: And one day I stepped on i s plus if
Speaker 1: a mane and I lost my legs for that.
Speaker 3: He lost his legs. That landmine was left by a
Speaker 3: cocaine cartel to protect its harvest, and whoever set it
Speaker 3: packed the bomb with nails and glass. They also put
Speaker 3: in dogshit to make sure the wound got infected. I've
Speaker 3: seen a lot while reporting on crime, but the evil
Speaker 3: intent of that decision is hard to get over. Jose
Speaker 3: was left lying on the forest floor.
Speaker 1: It was so bad, and I remember that I look
Speaker 1: in the sky and I unsquare to my God, God Why?
Speaker 1: And the helicopter arrived. Three miners later.
Speaker 3: His fellow cops rade him out under heavy gun fire
Speaker 3: from the cartel how Is I was taken to hospital.
Speaker 3: Both his legs were amputated. He lay in a coma
Speaker 3: for eighteen days. Finally he opened his eyes.
Speaker 1: I remember that the film that I see was my
Speaker 1: younger brother. In that moment, I thought, in my family,
Speaker 1: I lost my legs, but in any moment, I lost
Speaker 1: my dreams. And I fight for my dreams with effort,
Speaker 1: with a smile, because I love my country too, and
Speaker 1: I think that I should continue service to my country.
Speaker 3: Jose says he's fellow police officers are warriors who fought
Speaker 3: all day, every day against the drug gangs, losing limbs,
Speaker 3: losing their lives, leaving behind their homes and families. And
Speaker 3: it's that human cost that doesn't get accounted for. The checkout.
Speaker 1: Yes, when I lose my legs, I arrived at the clinic.
Speaker 1: I cried so much, but I take a decision so
Speaker 1: important for my life.
Speaker 3: Despite the cost he paid in the drug war, Jose
Speaker 3: says he's come to terms with what happened to him.
Speaker 1: One day, I wake up so sad, and I remember
Speaker 1: that I hear a nurse seeing a hitting music. Christian
Speaker 1: music is music a Christian Yeah, and there is a
Speaker 1: part of the song that I will sing at the people. Yes,
Speaker 1: quando test friend al mar heloscatra Visa Germa s on
Speaker 1: brey Confe solo love hell mar Romano Nomo see the
Speaker 1: transbiene fa on delo Kanto. And I remember that when
Speaker 1: I was singing that song, I raise my hands and
Speaker 1: I say to my God, I forgive the person that
Speaker 1: did me that. And I say to my God, my God,
Speaker 1: forgive them and forgive me because I need you in
Speaker 1: this time. I need you so much.
Speaker 3: Jose forgave the cocaine gain who set that landmine. Today
Speaker 3: he's living in Bogata studying law. I will be a
Speaker 3: selling layer. And somehow he's still managing to smile given
Speaker 3: what happened to him. You might have thought Jose would
Speaker 3: be pretty down on the practice of cops pulling out
Speaker 3: cocaine plants, except he.
Speaker 1: Isn't reason by Santa if.
Speaker 3: It's a difficult job, but he says it's important, which
Speaker 3: is where we get back to what I was talking
Speaker 3: about with the bananas. According to economists, by reducing the
Speaker 3: supply of the coca crop, you would think it would
Speaker 3: drive up the price of cocaine. Jose says something similar
Speaker 3: is when I.
Speaker 1: Demanda, I ferda, it's.
Speaker 3: All about supply and demand, except, as I was about
Speaker 3: to discover in the cocaine business, it doesn't work like
Speaker 3: that at all. We finished talking and head out of
Speaker 3: the police social club together, Jose walking slowly on his
Speaker 3: prosthetic legs.
Speaker 1: God bleeds you, and never forget that the life will
Speaker 1: be better with my with our love, maybe is our
Speaker 1: message for you.
Speaker 3: Afterwards, I joined up with some of Jose's former colleagues
Speaker 3: in the National Police, and together we're traveled by helicopter
Speaker 3: deep into the Columbian Mountains. The police are armed with
Speaker 3: sixteen rifles as we fly over the thick forest, We
Speaker 3: land and climb into heavy duty four by fours, then
Speaker 3: drive along muddy tracks, heading deeper into the jungle. We're
Speaker 3: about one thousand meters above sea level, but among the
Speaker 3: mountains there are plateaus where the local farmers have planted fields.
Speaker 4: We walk.
Speaker 3: Among the trees. I see neat fields with row after
Speaker 3: row of coca plants, with their flat green leaves and
Speaker 3: bright red berries, the source of the global cocaine trade.
Speaker 3: They're handpicked by local farmers. Only here there's no farmhouse,
Speaker 3: just some ramshackle buildings made from timber and corrugated iron sheets.
Speaker 3: Leaving the car behind us, we walk closer and standing
Speaker 3: there in silence, when suddenly the forest erupts around heavily.
Speaker 3: Police charge forward, but this time it's a training rate
Speaker 3: on a mock cocaine production lab, but the noise in
Speaker 3: the threat of violence feels real. The men pretending to
Speaker 3: be cocaine farmers are forced to lie face down, hands
Speaker 3: out stretched in the dirt, and the cops as soon
Speaker 3: seizing assault rifles, clearing rooms, pulling their suspects off at gunpoint.
Speaker 3: It all happens in seconds. What's left is a stack
Speaker 3: of brick sized blocks of white powder cocaine lying in
Speaker 3: the jungle sun. Watching the police, I see a lot
Speaker 3: of bravery, but not a lot of evidence the strategy
Speaker 3: is actually working here in Colombia. As acre after acre
Speaker 3: of coca plants are destroyed by the police, the farmers
Speaker 3: just go out and plant more. And even if half
Speaker 3: the harvests are ruined every year by cops, which is
Speaker 3: pretty much what happens, the price paid on the street
Speaker 3: for cocaine has actually stayed the same or for one
Speaker 3: in real terms, over the past thirty years, which is
Speaker 3: where we come back to economics. Economics says that that
Speaker 3: shouldn't happen. A supply of reduction shouldn't meant a price fall.
Speaker 3: The coca farmers should be able to charge more and
Speaker 3: the drug cartels should have to pay it. When I
Speaker 3: was trying to understand this, I read something by the
Speaker 3: Economist Magazines Central America correspondent Tom Wainwright. Picture this, You're
Speaker 3: at the supermarket buying a two letter bottle of milk.
Speaker 3: It's pretty cheap. In fact, in real terms, the price
Speaker 3: of this bottle of milk has fallen over the past
Speaker 3: thirty years. Part of the reason it's cheap is because
Speaker 3: the big supermarket chains dominate the market. Think Tesco, Sainsbury's, Coals,
Speaker 3: Woolies or wal Mart. Those big supermarket chains account for
Speaker 3: a huge amount of the food we eat and the
Speaker 3: milk we drink, meaning the dairy farmers have a little
Speaker 3: choice over who they sell to. That means the supermarkets
Speaker 3: can squeeze their suppliers, telling them they're only prepared to
Speaker 3: pay so much, keeping down the cost to the customer
Speaker 3: while maintaining their own profits and leaving any increase in
Speaker 3: the cost of producing the milk itself to be picked
Speaker 3: up by the farmer. And while Western farmers might say
Speaker 3: they feel like they're being held at gunpoint, the farmers
Speaker 3: in Colombia actually are. Those cartels set the prices. Meaning
Speaker 3: the whole strategy of destroying the coca plants, something governments
Speaker 3: have spent billions on, doesn't work. You see, the amount
Speaker 3: of land used to grow coca plants world wide has
Speaker 3: roughly trebled touring the past decade. Production is now at
Speaker 3: a record level. The crops do get destroyed, but that
Speaker 3: just makes it harder for the farmers. It doesn't affect
Speaker 3: the cocaine gains that are shipping and selling the drug.
Speaker 3: Looking back at what I've seen so far in Colombia,
Speaker 3: it's the sheer violence of a drug trade. That stands
Speaker 3: out Jose's injuries from a landmine, the police training for
Speaker 3: a raid with both sides armed and submachine guns. Who
Speaker 3: created this business model? There's really one place to go
Speaker 3: to find the answer. From the mountains, I travel north
Speaker 3: to Meda Yane, where Papal Escobar helped build the world's
Speaker 3: first major drug cartel during the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 5: The Median Catel group of men that in the last
Speaker 5: few years has formed a near monopoly on the processing
Speaker 5: and sale of cocaine.
Speaker 3: The Median cuts held changed everything in the cocaine business.
Speaker 3: They were the first to industrialize the process, shipping and
Speaker 3: flying cocaine bus quantities out of the country.
Speaker 5: According to American officials, controlling as much as eighty percent
Speaker 5: of the world's supply.
Speaker 3: With that control came huge profits.
Speaker 6: They're talking about a business that probably makes a couple
Speaker 6: of billion dollars a year.
Speaker 3: In nineteen eighty one, Time magazine ran a front page
Speaker 3: story calling cocaine the drug of choice for millions. A
Speaker 3: few years later, Forms magazine put the Median cartel's leader,
Speaker 3: Pablo Escobar in its annual list of billionaires. Cocaine Inc.
Speaker 7: A huge international business run by a relatively small band
Speaker 7: of smugglers operating out of Columbia. This cocaine cartel, in
Speaker 7: many ways, is as sophisticated as a fortune five hundred
Speaker 7: up on.
Speaker 3: It, and it was sophisticated just like any other business.
Speaker 3: The carta had to manufacture, transport, market and seal its product.
Speaker 3: The people running it also became sophisticated just like other
Speaker 3: business leaders. They wore the same expensive watchers, went to
Speaker 3: the same expensive parties, and had the same expensive problems
Speaker 3: as those running legal businesses, like managing their employees, navigating regulation,
Speaker 3: finding reliable suppliers, and dealing with their competitors.
Speaker 8: The forty four year old Escobar was accused of waging
Speaker 8: a terror ac campaign. Hundreds of people were killed by
Speaker 8: Escobar's assassins.
Speaker 3: Looked at this way, cocaine might be the ultimate capitalist product.
Speaker 3: The businesses that had the most success selling it are dynamic, innovative, ruthless,
Speaker 3: loyal only to the pure, unfettered free market.
Speaker 8: Pablo Escobar had been a fugitive more than a year
Speaker 8: and a half after escaping from this prison, where police
Speaker 8: say he still ran his cool Keene.
Speaker 3: Empire until, of course, it ended.
Speaker 8: An elite Colombian police unit killed Pablo Escobar in a shootout,
Speaker 8: cornering him here in this house where he had been
Speaker 8: hiding in the city of Medaheene.
Speaker 3: Escobar was the barefoot man who tried escaping across the
Speaker 3: rooftops that Fiona was talking about at the beginning of
Speaker 3: this episode. He'd vowed to go down fighting rather than surrender,
Speaker 3: and was true to his word, firing at the police
Speaker 3: with a nine millimeter pistol in each hand. They shot back,
Speaker 3: hitting him twelve times. Escobar fell dead on the terra
Speaker 3: cotta tiles. The police post for photos, smiling holding their
Speaker 3: guns over his bloodied body. It looks like a trophy
Speaker 3: photo taken by a hunting party.
Speaker 8: Colombian authorities say its message to other drug lords is
Speaker 8: to surrender or you will be killed.
Speaker 3: But that message didn't seem to get through. In the
Speaker 3: year after Escobar's shooting, his cartail broke up into factions,
Speaker 3: and so did the control it had over the cocaine
Speaker 3: business in maneem I visit a suburb called Communa thirteen.
Speaker 3: It's high in the hills on the outskirts of the city,
Speaker 3: but near the main highway. A crucial combination for the
Speaker 3: cocaine trade. But while the drug bosses make millions, Communit
Speaker 3: thirteen is one of the poorest areas of Columbia. Escobar
Speaker 3: ruled it as his personal kingdom. Walking through its narrow
Speaker 3: streets to get out of the rain, I duck inside
Speaker 3: one of the houses and sit down with a local woman,
Speaker 3: a gay. We mean, her name is Rhodes. She doesn't
Speaker 3: speak much English and I don't speak much Spanish, so
Speaker 3: we talked through a translator. Grat yes for letting us
Speaker 3: speak in your home.
Speaker 1: Audience.
Speaker 6: Nah, huh, come kill woostom.
Speaker 3: We're in a very small room, about two meters by
Speaker 3: three meters. It's the kitchen, the bathroom, the living room,
Speaker 3: and the bedroom. Rose actually pulls down a chair off
Speaker 3: the bunk bed so we can sit down.
Speaker 9: She said, you know, this is my humble house.
Speaker 3: How long have you lived here for?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 9: As a quanto it she was fourteen years old when
Speaker 9: she arrived here, and now she's speak the name do
Speaker 9: you know?
Speaker 3: Okay? And so you were here when the drug lords
Speaker 3: and the gorillas were in charge, just to walk out
Speaker 3: until she said yes. Rose tells me how Commune thirteen
Speaker 3: could be a the place even for people with nothing
Speaker 3: to do with the drugs trade.
Speaker 9: She said, the gorillas almost killed one of her sons.
Speaker 9: The gorillas confusing with somebody else, so they wanted killing
Speaker 9: someone who knows her. You know, saw what was happening
Speaker 9: to him. So the guy warned her and she went
Speaker 9: directly to the place where her kid was, and she
Speaker 9: said to the gorillas, No, he's my kid, and you
Speaker 9: got to respect him. If you want to kill him,
Speaker 9: you have to kill me too.
Speaker 3: Rose stood up to the drug gangs and her son survived.
Speaker 3: Neither of them had anything to do with the cocaine business.
Speaker 3: But that's how close life and death got In made
Speaker 3: n in the nineteen nineties. After Escobar's death, his cartail crumbled.
Speaker 3: Other gangs stepped in fighting over the cartail's business, and
Speaker 3: while Rose's family managed to escape the violence, plenty of
Speaker 3: her neighbors went so lucky. For a time, Menin had
Speaker 3: a reputation as the murder capital of the world. Life
Speaker 3: in the city has gotten safer, Rose says, looking back,
Speaker 3: I ask what she thinks about the drug trade.
Speaker 9: She said, I wish would be gone, because you know,
Speaker 9: that's definitely only no good for the kids. So she
Speaker 9: would lay, never see that again. I run the streets bad.
Speaker 9: It's it's impossible as spite of the columbn economy.
Speaker 3: So yeah, Rose and I don't chat for too long
Speaker 3: before I leave and make my way back to my hotel,
Speaker 3: to the narrow streets of Mediine. But what she says
Speaker 3: days with me. What she said is that the cocaine
Speaker 3: business isn't just a criminal enterprise. It's bigger than that,
Speaker 3: so big that it's part of the Columbian economy, just
Speaker 3: like say in the oil industry or mining, huge multinational
Speaker 3: industries with power to change the lives of millions, and
Speaker 3: in some cases more powerful than individual governments. I'm still
Speaker 3: thinking about it months later.
Speaker 6: Do you speak Spanish, Salido.
Speaker 3: Which is how I ended up on a video call
Speaker 3: to another person who's witnessed the rise of the cocaine
Speaker 3: industry in Colombia. This is doctor Luiz Vales. Today he's
Speaker 3: a law professor. He actually teaches Jose, who you remember
Speaker 3: from earlier in this episode. It was Jose who suggested
Speaker 3: we speak.
Speaker 6: And now did you interpew it here in? He's wonderful
Speaker 6: a human being.
Speaker 3: And actually, but before taking up his teaching post, doctor
Speaker 3: Vealez was a judge who oversaw the state's investigation into
Speaker 3: the drug gang that took over the cocaine trade from
Speaker 3: the Median cartel. They were called the Cali Hotel.
Speaker 6: And we're talking about Cali cartel is mean conunction.
Speaker 3: And then the Cali Catel took over after Escobar.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, but it was the first time in Colombia
Speaker 6: that the Georgiers had bodygardener. I have the bodygarder.
Speaker 3: The judges. He had bodyguards. He tells me he had
Speaker 3: a bulletproof vest and a bulletproof car. His family also
Speaker 3: had to have protection.
Speaker 6: My daughter, she was one year old and she had
Speaker 6: to go to the kindergarten with the bodyguarden.
Speaker 3: Really, this was the big nineteen nineties. The Cali Hotel
Speaker 3: spread throughout Colombian society.
Speaker 6: I saw how drugs money corot the Colombian society. The
Speaker 6: point is, drugs trafficking becomes a new form of employment
Speaker 6: in one of the most an equality country in the world.
Speaker 3: Let me repay that trafficking became a form of employment
Speaker 3: in a poor country. But what's driving that economic engine,
Speaker 3: according to doctor Valais, is not supply. It's not the
Speaker 3: coca plants growing in the jungle. It's demand, and that
Speaker 3: demand is coming from those rich countries where people pay
Speaker 3: a fortune for cocaine.
Speaker 6: Columbia is the country that has been the highest course
Speaker 6: in the war in the by again drugs.
Speaker 3: He says. Colombia is the country that's paid the highest
Speaker 3: price of any in the drug war, or at least
Speaker 3: it wasn't ntil recently, because like any modern business, the
Speaker 3: cocaine trade is always changing, and when the authorities like
Speaker 3: doctor Valez cracked down on it here in Colombia.
Speaker 6: It moved.
Speaker 3: And I.
Speaker 6: Think it's a base for this terrible Mexico.
Speaker 3: Doctor Valez is now working as an advisor to the
Speaker 3: government of Mexico. Were countless thousands have been murdered by
Speaker 3: the drug gangs.
Speaker 6: Mechico is terrible.
Speaker 3: Mexico is terrible, he says. And that's coming from a
Speaker 3: man who had a bodyguard for his one year old daughter.
Speaker 3: Hearing that, I know that Mexico is where we must
Speaker 3: go next.
Speaker 4: The problems between the different cartels, normally they solved that
Speaker 4: through killing people, and unfortunately we have lots of corpse
Speaker 4: and we have not been able to identify those people
Speaker 4: belong to that, and there are lots of clandestine.
Speaker 3: Grapes That's next time on Cocaine Ink.
Speaker 2: Cocaine Inc. Is a joint investigation from the Times for
Speaker 2: Sunday Times and News Corp Australia. The reporters are David Collins,
Speaker 2: Stephen Drill and me Fiona Hamilton. The series is produced
Speaker 2: by Sam Chanterassak. They executive producers are Will Rowe and
Speaker 2: Dan Box. Audio production and editing is by Jasper Leak,
Speaker 2: with original music by Tom Burchell additional recording by Jason
Speaker 2: Edwards and If you want to get in touch with
Speaker 2: any questions or thoughts on the series, email Cocaine Inc.
Speaker 2: At the Times dot co dot uk.