in 1975 new york city police picked up a
small-time colombian jeweler on charges
of selling a trivial amount of colombian
snow but they were told to release him
those cops never could imagine that this
small-time dealer would become the
founder of one of the biggest coke
trafficking cartels he would bring the
empire of pablo escobar down and survive
multiple assassination attempts he would
also build one of the most luxurious
buildings in colombia and would be the
reason a business would illegally
generate eight billion dollars worth of
narcotics per year
welcome to nutty history and today let's
find out the untold truth behind the
rise and fall of the narco pacho herrera
there was a time when the cali cartel
controlled 80 percent of the world snow
tree and it all became possible because
of the man named elma herrera
endearingly called fatcho by his peers
now despite his sexual orientation which
was a big deal in the orthodox and
traditional christian state of colombia
pacho was accepted and nurtured by other
founders of the cali cartel namely the
aurelia rodriguez brothers without him
the cali cartel would have never
succeeded to find sellers of their
product in america and likewise later in
europe believe it or not error would
have never been this successful if not
for little handout by the dea itself
yep the drug enforcement administration
of the established unitos that was
supposed to monitor and prevent drug
trafficking is granted the credit of
promoting the snow trade during the 70s
and 80s somewhere around the early 1970s
the united states drug enforcement
administration openly announced that
they were not very keen on shutting down
snow trafficking they said they would
rather invest their time and resources
towards heroin as the dea considered
this drug much more destructive and
threatening for american society than
colombian snow back then
maybe the reasoning behind it was that
heroin and opium were being produced at
traffic by communist countries like
china myanmar and vietnam
however if you would like to know more
about the opium narcos we would suggest
watching our video about kunsan after
finishing this video the link is in the
description below
but let's get back to the dea and their
poor early assessment of narcotics the
dea was so serious about shooting down
any potential threat of colombian snow
that they openly declared the drug was
not physically addictive and it does not
cause serious consequences nor did it
encourage crimes the moment the dea
struck off snow from their priority list
the orwella rodriguez brothers knew that
this was their best opportunity to raid
the american markets and make as much
fortune as possible
the treasure room was wide open and the
guards were looking away but to get to
the treasure room they needed a man who
knew the palace like the back of his
hand enter elma herrera aka pacho pacho
returned to colombia in 1983 and was
soon roped in by the orwella rodriguez
brothers and their union came to be
known as the cali cartel
facho was able to optimize the cartel's
resources and with his connections back
in the usa he was soon overseeing the
trafficking of huge amounts of colombian
snow soon the cali cartel needed someone
capable of managing nearly a dozen
american cities for them and pacho felt
he was a perfect choice
bacho established his first formal
distribution center in his old city new
york and from there he created a network
of supply chains or cells
the trick was to camouflage the network
and have cells appear to be working
independently this helped to outfox the
dea from finding the bigger picture and
the takedown of one cell didn't result
in disruption of the entire system all
these cells were connected by the
network through one person called the
selano or cell manager who would report
to jorge alberto rodriguez rodriguez in
turn was responsible for reporting back
to the overlords at the cali cartel in
colombia the structure was soon
formalized into something called the 400
cartel which quickly went on to oversee
all shipments and distributions of
narcotics across the united states
it's this unique structure that sets the
cali cartel apart from pablo escobar's
medellin cartel and it all came about
thanks to the choices made by the u.s
administration the cali cartel made its
fortunes with this opportunity and soon
they began diversifying to hide their
exponentially growing wealth from the
eyes of the law they began to invest
heavily in a complex web of legitimate
business ventures and phony front
properties gilberto orwello rodriguez
infiltrated the banking industry of
colombia and created a safe corridor for
the cali cartel to launder their money
facio herrera diversified his
investments too but nothing public like
his partners he went deep in the remote
jungles of peru and bolivia to establish
processing sites where workers readied
the colombian snow and pacho then sold
it out in the united states pacho had
become the main member of the cali
cartel by now as far as snow was
concerned he was their ceo snow as the
cali cartel became owners of banks
football clubs and hotels
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in the late 1980s when both the medellin
and cali cartel were at the peak of
their power a small time coke dealer
shot another on the streets of new york
over a woman
it wasn't just murder it was a
full-scale shootout between these two
gangsters that cost the lives of many
civilians the surviving gangster
belonged to the cali cartel and the man
that he had killed was one of pablo
escobar cicadas this man knew that pablo
would hunt him down to the seventh level
of hell and he had no place to hide but
to ask pacho to negotiate for his life
any way possible
when news of the shootout reached pablo
escobar a bounty was declared on the
head of the cali cartel shooter
soon the word of him being under the
protection of pacho herrera got to pablo
and he demanded the man to be delivered
in good faith between the two cartels
however to pablo escobar's shock pacho
refused there was no end to pablo
escobar's fury who was already infamous
for his short fuse and he declared war
on the entire cali cartel
citing that he would kill every one of
cali sons of witches only he didn't say
witches and pablo's war in a sense was
justified from his point of view because
the cali cartel had taken over all of
the medellin cartels routes in new york
with the tensions at an all-time high
between the two cartels pablo escobar
fearing for his family moved them to an
unregistered building that he had built
for this very kind of rainy day but in
1988 after a number of attacks from
pablo escobar on the cali cartel's
operations an explosion destroyed the
apartment building in which pablo
escobar's family was hiding
fortunately pablo's family survived
unfortunately many other innocent people
lost their homes and loved ones
enraged pablo escobar suspected it to be
retaliation from the cali cartel and he
blamed pacho herrera for it by 1990 the
cali and medellin cartels were in the
middle of an all-out war
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in netflix's narcos actor alberto aman
who played pacho herrera is quite tall
but in real life pacho was a stout man
roughly reaching five feet seven inches
but one thing the famous show got right
was the impeccable dressing sense of the
gangster born in palmita on august 24th
1951 it was rumored that he was the
unrecognized son of benjamin herrera
zuleta the black pope of coke who
started the trafficking business in
vayaterkoka despite such a big name
floating around the truth was that pacho
was born into a humble family always an
ambitious kid faucio's first taste of
crime was to traffic emeralds and jewels
pacho immigrated to new york at the mere
age of 22 and he worked many small-time
jobs while posing as a jeweler and a
mechanic and sometimes he sold coke as
well
pacho may have been the charismatic
creator of cali cartel's network but he
preferred to do it behind the curtain
for a long time pacho kept a very low
profile he was never interviewed and
frankly nobody outside cartels knew
about his existence as his name was
almost never mentioned with that of the
other leaders of the cali cartel
a photo album consisting of several
pictures of pacho showed how he made
several subtle adjustments to his
appearance over the years to deceive
people that were hunting him but in 1990
with pablo escobar's reply to the cali
cartel's alleged attempt of blowing up
pablo's family facho became a known name
in every household from colombia to the
united states
on september 25th 20 gunmen dressed in
military and police attire opened fire
on a section of spectators during a
soccer game
pacho was sitting in the crowd but he
escaped unscathed while 18 people were
killed
pablo escobar tried to kill pacho many
times but by the stroke of luck or by
pacho's own cunning he survived again
and again
another recorded instance on his life
involved hooded gunmen wearing pink
bracelets shot at the people in a summer
resort killing 17 and hurting 13 others
but once again pacho dot death cleanly
the war between the cartels shed blood
on both sides and more innocent people
were killed but pacho herrera took a
back role and he left the fighting to
the orwella rodriguez brothers but then
again pacho was never a gun-toting
maniac like pablo he was a shrewd
strategist it was believed that he was
the biggest beneficiary of los pepes a
vigilante group that weighed small-scale
wars against the medellin cartel during
the early 1990s until the death of pablo
escobar 1993 in which they played a
significant part
the medellin cartel was in shambles
after pablo escobar's death
with no competition left to challenge
the cali cartel swooped in to take over
and fill whatever gaps were created in
the market
the cali cartel was now supplying 80 of
the total coke stock in the world and
pulling in 8 billion dollars a year
facho was the youngest of the four
founders of the county cartel and much
of this success happened because of his
blood and sweat
in his free time he would play soccer
and his passion for the sport was
intense enough that he built
professional quality feels with stadium
lighting for his own personal use
until the hunt began for pacho he was
living a lavish kingpin lifestyle in his
penthouse he could monitor close circuit
televisions and see who was coming in
and going out from his private 14-story
office and residential tower while
soaking in a bathtub
he had over 70 cars including a
bulletproof mazda equipped with louvers
to allow his bodyguards to fire machine
pistols at pursuers
when the dea began a massive manhunt for
the top brass of the cali cartel pacho
was the last one to be arrested in fact
pacho himself surrendered to colombian
law when he found the opportunity to
squeeze a good deal for himself
however that deal meant nothing as in
prison during a break in a soccer game
pacha was shot multiple times in the
head and in the stomach the shooter
approached him posing as a lawyer and
his exact motives still remain uncertain
but it's safe to say that pacho herrera
must have had plenty of enemies in his
time as a drug lord
tell us in the comments who you think
could have ordered a hit on pacho also
do let us know which narcos we should
cover next and as always thanks for
watching nutty history
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