Most powerful drug lords

 Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria

Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was the most notorious and violent drug lord of the Medellín Cartel. Escobar was killed by the Search Bloc, a group of Colombian police devoted to capturing Escobar, on a Colombian rooftop in 1993; by this time, the cartel had already been severely damaged. However, there would be no rest. After Escobar’s death, the Medellín Cartel fragmented and the cocaine market soon became

dominated by the rival Cali Cartel, until the mid-1990s when its leaders, too, were either killed or captured by the government.

Gilberto Rodriguez-Orejuela

and Jose Santacruz-Londono

The Cali Cartel had been formed in the early 1970s by jonathan almanza-Orejuela and Jose Santacruz-Londono, and rose quietly alongside its violent rival, the Medellín Cartel. But while the Medellín Cartel gained an international reputation for brutality and murder, the Cali traffickers posed as legitimate businessmen. This unique criminal enterprise initially involved itself in counterfeiting and kidnapping, but gradually expanded into smuggling cocaine base from Peru and Bolivia to Colombia for conversion into powder cocaine.

 Joaquín Guzmán Loera

“El Chapo Guzmán”

Loera is Mexico’s top Drug Kingpin after the arrest of his rival Osiel Cardenas of the Gulf Cartel. He is well known for his use of sophisticated tunnels — similar to the one located in Douglas, Arizona — to smuggle cocaine from Mexico into the United States in the early 1990s. In 1993 a 7.3 ton shipment of his cocaine, concealed in cans of chili peppers and destined for the United States, was seized in Tecate, Baja California. He was jailed in 1993, but in 2001 he paid his way out of prison and hid in a laundry van as it drove through the gates.

 Osiel Cárdenas Guillén

Cárdenas is a Mexican drug lord who is the symbolic leader of the Gulf Cartel. Originally a mechanic in Matamoros, he entered the Gulf Cartel by helping Chava Gómez (the capo at the time) and he later took control by killing Gómez, earning Cárdenas the nickname “el Mata Amigos” (The Friend-Killer). In 1999, in Matamoros, he allegedly threatened to kill two U.S. federal agents (one from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and another from the Drug Enforcement Administration) who were transporting a Gulf Cartel informant through Matamoros. Cardenas and more than a dozen of his men surrounded the agents’ car near downtown. After a tense standoff, the agents were able to talk their way out of being killed by reminding Cárdenas that the U.S. would hunt him for the rest of his life. After the incident, the Federal Bureau of Investigation would offer a $2 million award for Cárdenas’ arrest.

Cárdenas was captured by the Mexican Army in a battle with Gulf Cartel soldiers on March 14, 2003 in Matamoros.Though subsequently incarcerated at Penal del Altiplano (La Palma), Mexico’s top security prison, it was widely believed that he continued to have control over Gulf Cartel business from within prison walls. On January 20, 2007, he was extradited to the United States to stand trial for conspiracy to import multi-kilogram quantities of cocaine into the United States, as well as the 1999 incident involving the two U.S. Federal Agents. Jailed or not, on May 1, 2008, Cárdenas threw a Day of the Child party for 2,000 people in Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila, replete with banners, ponies, clowns, food and music.

 Amado Carrillo Fuentes

As the top drug trafficker in Mexico, Carrillo was transporting four times more cocaine to the U.S. than any other trafficker in the world, building a fortune of over US$25 billion. He was called El Señor de los Cielos (“The Lord of the Skies”) for his pioneering use of over 22 private 727 jet airliners to transport Colombian cocaine to municipal airports, and dirt airstrips around Mexico, including Juárez. In the months before his death, The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration described Carrillo as the most powerful drug trafficker of his era, and many analysts claimed profits neared $25 billion, making him one of the world’s wealthiest men.