Why Gustavo Gaviria May Have Been The Real Brains Behind The Medellín Cartel

The cousin of Pablo Escobar, Gustavo de Jesús Gaviria Rivero was the financial head of the Medellín Cartel in the 1970s and ‘80s.

Ever since Pablo Escobar’s death in 1993, the Colombian drug lord has inspired TV shows like Narcos, movies like Paradise Lost, and books like Kings of Cocaine. But while Escobar was the kingpin of the Medellín Cartel, his cousin Gustavo Gaviria was arguably the real mastermind.

“[Gaviria] we really wanted to take alive because he was the true brains,” said Scott Murphy, a former DEA officer who investigated the Medellín Cartel in its final years. “He knew all about the labs, where to get the chemicals, the transportation routes, [and] the distribution hubs throughout the United States and Europe.”

From 1976 to 1993, the Medellín Cartel ruled the cocaine business. And Pablo Escobar attracted plenty of attention as the main “boss” of the operation. But behind the scenes, Gaviria reportedly oversaw the financial side of the empire — at a time when the cartel could pull in $4 billion per year.

So who was Gustavo Gaviria, the shadowy figure behind Pablo Escobar’s success?

Gustavo de Jesús Gaviria Rivero was born on December 25, 1946. Almost exactly three years later, his cousin Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was born on December 1, 1949.

The boys grew up close in the Colombian town of Envigado. According to Mark Bowden, author of Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw, both Gustavo Gaviria and Pablo Escobar had well-educated parents and were solidly middle-class — which made their decision to leave school and pursue a life of crime “deliberate and kind of surprising.”

“Pablo began his criminal career as a petty thug in Medellín,” explained Bowden. “He and Gustavo were partners in a number of petty enterprises.”

Escobar’s son, Sebastián Marroquín, recalled that Gustavo Gaviria and Pablo Escobar were “always looking to do some business or pull off a crime to get some extra money.”

The cousins stole tires and cars and robbed cinema box offices. They even stole headstones from graveyards and held them for ransom. Eventually, they graduated from kidnapping gravestones to kidnapping living people — in one case, an industrialist whom they held for ransom.

The cousins’ criminal habits didn’t go unnoticed. In the 1970s, both Gustavo Gaviria and Pablo Escobar were arrested.

Everything changed after that arrest. The cousins turned toward a bigger prize than what they could fetch by ransoming tombstones — cocaine.

After their arrest, “[Escobar and Gaviria] essentially built everything together,” noted Douglas Farah, who covered Colombia as a journalist toward the end of Escobar’s reign.

Everything they had done up to that point would pale in comparison.

By the 1980s, demand for cocaine in the United States had skyrocketed. In Colombia, Gustavo Gaviria and Pablo Escobar were prepared to meet it.

Escobar had already sensed an opportunity in the early 1970s, when the cocaine market moved north from Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. He began smuggling coca paste into Colombia, where he had it refined, then sent north with “mules” to be sold in the United States.

When the ’80s hit — the era of discotheques and Wall Street binges — Escobar, Gaviria, and their Medellín Cartel were ready.

Escobar was the undisputed leader of the operation. But Gaviria handled the finances and exportation of cocaine behind the scenes. Pablo Escobar’s cousin was the “brains of the cartel,” according to former DEA officer Javier Peña, who tracked Escobar from 1988 until the drug lord’s death in 1993.

The cousins had different strengths, which they utilized in different ways. Gustavo Duncan Cruz, a political science professor at EAFIT University in Medellín, explained that Pablo Escobar focused on the violence of the cocaine trade. His charisma helped inspire his army of sicarios or hitmen. Anyone who disobeyed Escobar’s orders was intimidated by violence.

Gaviria handled a different side of things. “Gustavo was more specialized in business,” Cruz said. “Illegal business, of course.”