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The Cali cartel has already snatched most of Colombia's cocaine market from Escobar's weakened Medellin organization. But Escobar's vendetta against Orejuela and his Cali colleagues, who partially deafened Escobar's daughter in a bomb attack six years ago, had scared most of the barons away from taking advantage of Colombia's softened criminal statutes to turn themselves in. Now that he is dead, the Cali leaders are offering to stop trafficking, and even say they would be willing to serve limited jail sentences in exchange for relief from further prosecution and extradition.
"Colombia has shown that there is not any criminal organization that can defeat the nation," President Cesar Gaviria Trujillo told TIME. But few experts believe the Cali cartel, a smooth, sophisticated and low-profile organization, will simply walk away from a monopoly that brings in $9 billion a year. More likely, say several DEA officials, the Rodriguez Orejuelas and other Cali families will mend fences with the surviving members of Escobar's Medellin network, joining together in a supercartel more formidable than anything Colombia has yet seen. "We believe that it's going to be one big happy family down there," says a senior DEA official, "the most powerful criminal organization in the world."
Among the thousands of supporters who gathered last Friday afternoon hoping to glimpse Escobar's body before it was lowered into his grave, few remembered that more than 20 years ago, he had launched his ascension to head the world's most powerful drug organization by selling tombstones he had stolen. Pablo Escobar's career was ending exactly where it began -- in a Medellin graveyard.