![]() In essence, through alliances with bureaucratic elites at the regional and national levels, he was able to put elements of the state apparatus at the service of organized crime. As this case study shows, he was able to get authorities in Medellín to not only ignore his criminal activities, but to actively support and promote them. In the end, Berna had army officers, policemen and judges on his criminal payroll. He built relationships not only with the police, but penetrated the Attorney General’s Office, the military and even the presidential palace. His bureaucratic elite contacts also spread. He later spread into the countryside and created a personal army that included thousands of urban militias and rural paramilitaries. With El Patrón dead, Berna was to maneuver himself into the top spot in Medellín’s underworld. The police used Berna for information, which led to captures of key Escobar figures, seizures of properties and the freezing of Escobar’s bank accounts. Berna and his PEPES colleagues used these connections to track Escobar’s family and associates, killing many of them with impunity, isolating El Patrón and pushing many of Escobar’s forces over to their side. And they used this power to influence how Colombia’s government deployed its military, judicial, and political resources.ĭon Berna was to place himself at the heart of this criminal-bureaucratic elite alliance that proved pivotal in the battle against Escobar. The police’s increasing control over resources and the political importance of their battle against El Patrón made them a type of bureaucratic elite. He understood that the police were an implacable enemy but could be a superlative ally. In contrast to Escobar, Berna did not pick a fight with the government, kill police and judges, or kidnap elites. The principal benefactor of the fight against Escobar was Berna himself, the little-known foot soldier of Fernando Galeano, one of the criminal clans of the Medellín Cartel. ![]() Financed by the rival Cali Cartel, fed by intelligence from cartel associates tired of Escobar’s treachery and murder sprees, and protected by the Colombian police, the PEPES were a powerful force that was about to change the criminal landscape of Colombia. The PEPES had decimated the Medellín Cartel with a combination of guile, brutality and strategic alliances, leaving its leader Escobar with just one bodyguard. “There were shots in the air and shouts of ‘Viva Colombia!’ He asked me to leave because the press was coming and it would not be convenient if they saw me there.” 2 “He congratulated us, was happy and in the general euphoria,” Berna wrote. 1Ī few minutes later, the police major leading the search for Escobar arrived and hugged Berna and his brother, Berna said. Pablo was running across the roof when my brother came to the window, took aim and shot him in the head with his 5.56 M-16 rifle. He went to the second floor because there was a small window overlooking the roof to a neighboring house. Pablo did the same, but his movements were slow because he was so overweight. The only man who accompanied him, alias El Limon, shouted: ‘El Patron, they have found us’ and ran out the back door of the residence. El Patron, deep into his phone call, did not hear the noise. They broke down the door with a sledgehammer. In a book written years later, Berna described what happened next: ![]() Don Berna moved to the location with the police along with his brother and 20 of his men. The Search Bloc was waiting and triangulated the call to a small house in the Los Olivos neighborhood of Medellín. On December 2, Escobar made a call to his family, who were by then holed up in a hotel in Bogotá. This is one part of a multipart series concerning elites and organized crime in Colombia. As part of the plan to destroy Escobar, he and the PEPES had teamed up with the Colombian police’s famed Search Bloc. Leading the hunt against him for the PEPES was one-legged former guerrilla and cartel enforcer Diego Murillo Bejarano, alias “Don Berna.” Berna had turned on Escobar after El Patrón killed his boss, Fernando Galeano. Almost all of the senior members of the Medellín Cartel were either in prison, or had gone over to his rivals, a shadowy paramilitary group that called itself People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar (Perseguidos por Pablo Escobar – PEPES). His top assassins were either dead or had turned themselves in. The cocaine king - known as “El Patrón” - was running out of money and options. By the end of 1993, Pablo Escobar was cornered.
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