Narco Wars (2020) s01e10 Episode Script

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(man speaking Spanish)
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(speaking Spanish)
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MAN: Shake this square world
and blast off for Kicksville.
RICHARD NIXON: Public enemy
number one is drug abuse.
NANCY REAGAN: Just say no.
RONALD REAGAN: Halting
the drug problem in America
is like carrying
water in a sieve.
GEORGE H.W. BUSH: Take my word
for it, this scourge will stop!
KAMALA HARRIS:
There's now an understanding
that the war on drugs
was an abject failure.
MAN: You have to stop and ask
yourself, how did we get here?
DONALD TRUMP:
We will build a wall.
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(gunfire)
(explosion)
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(explosions)
(gunfire)
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REPORTER:
The Armed Revolutionary
Forces of Colombia,
known as the FARC,
is the most powerful
guerrilla group in the country.
They control the areas
where large amounts
of the world's cocaine
is produced.
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REPORTER: They are known
as paramilitaries.
They celebrate a legend
of heroic defiance
against the kidnappers.
The mission is to achieve
what the army cannot:
defeat the guerrillas.
(gunfire)
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(siren)
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REPORTER: 12 died and more than
200 passersby were injured
in this recent explosion.
Another outrage was to follow,
this time there was no mistaking
the culprit's identity.
They'd left their signature
at the scene.
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REPORTER: Pablo Escobar couldn't
stay out of the public eye,
and that's what killed him.
He died in a hail of bullets
as he tried to get away
across a roof.
CHRIS FEISTL: In December 1993,
after Pablo Escobar is killed,
there is a power vacuum.
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(helicopter)
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(shouts orders)
JEREMY McDERMOTT:
The FARC embraced drugs
and used them to fund
the revolutionary struggle
and the growth of the FARC,
and the growth of coca crops
in Colombia is a parallel line.
Wherever the coca is,
you tend to find the FARC.
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(gunfire)
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(speaking Spanish)
(speaking Spanish)
McDERMOTT: Carlos is the public
face, extremely charismatic.
(siren)
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McDERMOTT:
He wasn't from Medellín.
He was actually from Tuluá
on the Pacific coast.
It is rumored that
he was, for a short time,
a left-wing guerrilla.
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He is what we call
a "lavaperro,"
which is like the lowest rung
in the criminal structure.
It literally means a dog washer.
And he proves his worth
very quickly.
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The guerrillas try and
muscle in on the cartel.
Berna says,
"Let me take care of this,"
and there is a series
of bloody shootouts
in which Berna takes anything up
to 11 bullets and loses his leg.
But they win.
Berna's not
the most handsome man.
He was a lot less handsome
after he lost his leg
and took a bullet through the
cheek and various other things.
This does not hamper
his criminal career at all.
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FRANCISCO SANTOS CALDERÓN:
Pablo Escobar not only
was a drug trafficker,
but he was also
an entrepreneur of violence.
And he created
different groups, gangs.
When he dies, there's a vacuum,
and many of those gangs
are left with who controls it.
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McDERMOTT: Don Berna learnt
a key lesson from Escobar,
which is never become visible;
remain in the shadows.
STEVEN COHEN: He arguably
becomes more powerful
than Pablo Escobar ever was.
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McDERMOTT: And the message
is clear: We're coming.
(boom)
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(rooster crows)
REPORTER: People living
in Mapiripán were suspected
of helping the FARC, providing
them with food and shelter.
REPORTER:
As the paramilitaries entered,
they marked the town
as their territory.
REPORTER: Villagers were
taken from their homes.
The killing began
in the main street.
REPORTER: Three villagers
were publicly executed,
beheaded with chainsaws.
Many more perished.
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None of the dead wore uniforms
or carried guns.
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(gunfire)
SOLDIERS: ¡Uno, dos, tres!
McDERMOTT: The cocaine trade hid
in Colombia's civil conflict.
And suddenly
we have a right-wing
anti-subversive paramilitarism
which is welcomed in
so many parts of Colombia
against the guerrillas who were
kidnapping and extorting.
But this is just
the new Medellín Cartel.
But it's cleverer.
It's got a political façade,
it's militarized.
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(guns cocking)
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(gunfire)
(knocking)
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(siren)
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MAN: Stop?
MAN: Yeah.
MAN: Okay.
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JEREMY SALAMEH:
The Oficina de Envigado
was originally established
to mediate,
to collect money that was owed.
And it was almost like
an internal affairs
operation of sorts.
Don Berna made it clear,
"I'm taking this over,
and if there's any pushback,
you're gonna have
to deal with it."
McDERMOTT: And he turns
this vehicle into his bid
to take control of Medellín.
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And he begins to scoop up a lot
of the criminal infrastructure
and set up these debt-collecting
agencies, or oficinas,
all around Medellín,
and they all answer to him.
COHEN: He understands
that his rise to power
and his own control of power
depends on his good standing
with the security state
and with politicians.
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SALAMEH:
Corruption at all levels
was going through the roof.
He would do things that
would help the authorities,
and sometimes the authorities
would do things to help him.
They did operations
together sometimes.
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(popping and crackling)
(crowd oohs)
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SALAMEH: So nothing really
occurred unless Don Berna
or his higher infrastructure
approved it.
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People often refer
to homeless people
or these homeless children
and so forth,
they call them "desechables,"
like the throw-aways.
And somebody's considered a
desechable, a disposable person,
doesn't mean you can
go out and kill them,
but that's what they did,
they cleaned up the streets.
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And there was a scourge
of those kind of folks,
people disappeared, people got
killed, people got displaced.
They cleaned up the city,
and I think there was some sense
that at certain levels
In other words, it was accepted
because of the outcome.
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McDERMOTT: Berna sees what
the paramilitaries are doing,
and he goes, "This is
an extraordinary business model,
I want in."
(gun cocks)
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McDERMOTT: So, there's
lots of problems
within the paramilitary army.
If someone loses a load
or someone sleeps with
someone else's wife,
normally in the drug trafficking
world, there's violence.
Berna says,
"No, we can sort this out."
He's not always successful,
but what he does is
he begins to put discipline
on the paramilitary movement.
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(speaking Spanish)
McDERMOTT:
Vicente's got a stutter,
not remotely charismatic, but
super able at the business side.
And they turn
the paramilitary army,
and this need to
counteract the advance
of the Marxist guerrillas,
into a nationwide
criminal network,
a VIP club for drug traffickers.
And people begin to realize
this is just the most powerful
drug cartel there is;
dwarfs the power of
the Medellín Cartel.
And at that stage
the paramilitaries
are the most powerful criminal
syndicate on the planet.
VICENTE CASTAÑO: Muchas gracias.
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(gunfire)
COHEN: And there really is
a fear in Colombian society
and also at
high levels of government
that the FARC are actually gonna
manage to take over the country.
(gunfire)
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CALDERÓN:
The main road to Medellín
sometimes was a week closed
because of attacks
from the FARC to the road.
Bogotá is surrounded
by FARC fronts.
They were getting ready
to take over the capital.
(gunfire)
People were abandoning
Colombia massively;
everybody was seeing Colombia
as a sinking ship.
And frankly, when you saw
the growth of the FARC,
the growth of
the paramilitaries,
it was hard not to think
that Colombia could become
a narco state or a failed state.
BILL CLINTON: We got to stand by
these democracies,
including, and especially
tonight, Colombia,
which is fighting
narco traffickers
for its own people's lives
and for our children's lives.
I have proposed
a strong two-year package
to help Colombia win this fight.
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COHEN: Plan Colombia was this
major billion-dollar effort
to bring the Colombian military
up to snuff
to be able to take on
the narco-traffickers.
(gunfire)
And that meant training,
that meant weapons, technology.
(gunfire)
It's also the point
at which counter-narcotics
and counter-insurgency become
explicitly the same thing.
REPORTER:
Officially the United States
is fighting a war on drugs.
In practice,
it is bankrolling conflict
against communist guerrillas.
COHEN: The escalating threat
of communist takeover
becomes the justification for
increasingly overt alliance
with the narco-paramilitaries
as the most effective
fighting force against
the rising communist menace.
(gunfire)
(gunfire)
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(explosion)
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(speaking Spanish)
(plane approaching)
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(gunfire)
REPORTER: America's war on drugs
ignores the paramilitaries.
Instead, government helicopters
protect planes
dropping poison
in the coca fields below.
Their aim is to destroy
the plantations
controlled by the FARC.
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MAN: We have no relationship
with the AUC.
COHEN: By 2001, the extent
of paramilitary involvement
in the drug trade was
too blatant to ignore.
MAN: They claim to wish
to protect Colombian citizens
from other terrorist groups,
but they then massacre and
displace the same citizens,
and they claim to stand against
kidnapping and extortion,
and then engage in
those very practices.
COHEN: So, in this very weird
twist of history,
the AUC gets designated an
official terrorist organization
the day before September 11th.
McDERMOTT: And then everything
changes again on 9/11.
The war on terror and the war
on drugs have now become one.
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ÁLVARO URIBE:
Prudencia, muchachos.
Prudencia.
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FEISTL: President Uribe came up
with the Justice and Peace Plan,
which would give benefits
to paramilitary fighters
who decided to come in,
demobilize, disband,
surrender their weapons,
and stop drug trafficking
and any crimes that
they were involved in.
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(gunshot)
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(siren)
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FEISTL: He wants to try
to reap the benefits
of the Justice and Peace Law,
which basically says if you're a
paramilitary and you surrender,
you would be eligible
for certain benefits
under the Justice
and Peace Plan,
which are very reduced
sentences, under house arrest
or some kind of
minimal confinement.
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McDERMOTT: The Americans and
the Colombian public are seeing
that this peace process
is bordering on farce
as these guys continue to
move drugs, live the high life.
And so once the agreement
is signed,
the constitutional court
changes all the rules,
and they are suddenly sucked
down into the prison system.
And then in 2008, what they all
feared, they're all extradited.
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CALDERÓN: How do you measure
the success of Plan Colombia?
It's Colombia itself.
From a failed state
to the darling of investment
of what it is now.
Colombia is
a beacon of stability.
COHEN: Today people will tell
you that Plan Colombia's
a success despite
the human rights abuses
let loose on
the Colombian countryside.
WOMAN: Vamos, vamos.
COHEN: If the war on drugs is
in fact an effort to stop drugs
from entering the United States,
it is clearly
an abysmal failure.
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In that sense, we've poured
billions of dollars into a hole
and lit it on fire.
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