Heralded by President Iván Duque as Colombia’s “biggest strike against drug trafficking this century” and a moment that “can only be compared to the fall of Pablo Escobar,” the 23 October capture of Dairo Antonio Úsuga David (‘Otoniel’) made headlines worldwide. As the leader of the Clan del Golfo drug trafficking organisation (DTO), Otoniel was Colombia’s most-wanted criminal. He also exemplified the interplay between supposedly ideological armed groups and the cocaine trade, having previously been involved in both paramilitary and guerrilla activities. Yet despite the government’s presentation of his capture as a watershed moment, it is far from clear that the Clan del Golfo will suffer a long-term setback. Even if it does, the most likely outcome is that a rival DTO will fill the void.
Otoniel’s capture marked the climax of a six-year operation by a vast security task force, codenamed Agamenón, which at its peak featured approximately 3,000 soldiers and police (PNC) officers. On 23 October it found its mark, in what Duque described as “the biggest [military] penetration of the jungle in the history of our country.” Some 500 security personnel and 22 military helicopters swooped in on Cerro Yoki, a rural area in Necoclí municipality, Antioquia department. One PNC officer was killed during the raid, which, given its high-profile target, was otherwise notable for its relative lack of bloodshed.
That has raised suspicion in some quarters that Otoniel may have turned himself in as part of a negotiated truce. Driving this speculation is the fact that in September 2017 Otoniel reached out to the government led by former president Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018), “expressing his wish to come in and submit to justice,” as Santos put it at the time. The left-wing senator Gustavo Petro (Colombia Humana), the current frontrunner in the polls for the May 2021 presidential election, has been a leading proponent of the theory that Otoniel’s arrest was not the clinical, unexpected strike that the government claims.
One key factor reduces the likelihood of Petro being correct; on the day of Otoniel’s capture, Defence Minister Diego Molano Aponte announced that the government had launched proceedings for his extradition to the US, where he is sought on drug trafficking charges. Extradition would likely see Otoniel face the same fate of many extradited drug lords before him – life imprisonment in a maximum-security US prison, with few possibilities for more lenient sentencing in exchange for information. Whilst such a plea bargain would likely also be off the cards in Colombia, given Otoniel’s notoriety, if tried there he could expect the country’s maximum sentence of 30 years followed by conditional release.
The government has flatly dismissed any suggestion of a surrender. Following Otoniel’s arrest, Molano said his capture was made possible by “information supplied by members of the Clan del Golfo.” He added that the informants would be paid the Col$3bn (US$800,000) reward offered by the Colombian government and the US$5m bounty offered by the US. Whilst responding to Petro’s allegations on 25 October, Molano also pointed to PNC figures showing a dramatic upswing in PNC operations against the Clan del Golfo from 2020-2021 – a 733% rise in members killed (to total 50), a 352% increase in seized firearms (371), a 155% rise in seized cocaine (31.47 tonnes), and a 135% increase in arrests (570).
Despite those metrics, the Duque administration is still far from vanquishing the DTO. This was highlighted at a 3 November press briefing by Colombia’s PNC commander, General Jorge Luis Vargas, who said that it enjoys strong alliances with five of the key lynchpins in the international drugs trade – “Jalisco Nueva Generación and Sinaloa in Mexico, the Calabresa [‘Ndrangheta] and Sicilian mafias in Italy, and the Balkan networks.” In addition, Vargas said that the Clan del Golfo’s cocaine is shipped to at least 28 countries, reaching as far afield as China, Iran, Australia, and the United Arab Emirates. Within Colombia’s borders, the authorities seem no closer to stamping out the DTO. According to specialist website Insight Crime, the Clan del Golfo operates in at least 17 of Colombia’s 32 departments. Using its homelands of Antioquia, Chocó and Córdoba as its core bastion, the group also maintains a strong presence along the Caribbean coast, in the southwestern department of Valle del Cauca, and the Catatumbo region, which spills from Norte de Santander into Venezuela.
Outlook after Otoniel’s fall
Otoniel’s fall was inevitably heralded by the Duque administration as the ultimate vindication of its hard-line security policy. Also inevitable were the comparisons between Otoniel’s capture and the 1993 killing of Pablo Escobar, which brought about the immediate disintegration of his Medellín Cartel. But beyond a few obvious parallels – both Escobar and Otoniel were, at the time of their downfalls, Colombia’s most wanted criminals, who had evaded massive manhunts for seven and six years, respectively – there is little reason to believe that the Clan del Golfo will fall apart as rapidly as the Medellín Cartel did.
The key reason for this is the different leadership styles of both men. Whilst Escobar ran his DTO in a rigidly hierarchical structure, the Clan del Golfo is far more decentralised. Regional commanders in its core strongholds will be waiting in the wings to replace Otoniel. Furthermore, at the time of Escobar’s death he had become the personification of his DTO to such an extent that many of its members, and crucially also its rivals, could not conceive of it being rebuilt from the ashes. In contrast, Otoniel has built no such cult of personality. His replacement will be easier for the Clan del Golfo’s members to countenance, and the DTO’s practice of subcontracting local gangs via its decentralised command structure means it will likely be able to ride out a period of turbulence at the top.
The Clan del Golfo’s ability to survive is, however, contingent on the DTO being able to swiftly decide on a new leader and repel any incursions by rival criminal groups that will seek to exploit this moment of vulnerability. Any internecine power struggle between the DTO’s regional commanders could send it into a downward spiral. Likely flashpoints are Chocó department, where the Clan del Golfo was already engaged in a violent turf war with the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) guerrilla group; Antioquia, where it is clashing with dissident members of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) guerrilla group; and Catatumbo, where it is fighting both of these.
Furthermore, regardless of what takes place at the top tier of the DTO, these smaller cells are going nowhere. Even in the event of a total collapse of the Clan del Golfo’s central command, many of them can be expected to continue operating as smaller, localised gangs, or to become assimilated into more dominant DTOs. As the Farc’s 2017 demobilisation showed, removing a queen from the chessboard is not enough for the government to claim victory in the battle against criminal and insurgent groups. Until the government can consolidate its territorial control over Colombia’s rural hinterlands, another criminal group is always likely to fill the power vacuum.
Otoniel
Otoniel had a foot in both camps in Colombia’s internal conflict, being a member of the leftist guerrilla group Ejército Popular de Liberación (EPL) until its demobilisation in 1991, after which he joined the right-wing Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) paramilitary group. He ran money laundering and extorsion operations for the AUC until 2004, when it demobilised, and then formed the Clan del Golfo alongside his brother, Juan de Dios Úsuga (‘Giovanni’) in 2007. Otoniel’s participation in the internal conflict will likely trigger domestic opposition to his planned extradition to the US, given that victims’ associations have accused previous Colombian governments of extraditing former paramilitary leaders on drug trafficking charges before they could be tried for their crimes relating to the conflict [SSR-08-06].