Cali cartel
1
9.0
- proper noun
- NSFW
:
cartel de Cali
- In the 1990s, the Cali cartel controlled a significant portion of the global cocaine trade.
Examples
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In the meantime, however, it suffered serious penetration from the Cali cartel, which was, according to intellectuals and officials, "narcotrafficker but not narcoterrorist."
Academic text (2003) -
Thus, he initiated what in practice meant peace talks with the Cali cartel.
Academic text (2003) -
How could the Cali cartel be punished by a government with so many links to organized crime?
Academic text (2003) -
During the Samper administration, though, the heads of the Cali cartel were jailed, and their influence in the state shrank.
Academic text (2003) -
This gave the U.S. the tool it wanted, but blocked the possibility of extraditing the Cali cartel leaders, who had committed their crimes before the constitutional reform.
Academic text (2003) -
The Colombian government answered by trying to show spectacular results against the Cali cartel, which by then had become the main source of problems, and by 1995 it could already claim to have captured the cartel's major leaders.
Academic text (2003) -
The huge inroads that the Cali cartel had made in the police were complemented by the more or less open complicity between paramilitaries and the army in the field, despite some governmental efforts to turn the tide.
Academic text (2003) -
The Cali cartel was notorious for its influence over politicians during the 1980s and 1990s.
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U.S. authorities launched extensive operations to dismantle the Cali cartel due to its vast drug trafficking network.
Synonyms
210
7.9
A group of businesses that agree to control production and prices to limit competition
36
5.3
A group that makes and sells illegal drugs and uses violence or bribes officials to control the business
8
4.5
An organized group of criminals who work together to do illegal things
1
8.1
A Colombian criminal group that sold and smuggled cocaine from the 1970s until 1993
Surface Forms
Morphology
Cali + cartel
This is a compositional name: a place name plus a noun. If a learner knows 'Cali' is a Colombian city and 'cartel' denotes an organization that controls a market (often criminal in news contexts), they can infer it refers to an organization based in Cali involved in controlling (illicit) trade; specific historical details are not required to grasp the core meaning.
Etymology
Cali cartel is named after the city Cali in Colombia and the word cartel, which means a group that controls a business. Because a group from Cali organised and controlled much of the cocaine business in the 1980s and 1990s, the name came to mean that powerful drug organization.