The King of Cocaine - Pablo Escobar
Pablo Escobar
 |
| A mugshot of Pablo Escobar taken in 1977 by the Medellín Control Agency. |
1 December 1949
Rionegro, Colombia
Died - 2 December 1993 (aged 44)
Medellín, Colombia
Cause of death - Gunshot wound
Other names - Don Pablo (Sir Pablo)
El Padrino (The Godfather)
El Patrón (The Boss)
El Señor (The Lord)
El Mágico (The Magician)
El Pablito (Little Pablo)
El Zar de la Cocaína (The Tsar of Cocaine)
Occupation - Founder and head of the Medellín Cartel, and politician
Net worth - US$30 billion (1993 estimate)
Spouse(s) - Maria Victoria Henao (m. 1976)
Children - Sebastián Marroquín (1977)
Manuela Escobar (1984)
Conviction(s) - Drug trafficking and smuggling, assassinations,
bombing, bribery, racketeering, murder
Criminal penalty - 5 years imprisonment
Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria (/'?sk?b??r/, Spanish: ['paßlo e'miljo esko'ßa? ?a'ßi?ja]; 1 December 1949 – 2 December 1993) was a Colombian drug lord and narcoterrorist. His cartel supplied an estimated 80% of the cocaine smuggled into the United States at the height of his career, turning over US$21.9 billion a year in personal income.He was often called "The King of Cocaine" and was the wealthiest criminal in history, with an estimated knownnet worth of between US$25 and US$30 billion by the early 1990s (equivalent to between about $48.5 and $58 billion as of 2018), making him one of the richest men in the world in his prime.
Escobar was born in Rionegro, Colombia, and grew up in nearby Medellín, studying briefly at Universidad Autónoma Latinoamericana of Medellin but left without a degree. He began to engage
in criminal activity involving the sale of contraband cigarettes and fake lottery tickets, and also participated in motor vehicle theft. In the 1970s, he began to work for various contraband smugglers, often kidnapping and holding people for ransom before beginning to distribute powder cocaine himself, as well as establishing the first smuggling routes into the United States in 1975. His infiltration to the drug market of the U.S. expanded exponentially due to the rising demand for cocaine; and, by the 1980s, it was estimated that 70 to 80 tons of cocaine were being shipped from Colombia to the U.S. monthly. His drug network was commonly known as the Medellín Cartel, which often competed with rival cartels domestically and abroad, resulting in massacres and the murders of police officers, judges, locals, and prominent politicians
.In 1982 parliamentary election, Escobar was elected as an alternate member of the Chamber of Representatives of Colombia as part of the Liberal Alternative movement. Through this, he was responsible for the construction of houses and football fields in western Colombia, which gained him popularity among the locals of the towns that he frequented. However, Colombia became the "murder capital of the world", and Escobar was vilified by the Colombian and American governments.In 1993, Escobar was shot and killed in his hometown by Colombian National Police, one day after his 44th birthday.
Early life
The city of Medellín, where Escobar grew up and began his criminal career.Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was born on 1 December 1949, in Rionegro, in the Antioquia Department of Colombia. He was the third of seven children of the farmer Abel de Jesús Dari Escobar Echeverri (1910–2001), with his wife Hemilda de los Dolores Gaviria Berrío (d. 2006),an elementary school teacher. Raised in the nearby city of Medellín, Escobar is thought to have begun his criminal career as a teenager, allegedly stealing gravestones and sanding them down for resale to local smugglers. His brother, Roberto Escobar, denies this, instead claiming that the gravestones came from cemetery owners whose clients had stopped paying for site care, and that he had a relative who had a monuments business. Escobar's son, Sebastián Marroquín, claims his father's foray into crime began with a successful practice of selling counterfeit high school diplomas,generally counterfeiting those awarded by the Universidad Autónoma Latinoamericana of Medellín. Escobar studied atthe University for a short period, but left without obtaining a degree.
Escobar eventually became involved in many criminal activities with Oscar Benel Aguirre, with the
duo running petty street scams, selling contraband cigarettes, fake lottery tickets, and stealing cars.
In the early 1970s, prior to entering the drug trade, Escobar acted as a thief and bodyguard, allegedly earning US$100,000 by kidnapping and holding a Medellín executive for ransom. Escobar began working for Alvaro Prieto, a contraband smuggler who operated around Medellín, aiming to fulfill a childhood ambition to have COL $1 million by the time he was 22.Escobar is known to have had a bank deposit of COL $100 million (more than US$3 million), when he turned 26.
Cocaine distribution
In The Accountant's Story, Roberto Escobar discusses the means by which Pablo rose from middle-class simplicity and obscurity to one of the world's wealthiest men. Beginning in 1975, Pablo started
developing his cocaine operation, flying out planes several times, mainly between Colombia and Panama, along smuggling routes into the United States. When he later bought fifteen bigger airplanes, including a Learjet and six helicopters, according to his son, a dear friend of Pablo's died during the landing of an airplane, and the plane was destroyed. Pablo reconstructed the airplane from the scrap parts that were left and later hung it above the gate to his ranch at Hacienda Nápoles.
In May 1976, Escobar and several of his men were arrested and found in possession of 39 pounds (18 kg) of white paste, attempting to return to Medellín with a heavy load from Ecuador. Initially, Pablo tried to bribe the Medellín judges who were forming a case against him, and was unsuccessful. After many months of legal wrangling, he ordered the murder of the two arresting officers, and the case was later dropped. Roberto Escobar details this as the point where Pablo began his pattern of dealing with the authorities, by either bribery or murder.
Roberto Escobar maintains Pablo fell into the drug business simply because other types of contraband became too dangerous to traffic. As there were no drug cartels then, and only a few drug barons,
Pablo saw it as untapped territory he wished to make his own. In Peru, Pablo would buy the cocaine
paste, which would then be refined in a laboratory in a two-story house in Medellín. On his first trip,
Pablo bought a paltry 30 pounds (14 kg) of paste in what was noted as the first step towards building his empire. At first, he smuggled the cocaine in old plane tires, and a pilot could return as much as US$500,000 per flight, dependent on the quantity smuggled.
Established drug network
In 1982 Escobar was elected as an alternate member of the Chamber of Representatives of Colombia, as part of a small movement called Liberal Alternative. Earlier in the campaign he was a candidate for the Liberal Renewal Movement, but had to leave it because of the firm opposition of Luis Carlos Galán, whose presidential campaign was supported by the Liberal Renewal Movement.Escobar was the official representative of the Colombian government for the swearing-in of Felipe González in Spain.
Escobar quickly became known internationally as his drug network gained notoriety; the Medellín
Cartel controlled a large portion of the drugs that entered the United States, Mexico, Puerto Rico,
the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and Spain. The production process was also altered, with coca
from Bolivia and Peru replacing the coca from Colombia, which was beginning to be seen as substandard quality than the coca from the neighboring countries. As demand for more and better cocaine increased, Escobar began working with Roberto Suárez Goméz, helping to further the product to other countries in the Americas and Europe, as well as being rumored to reach as far as Asia.
Palace of Justice siege
It is alleged that Escobar backed the 1985 storming of the Colombian Supreme Court by left-wing guerrillas from the 19th of April Movement, also known as M-19. The siege, a retaliation motivated by the Supreme Court studying the constitutionality of Colombia's extradition treaty with the U.S., resulted in the murders of half the judges on the court. M-19 were paid to break into the Palace and burn all papers and files on Los Extraditables, a group of cocaine smugglers who were under threat of being extradited to the U.S. by the Colombian government. Escobar was listed as a part of Los Extraditables. Hostages were also taken for negotiation of their release, thus helping to prevent extradition of Los Extraditables to the U.S. for their crimes.
Family and relationships
In March 1976, the 26-year-old Escobar married Maria Victoria Henao, who was 15. The relationship was discouraged by the Henao family, who considered Escobar socially inferior; the pair eloped.
They had two children: Juan Pablo (now Sebastián Marroquín) and Manuela.
In 2007, the journalist Virginia Vallejo published her memoir Amando a Pablo, odiando a Escobar
(Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar), in which she describes her romantic relationship with Escobar and
the links of her lover with several presidents, Caribbean dictators, and high-profile politicians.
Her book inspired the movie Loving Pablo (2017).
Drug distributor Griselda Blanco is also reported to have conducted a clandestine, but passionate,
relationship with Escobar, with several items in her later-found diary linking him with the nicknames
"Coque de Mi Rey" (My Coke King) and "Polla Blanca" (White Dick).
Properties
After becoming wealthy, Escobar created or bought numerous residences and safe houses, with the Hacienda Nápoles gaining significant notoriety. The luxury house contained a colonial house,
a sculpture park, and a complete zoo with animals from various continents, including elephants,
exotic birds, giraffes, and hippopotamuses. Escobar had also planned to construct a Greek-style
citadel near it, and though construction of the citadel was started, it was never finished.
Escobar also owned a home in the US under his own name: a 6,500 square foot, pink, waterfront mansion situated at 5860 North Bay Road in Miami Beach, Florida. The four-bedroom estate, built in 1948 on Biscayne Bay, was seized by the government in the 1980s. Later, the dilapidated property was owned by Christian de Berdouare, proprietor of the Chicken Kitchen fast-food chain, who had bought it in 2014. De Berdouare would later hire a documentary film crew and professional treasure hunters to search the edifice before and after demolition, for anything related to Escobar or his cartel. They would find unusual holes in floors and walls, as well as a safe that was stolen from its hole in
the marble flooring before it could be properly examined.
Escobar also owned a massive Caribbean getaway on Isla Grande, the largest of the cluster of
the 27 coral cluster islands comprising Islas del Rosario, located about 22 miles (35 km) from Cartagena. The compound, now half-demolished and overtaken by vegetation and wild animals, featured a mansion, apartments, courtyards, a large swimming pool, a helicopter landing pad, reinforced windows, tiled floors, and a large, unfinished building to the side of the mansion.
Sixteen months after his escape from La Catedral, Pablo Escobar died in a shootout on 2 December 1993, amid another of Escobar's attempts to elude the Search Bloc. A Colombian electronic surveillance team, led by Brigadier Hugo Martínez, used radio trilateration technology to track his radiotelephone transmissions and found him hiding in Los Olivos, a middle-class barrio in Medellín.With authorities closing in, a firefight with Escobar and his bodyguard, Álvaro de Jesús Agudelo (alias "El Limón"), ensued. The two fugitives attempted to escape by running across the roofs of adjoining houses to reach a back street, but both were shot and killed by Colombian National Police. Escobar suffered gunshots to the leg and torso, and a fatal gunshot through the ear.
It has never been proven who actually fired the final shot into his ear, or determined whether this shot was made during the gunfight or as part of a possible execution, with wide speculation remaining regarding the subject. Some of Escobar's relatives believe that he had committed suicide.His two brothers, Roberto Escobar and Fernando Sánchez Arellano, believe that he shot himself through the ear. In a statement regarding the topic, the duo stated that Pablo "had committed suicide, he did not get killed. During all the years they went after him, he would say to me every day that if he was really cornered without a way out, he would 'shoot himself through the ear'."
Aftermath of his death
Soon after Escobar's death and the subsequent fragmentation of the Medellín Cartel, the cocaine market became dominated by the rival Cali Cartel until the mid-1990s when its leaders were either killed or captured by the Colombian government. The Robin Hood image that Escobar had cultivated maintained a lasting influence in Medellín. Many there, especially many of the city's poor whom Escobar had aided while he was alive, mourned his death, and over 25,000 people attended his funeral. Some of them consider him a saint and pray to him for receiving divine help.
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