Pablo "El Doctor" Escobar (1 December 1949- 2 December 1993) was a notorious and wealthy cocaine trafficker and drug lord from Colombia who led the Medellín Cartel. Escobar was the richest criminal in history, with $30,000,000,000 by the early 1990s. Escobar was killed by the Search Bloc in a shootout in Medellín in 1993 after several years of being one of the most influential, richest, and feared men in the country.
Biography[]
Escobar in 1974
Pablo Escobar was born in 1949 in Rionegro, Colombia, the brother of Roberto de Jesus Escobar Gaviria and Luis Fernando Escobar Gaviria. On the streets of Medellín as a teenager, he made money illegally by stealing gravestones and giving them to dealers for resale, and Escobar and his cousin Gustavo Gaviria worked together from a very young age.
By the early 1970s, he was a thief and a bodyguard, and made a quick $100,000 for capturing and ransoming a Medellín executive. Escobar worked for contraband smuggler Alfredo Gomez Lopez, earning money as his bodyguard and, later, his partner. Escobar's childhood ambition was to become a millionaire before he was 22 years old, and starting in 1975, he began to smuggle cocaine. Escobar himself flew planes between Colombia and Panama, smuggling crack into America.
Founding of the Medellín Cartel[]
Escobar in 1979
In 1975, after purchasing 14 kilograms of cocaine, he killed dealer Fabio Restrepo, and all of his men were told that they worked for Escobar now. In May 1976 he was arrested for possessing 18 kilos of crack after returning to Medellín from Ecuador, where his associate Mateo Moreno had introduced him to cocaine, but he bribed the two arresting officers, and the case was dropped. Because there were no cartels or barons back then, Escobar had plenty of customers, and soon the demand for coke skyrocketed in the United States. However, Moreno felt cheated when Escobar left him in drug labs without any of the luxuries that Escobar and other members of his organization enjoyed, and Moreno decided to sell him out to the police in 1979. Escobar was arrested, and a mugshot was taken of him. However, he succeeded in convincing the police to hand Moreno over after paying them $1,000,000, and Moreno was shot in the head by Escobar himself.
The Paisa Robin Hood[]
Escobar's presidential campaign posters
Escobar took over several trade routes into America, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and Spain with crack produced in Bolivia and Peru, and he bought Norman's Cay in the Bahamas. There, he constructed a zoo, a lake, and a base of operations for his smuggling operations. Escobar formed the Medellín Cartel, made up of several gang members that smuggled drugs through the Americas and the Caribbean. Escobar became popular for giving money to the poor as a way of laundering it, and he buried other caches of money, with only his accountant knowing their locations; his accountant became known as "Blackbeard" for this reason. Escobar recruited several poor people into his cartel and formed a formidable army, and he became so powerful and wealthy that he allied with the Ochoa Brothers, the drug smuggler Carlos Lehder, and the emerald smuggler Jose Rodriguez Gacha to form a large cartel. Soon, Escobar was producing 80% of the world's cocaine.
Entrance into politics[]
Escobar as a congressman, 1982
In 1982, Escobar gained political power after being made a part of the New Liberalism party's membership in the Chamber of Representatives of Colombia as the alternative of Jairo Ortega, and he was present at President Felipe Gonzalez's inauguration in Spain. Escobar would be ousted from office by President Belisario Betancour after an attempt to frame Minister of Justice Rodrigo Lara as a man with cartel links, and Escobar decided to have his revenge by assassinating Lara in 1984, giving him much negative attention from the government. Escobar was kicked out of the government after he was accused of murdering Lara, and Escobar decided to wage war on the government; in 1989 he assassinated three presidential candidates. By 1989, Forbes reported that he was one of 227 billionaires, with $30,000,000,000 ($58,000,000,000 in 2014 due to inflation), and he gained popularity as a "Robin Hood" figure. He built churches, hospitals, and schools, which made the Roman Catholic Church respect him, and he also built housing projects and community centers for the poor. However, Colombia became the world murder capital, with 25,100 murders in 1991 and 27,100 in 1992. He gave money to hitmen for killing cops, and 600 cops were killed by his men.
War with the government[]
Escobar's war on the government led to the assassination of Minister of Justice Lara in 1984 and presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan in 1989, but he failed in his attempt to kill Cesar Gaviria with a bombing on Avianca Flight 203, during which he contacted ETA bomb-maker Efram Gonzalez for his assistance. Escobar was forced to flee to Panama at first, but he later decided to return to Colombia and fight the government against the wishes of his cousin Gustavo. Gacha and his cousin Gustavo would be killed by the newly formed Search Bloc police force of Colonel Horacio Carrillo on 15 December 1989 and 12 August 1990, respectively, and Escobar was dealt many blows by the police and the United States.
Escobar's campaigns of bombings on street corners and political assassinations ended in 1990, when he decided to kidnap wealthy people's relatives instead. He intended to force President Cesar Gaviria to give in to his demands, which included a "surrender deal": Escobar would stay in a "prison" that he built (it would be more of a villa), he would be guarded by his own men, extradition would be repealed, and no policemen or planes could be within three kilometers of the prison. When the army accidentally killed hostage Diana Turbay (a beloved journalist and the daughter of former president Julio Cesar Turbay Ayala) in January 1991, President Gaviria decided to end the bloodshed and make peace with Escobar. Escobar built "La Catedral", and he was surrounded by his loyal sicarios while he stayed in prison.
Stay in prison[]
Escobar in 1992
Escobar entrusted command of the cartel to his lieutenants Fernando Galeano and Gerardo Moncada, who were forced to pay him first $250,000 a month, and later $1,000,000 a month, to compensate for his expenses during his war with the Cali Cartel. These men also managed his war with the Cali Cartel, who had collaborated with the treacherous Ochoa Brothers to kill his cousin in 1990. Escobar refused Helmer Herrera's offer of $3,000,000 to end the Cali-Medellin war, and he also refused $10,000,000; he demanded $30,000,000 from the Cali Cartel if they wanted peace. His own lieutenants Moncada and Galeano conspired against him, and Escobar became aware of their disaffection when Moncada's wife accidentally revealed that her husband had complained about the "war tax" imposed on them. Escobar allegedly killed and dismembered both of them, and he decided to flee his prison when the government discovered that these rumors were true.
Anti-Escobar alliance[]
Escobar made enemies with the Cali Cartel in addition to Gerardo Moncada's widow Judy Moncada and her protector Don Berna, and Escobar executed Judy's brother Jaime for having the audacity to go up against him. The Moncadas and Cali Cartel enlisted the help of the AUC paramilitary leaders Carlos Castano Gil and Fidel Castano Gil via CIA agent Bill Stechner, who wanted to work with the "bad guys" to kill Escobar. Stechner supplied military-grade weapons to the paramilitaries, and the Cali-AUC-Moncada alliance manifested itself as "Los Pepes", standing for "Persecuted by Pablo Escobar".
Los Pepes[]
Los Pepes' first victim, Velasco
From late 1992 to early 1993, Los Pepes waged war on Escobar, with DEA agent Javier Pena leaking classified information to them so that they could take down Escobar's sicarios and drug labs. Escobar lost most of his men and money, and men such as Velasco, Jairo, and Fernando Duque were assassinated, while his acquaintance Valeria Velez was also murdered. Escobar sought vengeance against his enemies and the Colombian government, which sanctioned the Los Pepes death squad. Escobar was in talks with Attorney-General Gustavo de Greiff to surrender, but these talks came to nothing, as Escobar's new terrorist attacks proved that peace was impossible.
Downfall[]
Escobar after being shot
Soon, the United States became heavily involved in the Colombian war on drugs, sending advisers to train the Los Pepes (PEPES standing for "People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar") paramilitary forces and to assist the Colombian Army against the cartels.
On 2 December 1993, Escobar was tracked down to Medellín by radio triangulation technology used by the government's Search Bloc, with Lieutenant Hugo Martinez Jr. spotting him talking to his wife on the radio and giving her a statement of continued fighting to issue to the press. The Search Bloc men breached the building and shot at Escobar and his chauffeur Jhon Burgos, and the two men killed three Search Bloc policemen. Burgos was killed on the roof, and Escobar was wounded by a sniper's bullet from Sergeant Sarmiento before being shot two more times. Search Bloc policeman Trujillo delivered the final shot to his head, killing Escobar.
25,000 people attended his funeral, and his mother asked for people to remember all the good things which he had done, and not the bad things.