The Legend of Pablo Escobar

History

By Amanda Massello

Cocaine-legend Pablo Escobar (1949—1993) began his criminal career inauspiciously as a grave robber, ripping up tombstones and re-selling them. Through underworld connections, he soon began smuggling cocaine, a job in which success proves lucrative. Through a series of conspicuous moves he became head honcho of the Medellín Cartel, earning $1 million a day in cocaine money by controlling charter-flight deliveries to the US. In the 1980s, Colombia controlled 75-80% of the cocaine trade and of that, Escobar’s cartel ran the majority of it. Coca soon became the biggest cash crop in Latin America as international cocaine use exploded.

A drug baron worth $3 billion, Escobar’s power and fame was widespread. Pablo was fierce and bought up influence by intimidating, threatening or killing anyone in his path, be it man, woman, or child. Politicians were offered two alternatives: pay-off or death.

Despite his corrupt character, El Patron—as Pablo is also called—was able to win the hearts and minds of Colombia’s disenfranchised by financing charity works a la Robin Hood. He built churches and football fields, quickly winning support of the Catholic Church and the working class.

He is credited with several political assassinations and the bombing of Avianca flight 203, which killed several Americans on-board, spurring DEA involvement in Colombia. In order to stop a law from being passed that would allow narco-traffickers to be extradited, Pablo’s men—the M19—turned a November 6, 1985 Supreme Court meeting into a bloodbath, killing half the senators. The granddaddy of the cocaine industry also created his own political party and was elected to congress, establishing himself as head of a veritable mafia.

Escobar was allowed to build and design his own prison, La Catedral, as part of a deal with the government. In exchange for giving himself up to the authorities, he was granted immunity from extradition to the US. So many were his enemies, that when Escobar escaped from his plush private jail in 1992, government teams, both Colombian and American, joined hands with the vigilante group Los Pepes (People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar) to track him down. The manhunt ended in a shootout between Pablo and a US army contingent on the rooftops of a Medellín neighborhood in 1993.

Hollywood is currently battling over multiple screenplays about the life and legend of Pablo Escobar: Three movies with Pablo as the central figure are expected to come out in 2008. The legend of Pablo is also featured in the 2001 movie Blow, starring Johnny Depp. The message: don’t mess with Pablo.