Pablo Escobar "El Zar de la Cocaína"

Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was a Colombian drug lord and the leader of one of the most powerful criminal organizations ever assembled.

Even though Pablo was born in Rionegro on the 1^st December 1949 into a lower-middle-class family, he grew up in the Medellín suburb of Envigado. Since he was young he was always talking about how he was going to become President of Colombia someday. Pablo’s criminal career started when he was still a young man committing small thefts and scams and the legend says he would steal tombstones, sandblast the names off of them, and resell them to crooked Panamanians. After that, he moved up to stealing cars, which led to his arrest in 1974, at the age of 25. He was transferred to “La Ladera” prison where he met one of the most famous smuggler of the area, Antonio Prieto. After being released, Escobar started working for Prieto and found his path to wealth and power: drugs. He would buy coca paste in Bolivia and Peru, refine it, and transport it for sale in the US. In 1975, a local Medellín drug lord named Fabio Restrepo was murdered, reportedly on the orders of Escobar himself. After Restrepo’s death, Escobar took over his organization and expanded his operations. Before long, Escobar controlled all crime in Medellín and was responsible for as much as 80% of the cocaine transported into the United States. In 1982 he started his political career being elected to Colombia’s Congress. Once he achieved economic, criminal, and political power, Escobar’s rise was complete. He was a cruel and selfish man, but this does not change the fact that Escobar was a brilliant criminal, and he knew that he needed the common people of Medellín on his side; reason why he spent millions on parks, schools, stadiums and churches. His strategy undoubtedly worked, in fact Escobar was beloved by the common people, who saw him as a “local boy” who succeeded in life and was giving back to his community. By the mid-1980s, Pablo Escobar was one of the most powerful and richest men in the world. His empire included an army of soldiers and criminals, a private zoo, mansions, and apartments all over Colombia, private airstrips and planes for drug transport. Basically, by the time he was 35, The "King of Cocaine" was one of the world's wealthiest men.

"El Patron" brought in an estimated $420 million a week in revenue, which totals almost $22 billion a year, making him one of the wealthiest drug lords ever. He could order the murder of anyone, anywhere, anytime. Escobar quickly became legendary for his ruthlessness and, as the time went by, politicians, judges, and policemen, publicly started opposing him. Escobar had a “special way” of dealing with his enemies: he called it “plata o plomo” literally, silver or lead. Usually, if a politician, judge or policeman got in his way, he would first attempt to bribe them. If that didn’t work, he would order them killed, occasionally including their family in the hit. The exact number of honest men and women killed by Escobar is unknown, but it probably goes between the hundreds and possibly into the thousands. Social status did not matter to Escobar. He ordered the assassination of hundreds of people, including presidential candidates and was even rumoured to be a part of the attack on the Supreme Court, that took place in 1985 carried out by the 19th of April insurrectionist movement and in which several Supreme Court Justices were killed. On November 27, 1989, Escobar’s Medellín cartel, which was responsible for 80% of the global cocaine market, planted a bomb on Avianca flight 203, killing 110 people. The target, a presidential candidate, was not actually on board. In addition to these high-profile assassinations, Escobar and his organization were responsible for the deaths of countless magistrates, journalists, policemen and even criminals inside his own organization.

Article by Azzurra Furnari