Pablo Escobar

History
Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria (December 1, 1949 – December 2, 1993) was a Colombian drug lord. Often referred to as the "World's Greatest Outlaw", he was the most elusive cocaine trafficker ever to have lived.[1] He is regarded as the richest and most successful criminal in world history.[2] Some other sources state that he was the second richest criminal ever, after Amado Carrillo Fuentes.[3] In 1989, Forbes magazine declared Escobar as the seventh richest man in the world, with an estimated personal fortune of US $25 billion.[4] He owned innumerable luxury residences and automobiles and, in 1986, he attempted to enter Colombian politics, even offering to pay off the nation's US $10 billion national debt.[5] It is not true that he offered to pay off the Colombian National Debt, according to Escobar's son, in the documentary, Sins of my Father.

Escobar was born in the village of Rionegro in Antioquia, Colombia, the third of seven children to Abel de Jesus Escobar, a peasant, and Hemilda Gaviria, an elementary school teacher.[6] Pablo and his family resided in an adobe hut that had no electricity but had running water. Pablo and his brother were once sent home from school because Pablo had no shoes and no money to buy them. Escobar studied political science at a nearby university but was forced to drop out when he could not afford to pay the required fees. This was when he began his criminal career, allegedly stealing gravestones and sanding them down for resale to smugglers. His brother, Roberto Escobar, denies this, claiming that the gravestones came from cemetery owners whose clients had stopped paying for site care and that they had a relative who had a legitimate monuments business.[7] He studied for a short time at the University of Antioquia.[8]

After this alleged hustling business, Pablo started doing whatever else he could to make money — from running petty street scams with his gang to selling contraband cigarettes and fake lottery tickets. He even conned people out of their cash when they would leave the bank. By the time he was 20, he was already an accomplished car thief.[1] In the early 1970s, he was a thief and bodyguard, and he made a quick $100,000 on the side kidnapping and ransoming a Medellín executive before entering the drug trade.[9] His next step on the ladder was to become a millionaire by working for the multi-millionaire contraband smuggler, Alvaro Prieto. Through his dedication and guile, Pablo became a millionaire by the time he was 22.

Pablo Escobar once said that the essence of the cocaine business was "simple - you bribe someone here, you bribe someone there, and you pay a friendly banker to help you bring the money back."[17] In 1987 Forbes magazine estimated Escobar to be the seventh-richest man in the world with a personal wealth of close to US$25 billion[4] while his Medellín cartel controlled 80% of the global cocaine market.

While seen as an enemy of the United States and Colombian governments, Escobar was a hero to many in Medellín (especially the poor people); he was a natural at public relations and he worked to create goodwill among the poor people of Colombia. A lifelong sports fan, he was credited with building football fields and multi-sports courts, as well as sponsoring children's football teams.[18]

Escobar was responsible for the construction of many hospitals, schools and churches in western Colombia, which gained him popularity inside the local Roman Catholic Church.[19] He worked hard to cultivate his "Robin Hood" image, and frequently distributed money to the poor through housing projects and other civic activities, which gained him notable popularity among the poor. The population of Medellín often helped Escobar by serving as lookouts, hiding information from the authorities, or doing whatever else they could do to protect him.

Despite his popular image among Medellín's impoverished community, Escobar was well-known among his business associates to be a calm and sensible negotiator, that preferred to use money before the gun. Many of the wealthier residents of Medellín also viewed him as a threat. His brother said that Pablo knew that money generated more loyalty than fear, so violence was often unnecessary. At the height of his power, drug traffickers from Medellín and other areas were handing over between 20 and 35% of their Colombian cocaine-related profits to Escobar, because he was the one who shipped the cocaine successfully to the US.

The Colombian cartels' continuing struggles to maintain supremacy resulted in Colombia's quickly becoming the world’s murder capital with 25,100 violent deaths in 1991 and 27,100 in 1992.[20] This increased murder rate was fueled by Escobar's giving money to his hitmen as a reward for killing police officers, over 600 of whom died in this way.

The war against Escobar ended on December 2, 1993, amid another attempt to elude the Search Bloc. Using radio triangulation technology provided as part of the United States efforts, a Colombian electronic surveillance team, led by Brigadier Hugo Martinez,[24] found him hiding in a middle-class barrio in Medellín. With authorities closing in, a firefight with Escobar and his bodyguard, Alvaro de Jesús Agudelo AKA "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.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-24">[25] He suffered gunshots to the leg, torso, and the fatal one in his ear. It has never been proven who actually fired the final shot into Escobar's head, whether this shot was made during the gunfight or as part of possible execution, and there is wide speculation about the subject. Some of the family members believe that Escobar could have committed suicide.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-25">[26] <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-26">[27] His two brothers, Roberto Escobar and Fernando Sánchez Arellano, believe that he shot himself through the ears: "He 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 ears."<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-27">[28] During the autopsy however, there was no stippling pattern found around the ear, which suggested that the shot which killed Escobar was fired from further than an arm's length away.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-28">[29]

After Escobar's death and the fragmentation of the Medellín Cartel the cocaine market soon became dominated by the rival Cali Cartel, until the mid-1990s when its leaders, too, were either killed or captured by the Colombian government.

The Robin Hood image that he had cultivated continued to have lasting influence in Medellín. Many there, especially many of the city's poor that had been aided by him while he was alive, lamented his death.

(info from Wikipeida)

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