Pablo Escobar, the coke's tzar

The history of Pablo Escobar Gaviría, the most important drug dealer that ever existed, arouses hates and passions in equal parts. Considered a true hero and a significant example for humble people, was also one of the greatest enemies that the Colombian state ever had, and even for the United States of América. A man who could forge, practically from the void, a millionaire fortune by dint of crimes and murders and who detained his immense power by means of extortion.

Pablo Escobar was born on December 1st of 1949, in a small rural locality called El Tablazo, near Antioquia (Colombia). Parallel to his bachelor’s studies in Medellín –city that was to be witness and protagonist of the majority of his vicissitudes-, he began to initiate into different criminal practices. Some versions suggest that he began with the theft of headstones in cemeteries, others that he was also into car thefts. But the truth is that his beginnings into drug traffic were which led him to be one of the wealthiest men in the world decades later.

He increased his enterprising fame little by little. Thus, his incursion in the sale of cannabis took him to migrate progressively to a much more lucrative activity, the traffic of cocaine. In the early 70’s, cocaine was starting to propagate in the coffee grower country, coming from Peru and Bolivia. It did not take Escobar a long time to join this emergent market, establishing connections with the different incipient cartels that were arising in the country. In his beginnings he was dedicated to the transport of raw material. Shortly after, he already owned multiple lands, his own property (the famous Napoles) and several runways from where airplanes replete with drugs landed and took off.

To be fair, it can not be said from Pablo Escobar that he was a criminal of the worst kind. On the contrary, Pablo was a beloved man among his people. He never forgot his humble origins, showing off his affluent present, he became benefactor of the lower classes of Medellín. That is why it is not surprising that he invested part of his huge income in different works of charity.

The slums of his city began to look better because of Escobar’s work and, as a soccer fan as he was, he built several fields in the area. Paradoxically, those lands that were supposed to move youth away from delinquency ended up being the recruitment centre for hire assassins par excellence. The thing is that together with his works of charity, he did not forget to build an empire that would reach unusual points.

He continued building his fame little by little. At the end of the 70’s, he was already a charismatic personality for the have-nots, who saw in him an authentic alternative to escape from the poverty and the misery that Colombia was living in at that time.

In this way, Escobar established contacts inside the political power. Power in which he took part, thanks to Alberto Santofimio Botero and Jairo Ortega, two politicians who were economically supported by him, already a powerful drug baron at that time.

Escobar obtained a position as a member of Congress for the new liberalism, thanks to the support of those statesmen and also thanks to the popularity achieved in question of social matter, which showed him as a person not selfish at all despite his immense fortune. Even his entire city remembers his housing construction project called “Medellín without hovels.”

In 1982, he assisted to the ascension of Felipe González to President of the Spanish Government as an especial guest for taking part in the Colombian government. Surely those present in that event, many of them future enemies of Escobar, did not imagine that the man of grotesque language and gaudy clothes would become one of the most influential and powerful personalities of the 20^th century.

The permanence of Pablo Escobar Gaviría in politics did not last long, at least as an active member. The Colombian Minister of Justice Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, who was supposedly sent to assassinate, denounced his activities and forced him to retire from politics. Since then, that life dedicated to business and charity works was transformed into a path sealed by death and a practice of duress unheard of, where Escobar would do whatever it took to achieve his objectives.

He was also accused of the assassination of several presidential candidates who expressed fierce opposition. One of them, Luis Carlos Galán, appeared to be the clear winner of the elections in 1989. Another notorious attack that seemed to bear Escobar’s seal was the car bomb that exploded in front of the Administrative Department of Security (DAS) leaving at least 70 deaths and thousands of wounded people.

Step by step he was to become in Colombia's number one public enemy. Escobar Gaviría continued to develop activities in parallel with the trafficking of drugs. He continued to have an active participation as a soccer investor –the Medellin National Athletic consecrated as the first Colombian club to win the Copa Libertadores de América in 1989, thanks to his generous economic contribution –and financing hire assassins’ schools. In 1991, fed up with so many persecutions, he surrenders to justice.

In this way a persecution that would last several months and that made a fool of the Colombian government would begin. Escobar’s image was rising dramatically; he acted as his pleasure and was profiled as invincible. But, little by little, the harsh environment of the absolute leader of the Medellín’s cartel was weakening. Some of his most loyal men, such as “Tyson”, “Chopo” or “El Palomo”, succumbed to the Colombian authorities and the circle about his person was closing more and more.

Finally, on December 2^nd of 1993, one day after his 44^th birthday, Pablo Escobar was knocked down in one of his residences by an elite body formed by Colombian forces, even though it is widely suspected that part of the CIA’s intelligence apparatus contributed to his end.

It was a long persecution until Escobar’s whereabouts was found, thanks to the interception of a telephone call he had made.

Even though doubts around his death still exist, the version that is widespread suggests that what put an end to one of the main personalities of the Colombian and Latin-American history - which did not get tired of repeating that preferred a thousand times a grave in Colombia than a cell in the United States- was when the agent Guillermo Aguilar was seriously injured due to a shot in the head.

“He did not allow three presidents to govern. He transformed the language, the culture, the physiognomy and the economy of Medellín and of the country. Before Pablo Escobar, Colombians ignored the word hired assassin. Before Pablo Escobar, Medellín was considered a paradise. Before Pablo Escobar, Colombia was known as the Land of Coffee. And before Pablo Escobar, nobody thought in Colombia that a bomb could explode in a supermarket or in an airplane during flight. Because of Pablo Escobar there are armoured cars in Colombia and safety measures modified architecture. Because of him the judicial system was changed, the penitentiary policy and even the design of the shackles were reconsidered, and the Armed Forces were transformed. Pablo Escobar discovered, more than any other predecessor, that death can be the greatest instrument of power”, these were the words the Colombian magazine Semana chose to speak of the almighty Escobar.

A perfect synthesis of what he had achieved along his criminal trajectory.

Pablo Escobar Gaviría was a man who got to know everything in his life: the extreme wealth –he became one of the wealthiest men in the world, according to Forbes magazine- and the humbleness of his youth; the unlimited power and the daily work and sacrifice to be able to achieve it; the murder without scruples and a death in utter loneliness.

In the end Pablo Escobar Gaviría was a true hero for some, but for the rest he was the selfsame devil.

By Carlos Cabezas López