Titans of History

ESCOBAR

1949–93

The ingeniousness of my brother was extraordinary.

Roberto Escobar

The most powerful, wealthy and murderous criminal of the 20th century, Pablo Escobar was the paramount Colombian drug lord who became the mastermind and kingpin of the international cocaine trade. He accrued billions of dollars, and in the process was responsible for hundreds of kidnappings and murders. A godfather figure of unrivaled magnitude, and a law unto himself, Escobar threatened the very integrity of the state of Colombia.

Escobar was the son of a peasant and a schoolteacher, and grew up in a suburb of Medellín. He became involved in criminal activities from an early age, stealing cars and even, it was said, gravestones, which he sandblasted before selling them as new. He graduated to minor fraud, selling contraband cigarettes and forged lottery tickets, and then in the late 1960s, as demand for cannabis and cocaine multiplied, he saw an opening in the drug trade.

During the first half of the 1970s Escobar became increasingly prominent in the Medellín Cartel, in which a number of crime syndicates cooperated to control much of Colombia’s drug-trafficking industry. In 1975, a leading Medellín crime lord, Fabio Restrepo, was assassinated, and Escobar soon took over his operation.

In May of the following year, Escobar was charged with organizing a drug run to Ecuador. He tried to bribe the judges who were presiding over his case, but when that failed he murdered two officers who had arrested him and the chief witnesses, thereby ending the proceedings. This became part of an established pattern, a strategy called plata o plomo (silver plate or lead bullet—i.e. accept a bribe or face assassination). He killed many thousands, on his orders or personally, often with astonishing savagery.

Escobar was a savvy political operator, aware of the need to grease the palms of local politicians. In Medellín he was also a Robin Hood populist, contributing small but significant portions of his personal fortune to local building projects or struggling football clubs, gaining him some popularity among the people of the city. He briefly ran his own newspaper, and in 1982 he became a deputy for the Liberal Party in the Colombian Congress.

By the early 1980s Escobar’s cartel monopolized the South American drug trade, and was responsible for an estimated 80 percent of cocaine and cannabis shipped to the United States, Mexico, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. His operation involved purchasing coca paste in Bolivia and Peru, processing it in drug factories dotted across Colombia, and then smuggling thousands of tons every week out of the country and into the United States, by sea, air and road.

In 1989 Forbes magazine listed Escobar as the seventh richest man in the world, with an estimated fortune of $24 billion. He owned many beautiful homes, a private zoo, numerous yachts and helicopters, a fleet of private airplanes and even two submarines; he also kept a private army of bodyguards and assassins on the payroll. He was utterly unforgiving to those who threatened his position, even in the smallest possible way: after catching a servant stealing silver from one of his palatial homes, he had the unfortunate man tied up and thrown into the swimming pool, leaving him to drown.

It was not long before Escobar began to be targeted by the United States authorities. In 1979 the USA and Colombia had signed an extradition treaty, as part of a tougher approach to the drug trade. Escobar hated this treaty and began a campaign of assassination against anyone who supported it or who called for stronger policies against the drug cartels. He was widely believed to have been behind the storming in 1985 of the Colombian Supreme Court by left-wing guerrillas, which left eleven judges dead. Four years later Escobar ordered the murder of three presidential candidates, as well as the downing of an airliner, which killed 107 people, and the bombing of the national-security building in Bogotá, killing fifty-two. The same year two of his henchmen were arrested in Miami, trying to buy missiles.

In 1991, as the net seemed to be closing in around him, Escobar offered a deal to the Colombian authorities: in order to avoid extradition he would accept five years’ imprisonment. As part of the deal, Escobar was allowed to build his own “prison,” which naturally turned out to be another luxurious palace, from where he could direct his drugs empire by telephone. He was allowed to leave to attend the occasional football match or party, and was also permitted to receive visitors, including prostitutes (the younger the better) and business associates, two of whom were murdered on his premises—he liked to torture his victims personally.

On July 22, 1992, as he was being transferred to a tougher prison, Escobar managed to escape. The Colombian authorities launched a massive manhunt, with help from the USA, and also from Escobar’s enemies, including Los Pepes (People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar), a paramilitary group composed of his victims and members of the rival Cali Cartel. During the sixteen-month search, hundreds of people—both policemen and Escobar’s henchmen—were killed. Escobar was eventually tracked down to a safe house in Medellín and shot in the leg, torso and head as he attempted a daring rooftop escape; he died instantly. It was December 2, 1993, the day after his 44th birthday.

Escobar’s supporters regarded him as a hero and a champion of the poor, but in reality he was an outlaw of unrivaled greed and sadism. His token gestures of philanthropy did not disguise his scant regard for human life, and at the height of its influence his cartel was responsible for an average of twenty murders every month.