Famous Colombian drug lord. All in white: the life and death of Pablo Escobar

It's hard to imagine life in the heart of a criminal empire in Colombia. However, quite recently, some 20-25 years back, city Medellin in Colombia was the most dangerous city on the planet. The city was given this status due to the fact that in those years the city was captured and was in power, expelled from the government, Pablo Escobar, a strange figure, but interesting from a historical point of view.

The life story of the world famous eccentric Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar A ( full name: Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria, years of life: December 1, 1949 – December 2, 1993) continues to attract the attention of many people around the world to this day. Much has already been written about him, and another feature film was shot in 2014 "Paradise Lost" With Benicio Del Toro V leading role. This film does not reflect even half of the horror in which Colombians lived in those years.

Benicio Del Toro, Paradise Lost

During his lifetime, Pablo Escobar was an ambitious and cruel man. His deeds are followed by rivers of blood, which washed the city of Medellin and its surroundings for many years in a row. The Colombians who lived in Medellin in those years were simply afraid to live. The authorities were bribed by Escobar and worked for him, so ordinary Colombians had no protection from the terror perpetrated by the most bloodthirsty drug lord of our time. Nowadays, the city of Medellin no longer poses a great danger. IN lately More and more tourists can be seen on its streets. Russian emigrants also chose Medellin for its mild climate and convenient infrastructure.

You can find information on the Internet about excursions, which are now held in Medellin to the places of the odious drug lord. If you ask yourself, you can easily organize such an excursion yourself. So we decided to independently visit the most iconic places associated with the life of Pablo Escobar.

To begin with, I will say that we ourselves Colombians are not eager to remember and talk about Escobar, since many of them still remember the terrible time they had to endure and strive to forget it as soon as possible. This is understandable. It is probably even indecent to ask anyone in Colombia about Pablo Escobar and the horrors of those days, especially in Medellin. Of course, the years fly by, and much is gradually erased from memory. For young Colombians, all this is already part of history.

Sometimes it seems to me that in their desire to forget the tyranny of the era of Pablo Escobar and his associates, Colombians have now gone too far. What I'm saying is that every week, from Wednesday to Sunday, the streets in Medellin are buzzing with the sounds of a fiesta. until 3 am. This was impossible to imagine in 80s of the XX century. Everyone seems to continue to rejoice in the Escobar regime that has sunk into the past, plunging into the abyss of endless fun. Medellin residents massively organize noisy parties in numerous restaurants and pubs in the city, forgetting, or simply not taking into account those who want to sleep at night. If it were not for the legislative ban on the operation of entertainment establishments until 3 hours nights in Colombia, they probably would have walked for days on end.

To me, this revelry is very similar to expression of joy that hard times drug wars in Medellin led by Pablo Escobar are over. The remaining drug cartels have left the city and are hiding far away in the mountains and forests. Or maybe it's just a manifestation of another trait Colombian character- idleness and cheerful disposition. The first one that I clearly remember a trait of Colombians is that they are not obligatory. Promising, offering something and not delivering is the norm of communication in many Latin American countries, but in Colombia we encountered this feature many times. At first it’s annoying, but then you get used to it and don’t pay attention.

Echoes of that loud era of drug cartels from the time of Pablo Escobar, which still continue to operate in Colombia, can still be found today. So, at discos in the crowd of vacationers you can notice people smelling white powder, and it is legally allowed to have some small dose of drugs on you, and there is no death penalty for this, as in some Asian countries.

So, we started our excursion into the history of Medellin of those times from the end historical events-we decided to visit Cemetery Gardens of Montesacro (Cementerio Jardines Montesacro) in Medellin, since Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria, his brother, parents and bodyguards who died with him are buried here.

The operation to search and detain Escobar was carried out jointly with American intelligence services and continued more than a year. Pablo and his most devoted associates managed to hide from them for a long time. But one day he was identified by a phone call; he called his son the day after his 44th anniversary and admitted serious mistake, which cost him his life - he remained on the line 5 minutes.

In one of the following posts I will write more about the place where Pablo Escobar was killed.

To get to the cemetery Cementerio Jarnines Montesacro in Medellin, you need to take the metro to the station Itagüí(on the blue line), and, without going over (pay attention here!) river Rio Medellin, use the pedestrian bridge to exit the metro.

Itagüi metro station on Google maps marked not at all where it actually is!

Metro station on Google maps Itagüí And Cementerio Jardines Montesacro are on different banks of the river Rio Medellin, and if you look at the Google map, you will see that the cemetery Montesacro Gardens and metro station Itagüí are very close to each other, and this is not true! In reality, it is quite far from the metro to the cemetery (about 2-3 km).

A Google Maps error could cost someone a visit to Escobar's grave if you decide to visit it yourself.

The real Itagüí metro station in Medellin is still on Google maps! It is not connected to any of the designated metro lines in the city, and is indicated on the map as Metro Estacion Itagüí. And the metro station itself Itagüí, and cemetery Montesacro Gardens are on the same bank of the river Rio Medellin.

Itagüí metro station is very close to the street Calle 50 in the place where Calle 50 goes across the river Rio Medellin.

So that you don't get lost, I give below detailed description route from Itagüí metro station to the Cementerio Jarnines Montesacro cemetery, where Pablo Escobar is buried.

So, we get out of the metro at the station Itagüí, we don’t cross the river, but walk along Calle 50 in the opposite direction from the river towards the street Autopista Del Sur(Freeway Sur, another name - Carrera 42) meters 200 .

At the crossroads and Calle 50 you'll see metal bridge through Autopista Del Sur (Carrera 42), this is a pedestrian bridge. If you were walking along Calle 50, then here you need to turn left and, better, cross the street, since there is a wide and convenient sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. Along the street Autopista Del Sur (Carrera 42) from the metro side Itagüí In some places there is no sidewalk at all, and you will have to walk along the side of the roadway with people rushing along it. high speed cars. Therefore, let's move on. In addition, on the same side there will be the cemetery itself.

Without turning anywhere, we go straight all the time. Down the street Autopista Del Sur (Carrera 42) There are some buses running, the routes of which we still haven’t figured out. The area here resembles an industrial zone, the streets are deserted, but there is a lot of traffic.

Minutes later 20 You will see a fenced area located on a hill. We reach a checkpoint with a gate, this is it entrance to the cemetery Cementerio Jarnines Montesacro.

Leads upstairs highway, and immediately from the fence to the right there are steps for pedestrians - this is where we need to go. We go up the steps, and the first thing we see is gray Chapel building.

Pablo Escobar's grave located near the walls of this Chapels at the cemetery Montesacro Gardens. To see the tomb of the self-proclaimed king Pablo Escobar, Capella you need to go completely around the right side. At the moment when we approached it, several Colombians were standing at the grave of the drug lord. Yes, yes! Colombians also come here to honor the memory of their hero. And it's true! For many Colombians who lived in Medellin in time of troubles, Pablo Escobar was a true hero– he helped the poor, built schools and hospitals for them. Probably, the families of these people are grateful to the drug lord, and do not see him as the monster he appears to the whole world.

Escobar's grave modest, and in fact it is just a small tombstone on which his name, date of birth and date of death are engraved.
All.
There are no pretentious tombstone sculptures made of rare stone here.

Cemetery Gardens of Montesacro the place is quite well maintained and modern, it is positioned as ecological cemetery, which you can visit even with pets. The cemetery administration unobtrusively informs about this - there are small flags throughout the cemetery encouraging people to come here with their pets, and in return they only ask to clean up their excrement.

And, of course, this cemetery is very different from most classical cemeteries in Latin America.

If we move counterclockwise from the Chapel with the tomb of Pablo Escobar, then the next thing we will see is Columbarium building.

You can go there and walk along the rows along which small openings are built into the walls, where there are urns with the ashes of the deceased citizens of Medellin.

Inside the Columbarium, a security guard prohibited taking photographs.

Next to the Columbarium, to the left of it, under a canopy there is a wooden sculpture Cristo De Los Andes (“Christ of the Andes”) work Jose Horacio Betancur.

This one again surname Betancur (Betancourt), with which we are familiar from Cuba. Last name Bettencourt Latin America belongs to a noble family. And in Cuba we stayed in the house Casa Particulares, whose owners also bear the surname Betancourt. The atmosphere in that house was somewhat different from other houses in Cuba. The behavior and the way the hostess behaved was similar to that of an aristocrat. Maybe it's just a coincidence.

To the cemetery Montesacro Gardens Harmony and grace reign. The bushes and grass on the lawns between the tombstones are neatly trimmed, and colorful butterflies flutter over the cemetery.

Even on a weekday in the heat of the day there are people here, but not so many that it is a problem. Fortunately, the size of the cemetery allows everyone to scatter to different corners.

A little further - building of the Pantheon of Eternal Memory (Panteon de la Eterna Memoria), and behind it an ordinary residential building peeks out. It is unlikely that sufficiently wealthy people live in this house so close to the cemetery. It is calm and quiet, there is no dusty highway under the windows, and only a peaceful view opens from the windows of the apartments in this building.

Inside Pantheon I still managed to take a few photos. Here is vintage hearse, in which horses were once harnessed, and a coachman sitting somewhere up there with a mute face was taking his passenger on his last journey.

There are also not many people in the Pantheon. I mean, living people. Marble slabs along the walls are decorated with flowers brought by relatives and friends of the buried.

Maybe the residents of that residential building were specially moved here in order to constantly remind them of the frailty of existence? After all, on the other side of the house the windows overlook part of the cemetery Montesacro Gardens, called "Forest of Life" (Bosque de Vida). Any look from the windows of this residential building is a reminder of the perishability of existence that surrounds a person every moment of his life. It's fun, you can't say anything.

In this small, relatively new, as can be seen from the unsigned tombstones, garden Bosque de Vida, everyone can buy themselves a place for their final resting place.

Here at the cemetery there is a nice little service - you can choose in advance a shady place under the overgrown bushes of spathiphyllum (spathiphyllum), under an Indian mango tree, under bushes with blue-orange flowers.

Or, if you want, you can buy a plot of land with a gate that is completely fenced off with a stone wall and arrange it as you wish.

For example, like the courtyard of a house in London.

At the time of our visit to the cemetery Montesacro Gardens V March 2015, under "tree of life" growing in the middle of this wonderful garden Bosque de Vida, there are still many unsold places. And the fenced-off areas are still free in some places. Here and there in the park-cemetery there are such birds with a tuft, they quickly run between the graves and look like little dinosaurs looking for something to profit from.

Stands in the middle of the cemetery mass grave with the monument "People".

In total, we spent about an hour in the cemetery. 3 . Time seems to stop here, and you don’t feel that heavy and sad aura that I feel in cemeteries in Russia. Cemetery Gardens of Montesacro- it’s like an enterprise, a park in which people work who maintain cleanliness and order in their possessions. I wonder if they are funded by the state or if they are a completely commercial structure that pays for itself by selling small plots of land for future and eternal ownership? And if so, what other related services do they provide to their regular customers?

Back to the metro station Itagüí we took the same road that we went to the cemetery. We were caught by a little rain, the heat subsided a little.

I already wrote about this, but I will repeat it. In Colombia, it is not recommended to lean against the walls of buildings, fences and poles to the height of the human organs. This is due to the fact that Colombians do not hesitate to relieve themselves wherever they feel like it. I'm talking about commoners and ill-mannered people, if you look at them from the height of European civilization, people. My Colombian friends in Medellin, when asked about this massive Colombian phenomenon, shrugged their shoulders and replied that they had nothing like it in their country, and they had never seen anything like it. But I myself have personally seen more than once how a man walks down the street in the city, stops and begins to relieve himself, not paying any attention to passers-by and vehicles. In the old part of Medellin, it’s generally like that, it seems to me that the walls of the buildings have been absorbing urine for centuries– this can be seen from the unambiguous, sometimes fresh, stains on the walls and is felt from the persistent smell of urea. This happens during the day, in the evening, at any time of the day. The human body cannot relieve itself on a schedule. That's what I wanted and that's it! What to do? Turn to the tree or fence, unzip your fly and let the whole world rest. According to the mass of this phenomenon Colombia can only be compared with Guatemala, and other countries are not too far behind.

This time I caught one of these with a camera in my hands pisuna in Medellin on the street Carrera 42 in broad daylight. We walked from the cemetery to the metro. Everything would be fine, but the warning sign standing nearby seems to hint that it doesn’t matter whether they are looking at him or not.

All in all, Colombia in this regard it also reminds me India, where poor and uneducated people are not embarrassed at all and relieve even greater need in crowded places. Well, I was impatient! What!? Should I shit my pants? Sometimes you travel like this in India by train, look out the window, enjoy the beauty of the local landscapes... And here you are! The picture changes abruptly, and you already see something else - men and women squatting in rows doing their job and looking at the train. And you are on them. And they are on the train. A strange sight.

Let's leave this topic, disgusting for Puritan society, and let's go to where the house where the father of Colombian drug trafficker Pablo Escobar lived.

We took the metro to the station Aguacatala, and went up the hill along the road. The area here is quite decent and quiet.

At the intersection of streets Carrera 44 And Calle 15 Sur and there is a house that Escobar built for himself and his family.

Here he lived for some time, continuing to create his terrifying to Medellin, business. After Escobar killed in 1993, the house was looted and is now in complete desolation. The Medellin authorities still don’t know what to do with this house, which is why it continues to deteriorate year after year.

Not seeing anyone, we decided to try to move the gate to get into the area and take some photos. Hearing the hysterical creaking of the gate, a security guard in uniform appeared from somewhere in the depths of the yard of the terrible house and said that entry into the territory was prohibited. We replied that we are from Russia and we are doing a report for , and that we would like to take a couple of closer pictures. The guard gave up without a fight and let us inside for 5 minutes.

This is the main entrance to Pablo Escobar's house.

Richly decorated for those times? Or did the richest man on the planet at that time simply have no taste?

In the lobby there are 3 elevator The ceilings are very low. Of course, there is no greatness in all this now. And did it exist?

It was not possible to wander around the house due to the time limit issued by the house guard, so inside I took another shot through the gap in the door leading to the next room. I don’t know what kind of strange room this is.

In general, the architecture of the building is of absolutely no interest. So, we checked into another Escobar place.

There is a huge dish antenna in the backyard of Escobar's house. Mobile phones in those years there was no antenna that could serve for satellite communications.

And in the basement of the house there is garage. Entering the garage is very inconvenient. You need to move in and out of it carefully because of the wall that stands directly opposite the entrance to the garage.

Pablo Escobar was a famous collector vintage cars, they were all here. Probably, some of the collection could have been preserved; this property rests somewhere in the backyard of one of Escobar’s admirers.

There is one in the yard of the house playground. One can imagine how the drug lord’s guards and other retinue whiled away the time, waiting for the villain’s next brilliant plans.

In the far corner of the yard stands an inconspicuous wooden structure. Now all that remains are ruins. From a distance you can see that the interior of this building is decorated with ceramic tiles.

Not to say that all this is chic, but on a grand scale. After all, in Colombia, some people still live in wooden and cardboard boxes, and the social gap between rich and poor Colombians is widening every year.

Well, since we are here in this part of the city, we at the same time decided to visit another attraction of Medellin - El Castillo Palace (Fortress). In general, there’s a lot to tell about how we walked around it for an hour 3 , I won't. Let me just say that we were pretty exhausted that day, since this area is located on the hills, and all this time we walked up and down in the sweltering heat and everything around El Castillo.

Ask for directions to El Castillo somehow there was no one, there were no passers-by along the way. Completely exhausted and tired, we finally found this palace El Castillo. It is located, as it were, in the center of a large wealthy park-like residential area, which cannot be passed through, since the parks and squares near the houses are surrounded by fences with checkpoints, like at Pablo Escobar’s house.

Approaching the entrance of the fortress, we learned that El Castillo Museum closes in 20 minutes, entrance fee. We hung around the entrance for a bit, looked at the palace from afar and trudged towards the metro.

If it weren’t for random passers-by, we would still be wandering around this quarter again for an hour 3 . And this despite the presence of a map on which this entire huge residential area was marked with one green spot, which we initially took for a park. Of course, there is a park there too, but don’t ask how to get there.

In an elite, so to speak, area of the city, in its very center, on the way to the metro we met cows grazing freely in a huge field surrounded by a barbed wire fence.

We hardly spoke the entire way back, since any muscle movement, even the tongue, seemed heavy and difficult. But at the house, when we arrived at our station Estadio, we unanimously decided to treat ourselves after such an intense walking tour that took up the whole day - in the supermarket EXITO we bought the famous Medellin Tres Leches cake (Three Milks), and soda!

And with such pleasure we killed half of them Tres Leches for two, washed down with sizzling bubbles that taste like Buratino. A traditional Colombian delicacy, cake. Tres Leches- This is a sponge cake generously soaked in sweet liquid cream, topped with a layer of condensed milk, covered with whipped cream, and a little chocolate with coffee powder. They say that it is in Medellin that it is recommended to try this dessert. Made!

I wanted to describe all the events of this week in one post, but the material turned out to be too voluminous, and the week turned out to be busy, and what a week.

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Pablo Escobar
Spanish Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria
Birth name: Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria
Occupation: Drug lord
Date of birth: December 1, 1949
Place of birth: Rionegro, Colombia
Nationality: Colombia
Date of death: December 2, 1993
Place of Death: Medellin, Colombia

Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria(Spanish: Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria; December 1, 1949 - December 2, 1993) - Colombian drug lord, terrorist. Pablo Escobar made a lot of money from the drug business. In 1989, Forbes magazine estimated his fortune at $47 billion.
Escobar went down in history as one of the most daring and brutal criminals of the 20th century, not only in Colombia, but throughout the whole world. Killing judges, prosecutors, journalists, destroying civil aircraft, police stations and personally executing his victims, he was popular among young people and the poor.

Early years
Born on December 1, 1949, 40 kilometers from Medellin. Escobar was the third child in the family. His father was a poor peasant, his mother also came from the lower classes.
Like most of his peers, Pablo Escobar loved to listen heroic stories about the legendary Colombian "bandidos". About how they robbed the rich and helped the needy. Already as a child, he decided that when he grew up, he would become the same “Bandido”. At school, Pablo had to study among children from poorer families. In 1961, his family moved to Envigado, south of Medellin. There Pablo went to study at local school. He soon began smoking marijuana and was kicked out of school at age 16.
Start of criminal activity

Pablo began to spend most of his time in the poor neighborhoods of Medellin, which was a real hotbed of crime. At first, he began to steal tombstones from the local cemetery and, erasing the inscriptions, sold them again. Soon he created a small gang and began to engage in more sophisticated criminal activity: the theft of expensive cars for sale for spare parts. Then Pablo Escobar came up with another idea: to offer his “protection” to potential hijacking victims. Those who refused to pay his gang sooner or later lost their cars. This was already a real racket.

At 21, he already had quite a few followers. At the same time, Escobar's crimes became even more sophisticated and cruel. From ordinary car thefts and racketeering, he started kidnapping. In 1971, Pablo Escobar's men kidnapped the wealthy Colombian industrialist Diego Echevario, who was killed after prolonged torture. The murdered Diego Echevario aroused open hatred among the local poor peasantry, and Pablo Escobar openly declared his involvement in the kidnapping and murder. The poor people of Medellin celebrated the death of Diego Echevario and, as a sign of gratitude to Escobar, began to respectfully call him “El Doctor.” Pablo Escobar began to “feed” the local poor by building them new cheap houses. He understood that sooner or later they would become something of a protective buffer between him and the authorities. His popularity in Medellin grew day by day.

In 1972, Pablo Escobar was already Medellin's most famous crime boss. His criminal gang engaged in car thefts, smuggling and kidnappings. Soon his gang expanded beyond Medellin.

Meanwhile, in the United States, the new generation of Americans of the 70s was no longer content with just marijuana, they needed a stronger drug, and cocaine soon appeared on American streets. On this Pablo Escobar began to build his criminal business. He first bought cocaine from manufacturers and resold it to smugglers, who then transported it to the United States. The absolute absence of any “inhibitions” and his manic readiness to torture and kill set him apart from other bandits. When he heard rumors of some profitable criminal business, he simply seized it by force without further ado. Anyone who stood in his way or could in any way threaten him immediately disappeared without a trace. Quite quickly, Escobar began to run almost the entire cocaine industry in Colombia.

In March 1976, Pablo Escobar married his 18-year-old girlfriend, Maria Victoria Eneo Viejo, who had previously been in his circle. A month later their son Juan Pablo was born, and three and a half years later their daughter Manuella was born.

Escobar's drug business grew rapidly throughout South America. Soon he himself began smuggling cocaine into the United States. One of Escobar’s close associates, a certain Carlos Leider, who was responsible for transporting cocaine, organized a real drug trafficking transshipment point in the Bahamas. His work was organized on top level: a large pier, a number of gas stations and a modern hotel with all amenities were built there. Not a single drug trafficker could export cocaine outside of Colombia without the permission of Pablo Escobar. He removed the so-called 35 percent tax from each shipment of drugs and ensured its delivery. Escobar's criminal career was more than successful; he was literally swimming in dollars. In the jungles of Colombia, he opened chemical laboratories for the production of cocaine.
Founding of the cocaine cartel

In the summer of 1977, he and three other major drug traffickers teamed up to create what became known as the Medellin cocaine cartel. He had the most powerful financial and cocaine empire, which no drug mafia in the world could dream of. To deliver cocaine, the cartel had a distribution network, airplanes, and even submarines. Pablo Escobar became the undisputed authority of the cocaine world and the absolute leader of the Medellin cartel. He bought policemen, judges, politicians. If bribery did not work, then blackmail was used, but basically the cartel acted according to the principle: “Plata O Plomo” - translated as “silver or lead”, in other words, “if you don’t take the money, you’ll get a bullet.”

By 1979, the Medellin cartel already owned more than 80% of the US cocaine industry. 30-year-old Pablo Escobar became one of the richest people in the world, whose personal fortune amounted to billions of dollars.

To enlist the support of the population, he launched extensive construction in Medellin. He paved roads, built stadiums and erected free houses for the poor, which were popularly called “Pablo Escobar quarters.” He himself explained his charity by the fact that it hurt him to see how the poor suffered. Escobar saw himself as a Colombian Robin Hood.
Political activity
Propaganda posters for Escobar's presidential campaign.

In the criminal world, he reached the pinnacle of power. Now he was looking for a way to make his business legal. In 1982, Pablo Escobar ran for office and, at age 32, became a substitute member of the Colombian Congress (gaining the right to vote for congressmen during their absence).

Having broken into Congress, Escobar dreamed of becoming president of Colombia. At the same time, once in Bogota, he noticed that his popularity did not extend beyond Medellin. In Bogota, naturally, they heard about him, but as a dubious person paving a cocaine road to the presidency. One of the most popular politicians in Colombia, the main candidate for the presidency, Luis Carlos Galan, was the first to openly condemn the new congressman’s connection with the cocaine business.

A few days later, Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonia launched a broad campaign against the investment of dirty cocaine money in the election race. As a result, Pablo Escobar was expelled from the Colombian Congress in January 1984. Through the efforts of the Minister of Justice his political career disappeared once and for all. However, Escobar was not going to leave quietly and decided to take revenge on the minister.

On April 30, 1984, Bonia's ministerial Mercedes stopped at a traffic light on one of Bogota's busiest streets. At that moment, a motorcyclist drove up at point-blank range with a machine gun, riddling the back of the Mercedes, where the Minister of Justice usually sat. An automatic burst literally blew off the head of Rodrigo Lara Bonia. This is the first time that bandits have killed such a high-ranking official in Colombia. From that day on, terror began to spread throughout Colombia.

In the mid-1980s, Escobar's cocaine empire controlled almost every aspect of Colombian society. However, a serious threat looms over him. The administration of US President Ronald Reagan declared its own war on drug trafficking not only in the United States, but throughout the world. An agreement was reached between the United States and Colombia, according to which the Colombian government pledged to hand over to American justice the cocaine barons involved in trafficking drugs to the United States.

This was done because if drug traffickers were in any Colombian prison, they could, as before, continue to run their gangs without hindrance directly from their places of detention and would very soon be free. As for extradition to the United States, the drug traffickers understood that they would not be able to buy their freedom there.

The drug mafia responded with terror to the total war started by the government. Pablo Escobar created a terrorist group called Los Extraditables. Its members attacked officials, police, and anyone who opposed the drug trade. The reason for the terrorist attack could have been a major police operation or the extradition of another cocaine mafia boss to the United States.

A year later, the Supreme Court overturned the agreement on the extradition of drug traffickers to the United States. However, after a few days new president Colombia's Vergilio Barco vetoed the decision Supreme Court and renewed this agreement. In February 1987, Escobar's closest assistant, Carlos Leider, was extradited to the United States.

Pablo Escobar was forced to build secret hideouts throughout the country. Thanks to information from his people in the government, he managed to stay one step ahead law enforcement agencies. In addition, the peasants always warned him when suspicious people, cars with policemen or soldiers, or a helicopter appeared.

In August 1989, the terror reached its peak. On August 16, 1989, Supreme Court member Carlos Valencia died at the hands of Escobar's hitmen. The next day, police Colonel Waldemar Franklin Contero was killed. On August 18, 1989, at a pre-election rally, the famous Colombian politician Luis Carlos Galan was shot, who promised, if elected president of the country, to start an irreconcilable war against cocaine traffickers, to cleanse Colombia of drug lords by extraditing them to the United States.

Before the elections, the terror of the Medellin cartel acquired a special scope. Cartel hitmen killed dozens of people every day. In Bogota alone, one of the terrorist drug mafia groups carried out 7 explosions within two weeks, as a result of which 37 people were killed and about 400 were seriously injured.

On November 27, 1989, Pablo Escobar's men planted a bomb on a Boeing 727 passenger plane of the Colombian airline Avianca, which was carrying 101 passengers and 6 crew members. Successor of the deceased Luis Carlos Galan, future president Colombia, César Gaviria Trujillo, was supposed to fly on this plane. Five minutes after the airliner took off, a powerful explosion was heard on board. The plane broke in half, caught fire and crashed into the nearby hills. None of the people on board survived; three people on the ground were killed by falling aircraft debris. As it turned out later, Cesar Gaviria canceled his flight at the last moment for some reason.

Massive raids swept across the country, during which chemical laboratories and coca plantations were destroyed. Dozens of drug cartel members are behind bars. In response to this, Pablo Escobar twice made attempts on the life of the chief of the Colombian secret police, General Miguel Masa Marquez. In the second attempt, on December 6, 1989, a bomb explosion killed 62 people and injured 100 of varying degrees of severity.

...By the beginning of the 90s, Pablo Escobar was considered one of richest people planets. His fortune was estimated at at least $30 billion. He topped the list of the most wanted drug traffickers in the United States. On his heels invariably followed the most elite special forces, which set themselves the task of catching or destroying Pablo Escobar at any cost.
Harassment and arrest

In 1990, just the mention of Pablo Escobar's name struck terror throughout Colombia. He was the most known criminal in the world. The government created a “Special Search Group” whose target was Pablo Escobar himself. The group included the best police officers from selected units, as well as people from the army, special services and the prosecutor's office.

The creation of the “Special Search Group,” headed by Colonel Martinez, immediately brought positive results. Several people from Pablo Escobar's inner circle found themselves behind the walls of the secret police.

Escobar's men kidnapped some of Colombia's richest people. Pablo Escobar hoped that influential relatives of the hostages would put pressure on the government to cancel the agreement on the extradition of the criminals. And ultimately Escobar's plan succeeded. The government canceled the extradition of Pablo Escobar. On June 19, 1991, after Pablo Escobar was no longer in danger of extradition to the United States, he surrendered to the authorities. Escobar agreed to plead guilty to several minor crimes, in exchange for all his past sins being forgiven. Pablo Escobar was in a prison that he built for himself.

The prison was called "La Catedral" and was built in the Envigado mountain range. La Catedral looked more like an expensive, prestigious country club than a regular prison. There was a disco, a swimming pool, a jacuzzi and a sauna, and in the courtyard there was a large football field. Friends and women came to see him there. Escobar's family could visit him at any time. Colonel Martinez's "Special Search Group" did not have the right to approach La Catedral closer than 20 kilometers. Escobar came and went as he pleased. He attended football matches and nightclubs in Medellin.

During his imprisonment, Pablo Escobar continued to run a multi-billion dollar cocaine business. One day he learned that his associates in the cocaine cartel, taking advantage of his absence, robbed him. He immediately ordered his men to take them to La Catedral. He personally subjected them to unbearable torture, drilling his victims' knees and tearing out their nails, and then ordered his men to kill them and take the corpses outside the prison. It is known that Escobar committed one of the two murders with his own hands. This time Escobar went too far. On July 22, 1992, President Gaviria gave the order to transfer Pablo Escobar to a real prison. But Escobar found out about the president's decision and fled.

Now he was free, but he had enemies everywhere. There were fewer and fewer places left in which he could find a safe refuge. The US and Colombian governments this time were determined to put an end to Escobar and his Medellin cocaine cartel. After his escape from prison, everything began to fall apart. His friends began to leave him. Pablo Escobar's main mistake was that he could not critically assess the current situation. He considered himself a more significant figure than he actually was. He continued to have enormous financial resources, but he no longer had real power. The only way to somehow improve the situation was an attempt to renew the agreement with the government. Escobar tried several times to re-enter into a deal with justice, but President Cesar Gaviria and the US government believed that this time it was not worth entering into any negotiations with the drug lord. It was decided to pursue him and, if possible, eliminate him during his arrest.

On January 30, 1993, Pablo Escobar's people planted powerful bomb into a car near a bookstore on one of the crowded streets of Bogota. The explosion occurred when there were a lot of people. Mostly these were parents with their children. As a result of this terrorist attack, 21 people were killed and more than 70 were seriously injured.

A group of Colombian citizens created the organization "Los Pepes", whose acronym stood for "People Victims of Pablo Escobar". It included Colombian citizens whose relatives died because of Escobar.

After the terrorist attack, Los Pepes detonated bombs in front of Pablo Escobar's house. The estate that belonged to his mother burned to the ground. Instead of pursuing Pablo Escobar himself, Los Pepes began to terrorize and hunt everyone who was in any way connected with him or his cocaine business. They were simply killed. In a short amount of time, they caused significant damage to his cocaine empire. They killed many of his people and persecuted his family. They burned his estates. Now Escobar was seriously worried, because Los Pepes, having discovered the family, would immediately destroy it to the last person, not even sparing his elderly mother and children. If his family were outside Colombia, beyond the reach of Los Pepes, he could declare all-out war on the government and his enemies. He wanted to take his family to Germany. But after negotiations between the Colombian government and US intelligence agencies with the German government, Escobar's family was denied entry into the country and the plane was returned back to Colombia. In Colombia, the government put them up in a hotel.
End of career and death
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Colombian police officers near Escobar's corpse.

In the fall of 1993, the Medellin cocaine cartel collapsed. But Pablo Escobar himself was more worried about his family. For more than a year he had not seen his wife or children. For Escobar this was intolerable. On December 1, 1993, Pablo Escobar turned 44 years old. He knew that he was under constant surveillance, so he tried to speak on the phone as briefly as possible so that he would not be detected by NSA agents.

The day after his birthday, December 2, 1993, he called his family. NSA agents had been waiting for this call for 24 hours. This time, while talking to his son Juan, he stayed on the line for about 5 minutes. After this, Escobar was spotted in the Medellin quarter of Los Olibos. Soon, the house in which Pablo Escobar was hiding was surrounded on all sides by special agents. The special forces knocked down the door and burst inside. At that moment, Escobar's bodyguard, El Limon, opened fire on the police who were trying to storm the house. He was wounded and fell to the ground. Immediately after this, with a pistol in his hands, Pablo Escobar himself leaned out of the same window. He opened random fire in all directions. He then climbed out the window and tried to escape his pursuers through the roof. There, a bullet fired by a Los Pepes sniper hiding on the roof of a nearby house hit Escobar in the leg and he fell. The next bullet hit Escobar in the back, after which the sniper approached Escobar and fired a control shot in the head.

Now Escobar's prison has been looted, his estates are overgrown with grass, his cars are burned out and their skeletons are rusting in the garage. Escobar's widow and children live in Argentina; his brother is almost completely blind after a letter bomb was sent to his cell.
In works of art

Documentary by Jeff and Michael Zimbalist. The two Escobars; 2010; Colombia-USA. Enters the cycle documentaries 30 events from 30 years of ESPN.
IN feature film“The Crew” (“The Crew”, USA, 2000) of the drug lord’s two assistants are called Pablo and Escobar.
The film Cocaine (Blow) featured the character Pablo Escobar.
In the series Entourage, one of the main characters of the series, Vincent Chase (Adrian Graner), played the role of Pablo Escobar in the film Medellin, the film talked about the emotions and experiences of the main drug lord of Colombia.

In the repertoire of the Mexican group Brujeria, the album “Raza Odiada” (1995), there is a song “El Patron”, dedicated to the memory of Pablo Escobar.

IN computer games GTA Vice City and GTA Vice City Stories The international airport is named after Pablo Escobar.
In the game Xenus: Boiling point, the image of Pablo Escobar was “glued” to the image of one of the drug lords, Don Esteban.
In the feature film Marley and Me, Sebastian Tannay (Eric Dane) allegedly met with Pablo Escobar who told him: “Yes, he says, I read your article about Gaddafi, you did a great job tickling that peacock.”
Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, in his documentary thriller "News of a Kidnapping," tells the story of Pablo Escobar's struggle with the country's government to repeal the law on extradition by kidnapping. famous journalists and relatives of Colombian politicians.
In the album of the Russian rap group Bad Balance “Legends of Gangsters” there is a song “Pablo Escobar”.
In the repertoire American group Soulfly the song Plata o Plomo from the album Enslaved is dedicated to the activities of Pablo Escobar.
The leader of the rock band Bredor goes by the nickname "Escobar".

Interesting facts

Escobar owned 34 estates, 500 thousand hectares of land, 40 rare Rolls-Royce cars.
On Escobar's estate, 20 artificial lakes, six swimming pools were dug, and even a small airport was built.
Within his estate, Pablo Escobar ordered the construction of a safari zoo, which included 120 antelope, 30 buffalo, 6 hippopotamuses, 3 elephants and 2 rhinoceroses.
The son of a drug lord, Sebastian Marroquin, said in October 2009 that somehow, in once again hiding from government agents, Escobar, along with his son and daughter, ended up in a high-mountain shelter. The night turned out to be extremely cold, and, trying to warm his daughter, Escobar burned $1 million 964 thousand in cash.
Pablo Escobar was depicted on a New Year's greeting advertising poster in the center of Kharkov (at the beginning of Pushkinskaya Street). Until now, no one has spoken openly about their involvement in placing the drug lord on this congratulatory poster.
In the movie Jay and Silent Bob, the crack dealer's name is Pablo Escobar.

(1993-12-02 ) (44 years old)

Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria(Spanish) Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria ; December 1 - December 2) - Colombian drug lord and politician. Escobar made huge, but at the same time dirty money from the drug business. In 1989, Forbes magazine estimated his fortune at more than $1 billion.

Escobar went down in history as one of the most famous and brutal criminals of the 20th century, not only in Colombia, but throughout the whole world. By killing judges, prosecutors, journalists, destroying civilian aircraft, police stations and personally executing his victims, he was also popular among young people and the poor.

Biography

Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was born on December 1, 1949 in the city of Rionegro (Colombia), he was the third child in the family of farmer Jesus Dari Escobar and schoolteacher Hemilda Gaviria. As a teenager, Pablo spent a lot of time on the streets of Medellin, which was the capital of the department of Antioquia (27 km from Rionegro). Pablo did not drink alcohol, but school years and smoked Colombian hemp for the rest of his life. For a short period of time he studied at the Autonomous University of Latin America in Medellin.

Start of criminal activity

Young Pablo spent most of his time in the poor neighborhoods of Medellin, which was a real hotbed of crime. Escobar began stealing tombstones from a local cemetery and, erasing the inscriptions, selling them to Panamanian resellers. Then he sold cigarettes and marijuana, counterfeited lottery tickets. Soon he created a small gang and began stealing expensive cars for sale for spare parts. Then the idea came to him to engage in racketeering.

In 1971, Pablo's men kidnapped a wealthy Colombian industrialist. Diego Echavarria, who was killed after prolonged torture. The criminals tried to obtain a ransom, but failed and, after strangling their victim, threw the body into a landfill. Escobar openly declared his involvement in his murder. The poor people of Medellin celebrated the death of Diego Echavarría and, as a sign of gratitude to Escobar, began to respectfully call him “El Doctor.” By robbing the rich, Pablo built cheap housing for the poor, and his popularity in Medellin grew day by day.

A year later, 22-year-old Escobar was Medellin's most notorious crime boss. His gang continued to grow, and Pablo decided to start a new criminal business with which his entire subsequent life would be connected. In the 1970s, the United States was a country with an unlimited market for drug trafficking. Marijuana was to be replaced by a new drug, and it was cocaine, which, along with other alkaloids, is found in plants of the genus Erythroxylum ( Erythroxylum), for example in the cocaine bush ( Erythroxylum coca) etc. These plants were widespread in Colombia, and Escobar put drug production on stream. However, at first Pablo’s group was only an intermediary, buying goods from manufacturers and selling them to resellers who sold cocaine in the United States.

Escobar's drug business grew rapidly throughout South America. He himself began smuggling cocaine into the United States. One of Escobar's close associates, a certain Carlos Leder, responsible for transporting cocaine, organized a drug trafficking transshipment point in the Bahamas. Its work was organized at the highest level: a large pier, a number of gas stations and a modern hotel with all amenities were built there. Not a single drug trafficker could export cocaine outside of Colombia without the permission of Pablo Escobar. Escobar removed the so-called 35 percent tax from each shipment of drugs and ensured its delivery. In the jungles of Colombia, he opened chemical laboratories for the production of cocaine.

Founding of the cocaine cartel

In the summer of 1977, Escobar and three other major drug traffickers united and created an organization that became known as the Medellin Cartel. He had the most powerful financial and cocaine empire, which no other drug mafia in the world had. To deliver cocaine, the cartel had a distribution network, airplanes, and even submarines. Pablo Escobar became the undisputed authority of the cocaine world and the absolute leader of the Medellin cartel. He bribed police officers, judges, and politicians. If bribery did not work, then blackmail was used, but basically the cartel acted according to the principle: “ Plata O Plomo" - in other words, "silver or lead."

By 1979, the Medellin cartel already owned more than 80% of the US cocaine industry. 30-year-old Pablo Escobar became one of the richest people in the world.

To enlist the support of the population, Escobar launched extensive construction in Medellin. He paved roads, built stadiums and erected free houses for the poor, which were popularly called “Pablo Escobar quarters.” He himself explained his charity by the fact that it hurt him to see how the poor suffered. Escobar tried to present himself as the Colombian Robin Hood.

Political activity

In the underworld, Escobar reached the pinnacle of power. Later, he began to look for a way to make his business legal. In 1982, Pablo Escobar ran for office and, at age 32, became a substitute congressman for the Colombian Congress (gaining the right to vote for congressmen during their absence).

Having infiltrated Congress, Escobar began to dream of becoming president of Colombia. At the same time, once in Bogota, he noticed that his popularity did not extend beyond Medellin. In Bogota, naturally, they heard about him, but as a dubious person paving a cocaine road to the presidency. One of the most popular politicians in Colombia, the main candidate for the presidency, Luis Carlos Galan, was the first to openly condemn the new congressman’s connection with the cocaine business.

A few days later, Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla launched a widespread campaign against the investment of dirty cocaine money in the election race. As a result, Pablo Escobar was expelled from the Colombian Congress in January 1984. Through the efforts of the Minister of Justice, his political career ended once and for all. However, Escobar was not going to leave quietly and decided to take revenge on the minister.

The drug mafia responded with terror to the total war started by the government. Pablo Escobar created a terrorist group called Los Extraditables. Its participants attacked officials, police, and anyone who opposed drug trafficking. The reason for the terrorist attack could have been a major police operation or the extradition of another cocaine mafia boss to the United States.

A year later, the Supreme Court overturned the agreement on the extradition of drug traffickers to the United States. However, within a few days, the new President of Colombia, Vergilio Barco, vetoed the Supreme Court's decision and renewed the agreement. In February 1987, Escobar's closest assistant, Carlos Leder, was extradited to the United States.

Pablo Escobar was forced to build secret hideouts throughout the country. Thanks to information from his people in the government, he managed to stay one step ahead of law enforcement agencies. In addition, the peasants always warned him when suspicious people, cars with policemen or soldiers, or a helicopter appeared.

Thanks to the activities of the group, led by Colonel Martinez, several people from Pablo Escobar's inner circle were captured.

Escobar's men kidnapped some of Colombia's richest people. Pablo Escobar hoped that influential relatives of the hostages would put pressure on the government to cancel the agreement on the extradition of the criminals. And ultimately Escobar's plan succeeded. The government canceled the extradition of Pablo Escobar. On June 19, 1991, after Pablo Escobar was no longer in danger of extradition to the United States, he surrendered to the authorities. Escobar agreed to plead guilty to several minor crimes, in return he was forgiven for all of his past. Pablo Escobar was in a prison that he built for himself.

The prison was called La Catedral?!"and was built in the Envigado mountain range. La Catedral looked more like an expensive, prestigious club than an ordinary prison. There was a disco, a swimming pool, a jacuzzi and a sauna, and in the courtyard there was a large football field. Friends and women came to see Escobar there. Escobar's family could visit him at any time. Colonel Martinez's "Special Search Group" had no right to approach La Catedral closer than 3 kilometers. Escobar came and went as he pleased. He attended football matches and nightclubs in Medellin.

During his “imprisonment,” Pablo Escobar continued to run a multi-billion dollar cocaine business. One day he learned that his associates in the cocaine cartel, taking advantage of his absence, robbed him. He immediately ordered his men to take them to La Catedral. He personally subjected them brutal torture, drilling into his victims' knees and tearing out their nails, and then ordered his men to kill them and take the corpses outside the prison. It is known that Escobar committed one of the two murders with his own hands.

This time Escobar went too far. On July 22, 1992, President Cesar Gaviria gave the order to transport Pablo Escobar to a real prison. But Escobar found out about the president's decision and fled.

Now he was free, but he had enemies everywhere. There were fewer and fewer places left in which he could find a safe refuge. The US and Colombian governments this time were determined to put an end to Escobar and his Medellin cocaine cartel. After escaping from prison, everything began to fall apart for Escobar. His friends began to leave him. Escobar's main mistake was that he could not critically assess the current situation. He considered himself a more significant figure than he actually was. He continued to have enormous financial resources, but he no longer had real power. The only way for Escobar to somehow improve the situation was to try to renew the agreement with the government. Escobar tried several times to re-enter a deal with justice, but President Cesar Gaviria, as well as the US government, believed that this time it was not worth entering into any negotiations with the drug lord. It was decided to pursue him and, if possible, eliminate him during his arrest.

On January 30, 1993, Pablo Escobar's men planted a powerful bomb in a car near a bookstore on one of the crowded streets of Bogota. The explosion occurred when there were a lot of people there, mostly parents with their children. As a result of this terrorist attack, 21 people were killed and more than 70 were seriously injured.

The Cali drug cartel, which competed with it, also fought with the Medellin cartel. In addition, the Self-Defense Forces of Cordoba and Uraba ( Autodefensas Campesinas de Córdoba y Urabá, ACCU), created by the Castaño brothers Gil-Fidel, Vicente and Carlos, a far-right paramilitary group whose fighters fought the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - the Army of the People, the FARC - a left-wing radical rebel group of Colombia, in close cooperation with the US CIA, which has always supported anti-communist movements, group of Colombian citizens, the organization "Los Pepes" - an acronym from the Spanish phrase " Pe rseguidos por P ablo Es cobar" - "Pursued by Pablo Escobar." In addition to the militants, it included Colombian citizens whose relatives died because of Escobar. This organization received funding, among other things, from the Cali Cartel.

After the attack, members of Los Pepes detonated bombs in front of Pablo Escobar's house. The estate that belonged to his mother burned to the ground. Los Pepes began to terrorize and hunt those who were in any way connected with him or his cocaine business. For relatively short time the Los Pepes organization caused significant damage to Escobar's cocaine empire. Its members killed many of his people, persecuted his family, and burned his estates. Now Escobar was seriously worried about his family. If his family were outside of Colombia, he could have declared all-out war on the government and his enemies. Escobar wanted to take his family to Germany, but after negotiations between the Colombian government and US intelligence agencies with the German government, Escobar's family was denied entry into the country and the plane was returned back to Colombia. In Colombia, the government put them up in a hotel. [ ]

Colombian drug lord. Escobar was born on December 1, 1949, 40 kilometers from Medellin. He was the third child in the family. His father was a poor peasant, his mother also came from the lower classes.

Like most of his peers, Pablo Escobar loved to listen to heroic stories about the legendary Colombian "banditos". About how they robbed the rich and helped the needy. Already as a child, he decided that when he grew up, he would become the same “banditos”.

Who would have thought then that the innocent romantic dreams of a fragile, gentle boy would take the form of a nightmare in a couple of decades. At school, Pablo had to study among children from poorer families. In 1961, his family moved to Envigado, south of Medellin.

Pablo Escobar - the first steps in the field of crime

In Envigado, Pablo went to study at a local school, where far-left students predominated. Political Views He and his new schoolmates openly supported the Cuban Revolution that had occurred several years earlier. He soon became addicted to marijuana and was kicked out of school at age 16. From this age, Pablo Escobar began to commit crimes. Escobar began to spend most of his time in the poor neighborhoods of Medellin, which was a real hotbed of crime. At first, he began to steal tombstones from the local cemetery and, erasing the inscriptions, resold them again.

Soon he created a small criminal gang of like-minded people and began to engage in a more sophisticated criminal trade: the theft of expensive cars for sale for spare parts. Then Pablo Escobar came up with another “brilliant” idea: to offer his “protection” to potential victims of theft. Those who refused to pay his gang sooner or later lost their cars. This was already a real racket. At 21, he already had quite a few followers.

Pablo Escobar starts to get violent

At the same time, Escobar's crimes became even more sophisticated and cruel. From ordinary car thefts and racketeering, he started kidnapping. In 1971, Pablo Escobar's men kidnapped the wealthy Colombian industrialist Diego Echevario, who was killed after prolonged torture. This murder was never solved.

The murdered Diego Echevario aroused open hatred among the local poor peasantry, and Pablo Escobar openly declared his involvement in the kidnapping and murder. The poor people of Medellin celebrated the death of Diego Echevario and, as a sign of gratitude to Escobar, began to respectfully call him “El Doctor.” Pablo Escobar began to “feed” the local poor by building them new cheap houses.

He understood that sooner or later they would become a kind of protective buffer between him and the authorities, and his popularity in Medellin grew day by day. In 1972, Pablo Escobar was already Medellin's most famous crime boss. His criminal group was involved in car thefts, smuggling and kidnappings. Soon his gang expanded beyond Medellin. Meanwhile, in the USA, the new generation of Americans of the 70s was no longer content with just marijuana, they needed something stronger, and soon a new drug appeared on American streets - cocaine.

Pablo Escobar's cocaine empire

On this Pablo Escobar began to build his criminal business. He first bought cocaine from manufacturers and resold it to smugglers, who then transported it to the United States. The absolute absence of any “brakes”, his manic readiness to torture and kill, put him beyond competition. When he heard rumors of some profitable criminal business, he, without unnecessary ceremony, simply seized it by force. Anyone who stood in his way or could in any way threaten him immediately disappeared without a trace. Soon Escobar controlled almost the entire cocaine industry in Colombia.

In March 1976, Pablo Escobar married his 15-year-old girlfriend, Maria Victoria Eneo Viejo, who had previously been in his circle. A month later their son Juan Pablo was born, and three and a half years later their daughter Manuella was born. Pablo Escobar's drug business grew rapidly throughout South America. Soon he himself began smuggling cocaine into the United States. One of Escobar’s close associates, a certain Carlos Leider, who was responsible for transporting cocaine, organized a real drug trafficking transshipment point in the Bahamas. The service was delivered at the highest level. A large pier, a number of gas stations and a modern hotel with all amenities were built there.

Not a single drug trafficker could export cocaine outside of Colombia without the permission of Pablo Escobar. He removed the so-called 35 percent tax from each shipment of drugs and ensured its delivery. Escobar's criminal career was more than successful; he was literally swimming in dollars. In the jungles of Colombia, he opened illegal chemical laboratories for the production of cocaine. In the summer of 1977, he and three other major drug traffickers teamed up to create what became known as the Medellin cocaine cartel.

Escobar's powerful cocaine empire

He had the most powerful financial and cocaine empire, which no drug mafia in the world could dream of. To deliver cocaine, the cartel had a distribution network, airplanes, and even submarines. Pablo Escobar became the most indisputable authority in the cocaine world and the absolute leader of the Medellin cartel. He bought policemen, judges, politicians. If bribery did not work, then blackmail was used, but basically the cartel acted on the principle: “Pay or die.”

By 1979, he already owned more than 80% of the US cocaine industry. 30-year-old Pablo Escobar became one of the richest people in the world, whose personal fortune amounted to billions of dollars. Escobar had 34 estates, 500 thousand hectares of land, 40 rare cars. On Escobar's estate, 20 artificial lakes, six swimming pools were dug, and even a small airport with a runway was built. At times it seemed that the cocaine drug lord simply did not know what to do with the money. Within his estate, Pablo Escobar ordered the construction of a safari zoo, to which the most exotic animals were brought from all over the world. The zoo had 120 antelopes, 30 buffaloes, 6 hippos, 3 elephants and 2 rhinoceroses.

In hidden from prying eyes part of his estate, he loved to organize wild sexual orgies, for which young girls were invited. However, Escobar himself practically did not use cocaine. Moreover, Pablo Escobar, despite the fact that his enormous fortune grew from the cocaine trade, treated drug addicts with contempt, considering them subhuman. To enlist the support of the population, he launched extensive construction in Medellin. He paved roads, built stadiums and erected free houses for the poor, which were popularly called “Barrio Pablo Escobar”.

Pablo Escobar as Robin Hood

He himself explained his charity by the fact that it hurt him to see how the poor suffered. Escobar saw himself as a Colombian Robin Hood. In the criminal world, he reached the pinnacle of power. Now he was looking for a way to make his business legal. In 1982, Pablo Escobar ran for the Colombian Congress. And he eventually became a substitute member of the Colombian Congress at age 32. That is, he replaced congressmen during their absence. Having broken into Congress, Escobar dreamed of becoming president of Colombia.

At the same time, once in Bogota, he noticed that his popularity did not extend beyond Medellin. In Bogota they naturally heard about him, but as a dubious person paving a cocaine road to the presidency. One of the most popular politicians in Colombia, the main candidate for the presidency, Luis Carlos Galan, was the first to openly condemn the new congressman’s connection with the cocaine business.

A few days later, Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonia launched a widespread campaign against the investment of dirty cocaine money in the election race. As a result, Pablo Escobar was expelled from the Colombian Congress in January 1984. Through the efforts of the Minister of Justice, his political career ended once and for all. However, Escobar was not going to leave quietly and decided to take revenge on the minister. On April 30, 1984, Bonia's ministerial Mercedes stopped at a traffic light on one of Bogota's busiest streets. At that moment, a motorcyclist drove up at point-blank range with a machine gun, riddling the back of the Mercedes, where the Minister of Justice usually sat. An automatic burst literally blew off the head of Rodrigo Lara Bonia. This is the first time that bandits have killed such a high-ranking official in Colombia.

Escobar's Terror

From that day on, terror began to spread throughout Colombia. In the mid-1980s, Escobar's cocaine empire controlled almost every aspect of Colombian society. However, a serious threat looms over him. The administration of US President Ronald Reagan declared its own war on the spread of drugs not only throughout the United States, but throughout the world. An agreement was reached between the United States and Colombia, according to which the Colombian government pledged to hand over to American justice the cocaine barons involved in trafficking drugs to the United States.

He created a terrorist group called Los Extraditables. Its terrorists attacked officials, police, and anyone who opposed the drug trade. The reason for the terrorist attack could have been a major police operation or the extradition of another cocaine mafia boss to the United States. In November 1985, Escobar and other drug traffickers banded together to show the government that they could not be intimidated. Escobar hired large group leftist partisans to commit sabotage.

Left partisans, armed with machine guns, grenades and portable rocket launchers unexpectedly appeared in the center of Bogota and captured the Palace of Justice while at least several hundred people were inside the building. The partisans refused to conduct any negotiations and began to fire in all directions without making any demands. While they held the Palace of Justice in their hands, they destroyed all documents relating to the extradition of criminals. Large army and police forces were brought into the capital of the country. After a full day of siege, assault battalions, supported by tanks and combat helicopters, stormed the Palace of Justice.

The assault killed 97 people, including 11 of the 24 judges. A year later, the Supreme Court overturned the agreement on the extradition of drug traffickers to the United States. However, just a few days later, the new President of Colombia, Versilio Barco, vetoed the Supreme Court's decision and renewed the agreement. In February 1987, Escobar's closest assistant, Carlos Leider, was extradited to the United States. Pablo Escobar was forced to build secret shelters throughout the country. Thanks to information from his people in the government, he managed to stay one step ahead of law enforcement agencies. In addition, the peasants always warned him when suspicious people, a car with policemen or soldiers, or a helicopter appeared.

In 1989, Pablo Escobar again tried to make a deal with justice. He agreed to surrender to the police if the government would guarantee that he would not be extradited to the United States. The authorities refused. Escobar responded to this refusal with terror. In August 1989, the terror reached its peak. On August 16, 1989, Supreme Court member Carlos Valencia died at the hands of Escobar's hitmen. The next day, police Colonel Waldemar Franklin Contero was killed. On August 18, 1989, at a pre-election rally, the famous Colombian politician Luis Carlos Galan was shot, who promised, if elected president of the country, to start an irreconcilable war against cocaine traffickers, to cleanse Colombia of drug lords by extraditing them to the United States. Before the elections, the terror of the Medellin cartel acquired a special scope. Cartel hitmen killed dozens of people every day. In Bogota alone, one of the terrorist drug mafia groups carried out 7 explosions within two weeks, as a result of which 37 people were killed and about 400 were seriously injured.

On November 27, 1989, he planted a bomb on a passenger plane of the Colombian airline Avianaka, which was carrying 107 passengers and crew members. The successor of the deceased Luis Carlos Galan, the future president of Colombia, Cesar Gaviria, was supposed to fly on this plane. Three minutes after the airliner took off, a powerful explosion was heard on board. The plane caught fire and crashed into the nearby hills. None of those on board survived.

As it turned out later, Cezanne Gaviria canceled his flight at the last moment for some reason. Massive raids swept across the country, during which chemical laboratories and coca plantations were destroyed. Dozens of drug cartel members are behind bars. In response to this, Pablo Escobar twice made 4 attempts on the life of the chief of the Colombian secret police, General Miguel Masa Marquez. In the second attempt, on December 6, 1989, a bomb explosion killed 62 people and injured 100 of varying degrees of severity. By the early 90s, he was considered one of the richest people on the planet.

Horrible Pablo Escobar

His fortune was estimated at at least $3 billion. He topped the list of the most wanted drug traffickers in the United States. On his heels invariably followed the elite special forces, which set themselves the task of catching or destroying Pablo Escobar at any cost. In 1990, just the mention of Pablo Escobar's name struck terror throughout Colombia. He was the most famous criminal in the world. The government created a “Special Search Group” whose target was Pablo Escobar himself.

The group included the best police officers from selected units, as well as people from the army, special services and the prosecutor's office. The creation of the “Special Search Group,” headed by Colonel Martinez, immediately brought positive results. Several people from Pablo Escobar's inner circle ended up in the dungeons of the secret police. Escobar's men kidnapped some of Colombia's richest people. Pablo Escobar hoped that influential relatives of the hostages would put pressure on the government to cancel the agreement on the extradition of the criminals. And ultimately Escobar's plan succeeded.

The government canceled the extradition of Pablo Escobar. On June 19, 1991, after Pablo Escobar was no longer in danger of extradition to the United States, he surrendered to the authorities. Escobar agreed to plead guilty to several minor crimes, in exchange for all his past sins being forgiven. Pablo Escobar was in prison... which he built for himself. The prison was called "La Catedral" and was built in the Envigado mountain range. La Catedral looked more like an expensive, prestigious country club than an ordinary prison. There was a disco, a swimming pool, a jacuzzi and a sauna, and in the courtyard there was a large football field. Friends and women came to see him there. Escobar's family could visit him at any time.

Colonel Martinez's "Special Search Group" did not have the right to approach La Catedral closer than 20 kilometers. Escobar came and went as he pleased. He attended football matches and nightclubs in Medellin. During his imprisonment, Pablo Escobar continued to run his multi-billion dollar cocaine business. One day he learned that his associates in the cocaine cartel, taking advantage of his absence, robbed him. He immediately ordered his men to take them to La Catedral. He personally subjected them to unbearable torture, drilling his victims' knees and tearing out their nails, and then ordered his men to kill them and take the corpses outside the prison.

This time Escobar went too far. On July 22, 1992, President Gaviria gave the order to transfer Pablo Escobar to a real prison. But Escobar found out about the president's decision and escaped from prison. Now he was free, but he had enemies everywhere. There were fewer and fewer places left in which he could find a safe refuge. The US and Colombian governments this time were determined to put an end to Escobar and his Medellin cocaine cartel. After his escape from prison, everything began to fall apart. His friends began to leave him.

Escobar's mistake

Pablo Escobar's main mistake was that he could not critically assess the current situation. He considered himself a more significant figure than he actually was. He continued to have enormous financial resources, but he no longer had real power. The only way to somehow improve the situation was an attempt to renew the agreement with the government. Escobar tried several times to re-enter a deal with justice, but President Cesar Gaviria, as well as the US government, believed that this time it was not worth entering into any negotiations with the drug lord.

It was decided to pursue him and, if possible, eliminate him during his arrest. On January 30, 1993, Pablo Escobar planted a powerful bomb on one of the crowded streets of Bogota. The explosion occurred when there were a lot of people. Mostly these were parents with their children. As a result of this terrorist attack, 21 people were killed and more than 70 were seriously injured. A group of Colombian citizens created the organization “Los PEPES”, the acronym of which stood for “People Victims of Pablo Escobar”. It included Colombian citizens whose relatives died because of Escobar. The day after the terrorist attack, Los PEPES detonated bombs in front of Pablo Escobar's house.

The estate that belonged to his mother was almost completely burned to the ground. Instead of going after Pablo Escobar himself, Los Pepes began to terrorize and hunt everyone who was in any way connected with him or his cocaine business. They were simply killed. In a short amount of time, they caused significant damage to his cocaine empire. They killed many of his people and persecuted his family.

They burned his estates. Now Escobar was seriously worried, because Los Pepes, having discovered the family, would immediately destroy it to the last person, not even sparing his elderly mother and children. If his family were outside of Colombia, beyond the reach of Los Pepes, he could declare all-out war on the government and his enemies. In the fall of 1993, the Medellin cocaine cartel collapsed.

But Pablo Escobar himself was more worried about his family. For more than a year he had not seen his wife or children. He had not seen his loved ones for more than a year and was greatly missed. For Escobar this was intolerable. On December 1, 1993, Pablo Escobar turned 44 years old. He knew that he was under constant surveillance, so he tried to speak on the phone as briefly as possible so that he would not be detected by NSA agents. However, this time he finally lost his nerve. The day after his birthday, December 2, 1993, he called his family. NSA agents had been waiting for this call for 24 hours. This time, while talking to his son Juan, he stayed on the line for about 5 minutes. After this, Escobar was spotted in the Medellin quarter of Los Olibos.

Soon, the house in which Pablo Escobar was hiding was surrounded on all sides by special agents. The special forces knocked down the door and burst inside. At that moment, Escobar's bodyguard, El Limon, opened fire on the police who were trying to storm the house. He was wounded and fell to the ground. Immediately after this, with a pistol in his hands, Pablo Escobar himself leaned out of the same window. He opened random fire in all directions. He then climbed out the window and tried to escape his pursuers through the roof. There, a bullet fired by a sniper hit Escobar in the head and killed him on the spot.

On December 3, 1993, thousands of Colombians filled the streets of Medellin. Some came to mourn him, others to rejoice. If today in the slums of Medellin you ask a question about who Pablo Escobar was, not one of the people interviewed will say a bad word about Escobar. Literally everyone speaks of him as a positive hero. At the same time, he was the most cruel and heartless criminal. Many even consider him the most cruel person in the world. Now Escobar's prison has been looted, his estates are overgrown with grass, and his cars are rusting in the garage.

Escobar's widow and children live in Argentina; his brother is almost completely blind after a letter bomb was sent to his cell. Escobar's place was taken by competitors - the Rodriguez brothers Orejuelo and the Ochoa clan. And Medellin is still the most dangerous city in the world.

10 Crazy Facts About The Cocaine King's Even Crazier Money.

« Cocaine king"was the son of a poor Colombian farmer, but by the age of 35 he became one of the richest men in the world. Despite his humble origins, Pablo Escobar headed the Medellin drug cartel, which was responsible for 80% of the world cocaine market. El Patron's weekly income was approximately $420 million, making him one of the richest drug lords in history.

It is impossible to give an exact estimate of Escobar's wealth due to the fact that it is money from drug sales, but experts give estimates of up to $30 billion.

1. In the mid-1980s, Escobar's cartel brought in about $420 million a week - almost $22 billion a year.

2. Escobar was included in the list of international Forbes billionaires. In 1989, he took seventh place in the list of the richest people in the world.

3. By the end of the 1980s, he was responsible for supplying 80% of the world's cocaine.

4. He smuggled about 15 tons of cocaine into the United States every day.

According to journalist Jon Grillo, the Medellin cartel shipped most of its cocaine directly to the Florida coast. Grillo writes:

“It was a run of fifteen hundred kilometers from the northern coast of Colombia, and nothing stopped him. The Colombians and their American accomplices dump the cargo directly into the sea, where it will be picked up and taken ashore in speedboats, or even fly all the way to Florida and dump the cocaine somewhere in the middle of nowhere.”

Escobar with his son, Juan Pablo, in front of the White House in 1981

5. In other words, out of five Americans who use cocaine, four have used El Patron up their nostrils.

6. The “Cocaine King” lost 2.1 billion every year, but he didn’t care much about that.

Escobar's enormous wealth became a problem when he could not launder the money fast enough. As Roberto Escobar, the cartel's chief accountant and drug lord's brother, recounted in his book The Accountant's Story: cruel world Medellin cartel" (The Accountant's Story: Inside the Violent World of the Medellín Cartel), he stored cash in stacks in the Colombian wilderness - in dilapidated warehouses, and within the walls of the houses of cartel members:

“Pablo earned so much that every year we wrote off 10% of his wealth because rats ate the money in the vault, it got damaged by water or it just got lost.”

Considering how much the drug lord was estimated to earn, that would mean a loss of $2.1 billion annually. Pablo Escobar had a lot more money, than he could spend, and the fact that he was losing it due to rodents and mold did not bother him.

7. Every month Medellin spent 2.5 thousand dollars on elastic bands for banknotes.

Hiding and destroying huge sums of money is one issue, but the brothers also faced another, more mundane task: organizing and storing cash. According to Roberto Escobar, Medellin spent $2,500 a month on rubber bands used to tighten stacks of banknotes.

8. Escobar once burned $2 million because his daughter froze to death.

In a 2009 interview with Don Juan magazine, Ecobar's 38-year-old son Juan Pablo, who changed his name to Sebastian Marroquín, explained what it was like to live with the "Cocaine King."

According to Marroquín, the family was in a shelter on the slopes of Mount Medellin when Ecobar's daughter's body temperature dropped dramatically - and Escobar mercilessly burned $2 million worth of crisp bills to warm Manuela.

Pablo Escobar with his wife, Maria Victoria, son Juan Pablo and daughter Manuela

9. Escobar received the nickname “Robin Hood” because he gave money to the poor, built houses for the homeless, founded 70 football fields and a zoo.

10. He made a deal with Colombia to be imprisoned in a luxurious prison that he built himself and called La Catedral - "the cathedral."

In 1991, Escobar was imprisoned in a prison of his own design called La Catedral. In accordance with the agreement concluded with the Colombian government, Escobar had the right to choose who would serve his sentence in the same prison or work in it. In addition, he could continue to conduct cartel business and receive visitors.

La Catedral features a football pitch, barbecue area and patio. In addition, nearby Escobar built a building for his entire family. Representatives of the Colombian authorities were prohibited from approaching the prison closer than five kilometers.

Escobar with his main hitman "Popeye" at La Catedral

Pablo Escobar congratulates Kharkiv residents on the New Year.

Elimination of Pablo Escobar

And now the abandoned villa itself:

The “King of Cocaine” was the son of a poor Colombian farmer, but by the age of 35 he had become one of the richest people in the world, earning up to $420 million a week.

At the height of his power, the notorious Medellin Cartel boss, also called "El Patron", controlled up to 80% of the global cocaine market. He also owned a number of impressive properties.

Just look at his abandoned villa on an island off the coast of Colombia.