So Much Pain Still Exists: Why Medellín Blew Up Pablo Escobars House
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Escobar had recently mounted a campaign for Congress, in which he spent freely in Medellín’s poorer neighborhoods. He had initially tried to join a branch of Colombia’s mainstream Liberal Party, led by a popular young politician named Luis Carlos Galán, but he was thwarted when Galán denounced him as a mafioso. Escobar, undaunted, joined a different branch of the Party, with the help of a powerful, corrupt senator named Alberto Santofimio. In the old city center of Medellín is a street of funeral parlors. On a bright morning, I went there to meet Jesús Correa, an employee at one of the funeral homes and one of the first people to appreciate the mythic quality of Escobar’s life.
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The Medellín cartel’s ascent coincided with the collapse of Communism in Europe, which in turn helped end most of the socialist revolution in the hemisphere. After Escobar, the idea of rebellion based on ideology was largely supplanted by the remorseless pursuit of profit and power. In places along his supply chain—including Mexico and in Central America—the remnants of his operation have grown into insurgent gangs, and states have succumbed to corruption and internal conflict. In the main plaza—a parklike area with naïve mosaic murals—several dozen residents warmed themselves in the morning sun.
Pablo Escobar & 'El Chapo' Guzmán: How 2 of the world's most powerful and dangerous drug lords compare - Yahoo Singapore News
Pablo Escobar & 'El Chapo' Guzmán: How 2 of the world's most powerful and dangerous drug lords compare.
Posted: Fri, 29 May 2020 10:38:45 GMT [source]
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However, officials soon realized that they wouldn’t be able to manage all the animals, so most of them were relocated to other zoos. But alas, the luxury estate was not to last — because its owner would soon be dead. If you were to drive about 93 miles east of Medellín, Colombia, you would eventually make it to a town called Puerto Triunfo. Before long, you’d come across the legendary Hacienda Nápoles. Mark Bowden, a veteran Philadelphia Inquirer reporter whose bestselling book “Black Hawk Down” described the Delta Force’s ill-fated attack on a Somalian warlord in Mogadishu earlier in 1993, is clearly aware of those implications.
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At first, Roberto was more interested in riding bikes than dealing drugs and even raced professionally. But as his little brother became more powerful, Roberto started to work for the Medellín Cartel as an accountant. But like her brother, Manuela’s life took a dark turn following Escobar’s death in 1993. However, Pablo Escobar allegedly also had a number of “illegitimate” children with other women during his extramarital relationships, including at least one other son named Roberto Sendoya Escobar, according to British GQ. But while Henao focused on being Escobar’s wife and the mother of their son and daughter, her husband entertained several extramarital affairs, including a relationship with the Colombian journalist Virginia Vallejo.
The assembly declared Saturday that the administration of justice under the new charter “shall be public” except in instances established by law. Critics said the government’s concessions, in effect, gave Escobar a comfortable house arrest, featuring a locale and a security force of his own choosing. “The only benefit is that we have him physically in jail, but he will continue to be the brains behind his organization,” said a Colombian law enforcement official. The jail, originally designed as a drug rehabilitation center, sits on a pine-forested hill above Envigado on 10 acres of land surrounded by an electric fence. With whitewashed brick walls and a tiled roof, it resembles the comfortable ranch houses that Escobar often used as hide-outs. Supporters of the government’s approach said the drug war was unwinnable.
But what most annoys the 39-year-old about the Netflix version of his father’s life is that it claims to be realistic. Recently, however, attention to the building has returned, piqued by scores of international books, telenovelas and movies about Mr. Escobar. But Manuel Jose Cepeda, Gaviria’s adviser on assembly matters, said the anonymous judges would continue to operate several more months under “transitory legislation” to be written by an assembly commission after the current constitution and the state of siege expire. Justice Minister Jaime Giraldo said last month that the new system was working.
The explosion was the centerpiece of a two-day, city-wide ceremony last February 21 and 22, aimed at changing perceptions among both Medellín’s residents and its rapidly growing contingent of some 90,000 annual foreign visitors. It was staged under the auspices of Medellín, Abraza Su Historia (Medellín, Embrace Your History), a branding campaign launched by Gutiérrez. The Monaco building, where Escobar lived with his wife and children when he was at the height of his power, was a stone’s throw from the exclusive Club Campestre, Medellín’s country club, whose membership provided his cartel with a rich source of kidnapping victims. The Monaco also served as the starting or ending point for many of the city’s popular narco tours—including one led by Escobar’s brother. The criminals who emulate him are no less ruthless, but they have learned not to seek political power, or much recognition.
Medellín has Pablo problems in all strata of society, not just the poor neighborhoods. The current mafia headquarters, the Oficina de Envigado, is located in the rapidly growing nearby town of Envigado, where Escobar grew up. I visited the Hacienda Nápoles one day with Edgar Jiménez, who had been Escobar’s personal photographer and a friend of his since grade school. “Pablo said I was the only photographer who could take his photo,” Jiménez told me. “I did all their family events, like birthdays, weddings, and first Communions.” Like everyone else, he cherished the stories. Once, he said, he was summoned to the hacienda to find Escobar hosting one of his cartel partners, the German-Colombian Carlos Lehder Rivas.
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The government finally started taking action because it didn’t want to turn into a narco-state. Escobar stood against them when they tried to arrest him after ordering him out of the office. With M-19, he planned an attack on the Palace of Justice, which resulted in the deaths of half of Colombia’s supreme court.
On the contrary, he engaged in illegal activities, including the sale of faked lottery tickets, illegally obtained cigarettes, and theft of automobiles. On the day of his passing away, his estimated worth was $30 billion, which would be identical to $64 billion in 2021. Pablo Escobar’s escape from La Catedral triggered a massive manhunt.
He didn’t answer those questions but kept up a steady stream of handwritten letters to her about his children anyway. “It doesn’t show the moments of loneliness, fear, anxiety and terror. The escalating drug war eventually exhausted both the hunter and the hunted, weakened Escobar’s grip on the cocaine market and cost the government an estimated $2 billion a year. After the Galan slaying, President Virgilio Barco Vargas issued decrees that led to the extradition of 49 traffickers to the United States and the seizure of their properties. Since taking office last August, Gaviria has combined the plea-bargaining strategy with aggressive police tactics, which produced a record seizure of 47 tons of cocaine in the first four months of 1991.
The walls are filled with holes where people have searched for stashed money; locals note that nobody has ever found any. People can visit Escobar’s room, the now-swampy pool, the guard towers, the bathroom where the bomb was planted – basically the entire estate. The main house was, of course, luxuriously appointed, and even included its own disco tech.
Colombian authorities then decided to move him to a different prison — but Pablo Escobar escaped in July 1992 before they got to La Catedral. A few years later, in 1984, he orchestrated the murder of Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, Colombia’s Minister of Justice who dared stand up to him. And in 1989, he allegedly plotted to plant a bomb on Avianca Flight 203 (wrongly believing that future Colombian president César Augusto Gaviria Trujillo was on board), killing over 100 people on the plane and even a few people on the ground.
Unlike most prisons, La Catedral had a sauna, a jacuzzi, a billiards room, and a disco. And unlike most prisoners, Escobar continued to conduct business from behind bars. However, his cartel is believed to have a massive international footprint, bringing drugs (including, but not limited to, cocaine) into some countries that Escobar did not have a direct connection with. All in all, it can certainly be argued that Escobar was the more powerful of the two. But as with many things related to the underworld, it’s tough to come to a definite answer. Escobar was gunned down in 1993, but his image lives on as the quintessential peak of narco power and wealth.
At the height of his career, it’s estimated that Escobar’s Medellin cartel was supplying 80 percent of the world’s cocaine. The finances of any criminal enterprise are always murky, but Escobar’s massive operation undoubtedly secured his spot on every “wealthiest drug lords of all time” list. By his death, he’d secured a net worth of $30 billion—closer to $60 billion in today’s dollars. In comparison, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman had an estimated net worth of $2-4 billion in 2016.
One recent morning, a group of visitors from the United States and Europe arrived in a chauffeured van—part of a growing influx of narcoturistas, who come to see the places where Pablo Escobar lived and worked. Roberto, seventy-one, still looked like an accountant; he wore khakis, a blue short-sleeved shirt, and thick-rimmed spectacles. While he was in prison, a letter bomb delivered to his cell exploded, leaving him blind in his right eye and deaf in his right ear. His damaged eye was a milky blue, and he periodically squirted drops of medicine into it.
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