Who Is Pablo Escobar, The Notorious 'King Of Cocaine'?

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• Watch: Wife of Drug Kingpin El Chapo Arrested on US Drug Charges
• NEW — Colombia Discovery: Coffee, Art & Music
• Books
• Futaba Cake Building
• The pablo escobar white house photo story
• “The truth as we know it is over.” “Civil War” star on how it really could happen here‪.‬
• Iconic Singer And Rocker Eric Carmen Dead At 74
• What Happened To Pablo Escobar’s Family?

Between 1983 and 1994, 46,612 people were murdered by Colombia’s drug violence. That’s higher than the number of U.S. troops killed in combat in Vietnam, where 40,934 American troops were killed in action between 1965 and 1975. Today, Medellín wants to draw attention to the residents who lost their lives, rather than the criminals who took them. Alfonso Ospina served as chief of staff for President Belisario Betancur, whose decision in the early 80s to approve the extradition of drug dealers to the U.S. prompted a violent backlash.

Watch: Wife of Drug Kingpin El Chapo Arrested on US Drug Charges

Twelve years after taking the photo, Escobar was killed on the rooftops of Medéllin. The government didn’t want to become a narco-state and finally began fighting back. After forcing Escobar out of the office and attempting to arrest him, Escobar fought back. He orchestrated the Palace of Justice siege with M-19, killing half of Colombia’s supreme court.

Pablo Escobar El Chapo Guzman comparison - Business Insider

Pablo Escobar El Chapo Guzman comparison.

Posted: Sat, 31 Oct 2015 07:00:00 GMT [source]

NEW — Colombia Discovery: Coffee, Art & Music

Yes, Pablo Escobar did go to prison — but under his own terms. In 1991, Escobar struck a deal with Colombian authorities in which he agreed to turn himself in, but only if he could avoid extradition to the United States and build his own prison in Colombia to his specifications. In fact, the drug kingpin had an entire zoo at his estate outside of Medellín. This zoo included four hippopotamuses that he’d illegally imported into Colombia in the 1980s.

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In a gruesome scene from the first season of “Narcos,” Escobar murders two trafficking partners, whom he suspects of withholding money. He kills the first one by beating him to death with a pool cue; when he is finished, his face and clothing spattered with blood, his men beat the other one to death. The story on which the scene is based is hardly less gruesome. According to Popeye’s testimony, the two victims, Fernando Galeano and Gerardo Moncada, were shot, cut into pieces, and incinerated in a fire pit. No one disputes that Pablo Escobar was a murderer, a torturer, and a kidnapper. But he was loved by many in Medellín, and, increasingly, he is an object of fascination abroad.

Many of the city’s slums, called comunas, are still controlled by gangs, but security has improved; last year, there were five hundred and seventy-seven murders. For the Mayor, understandably, Popeye represents a public-relations problem. These days, Roberto Escobar, having served fourteen years in prison, earns money by leading tourists around one of his family’s former safe houses.

The pablo escobar white house photo story

At the height of his power, Escobar brought in an estimated $420 million a week in revenue, supplied 80% of the world's cocaine, and smuggled 15 tons of cocaine into the US per day. Escobar’s wife, Maria Victoria, took the photo, which made its first appearance in the HBO documentary “Sins of My Father” in 2010. The documentary tells the story of Escobar’s life through the eyes of Sebastian Marroquin (formerly Juan Pablo Escobar), his only son, with his wife, Maria Henao.

In the early seventies, the café was called Las Dos Tortugas—the Two Turtles—and it was a favored meeting place for robbers and smugglers. A dropout from Medellín’s Universidad Autónoma, Escobar had gone into business selling stolen tombstones and contraband American cigarettes. He began hanging out with the crowd at Las Dos Tortugas, coming and going on a Lambretta motorbike. Colombia’s drug trade was flourishing, although in those days it was mostly marijuana, which the locals called marimba. Escobar found his niche as the U.S. cocaine market began to take off.

Iconic Singer And Rocker Eric Carmen Dead At 74

(Popeye denies this.) Some of the elderly residents believed that La Catedral was haunted, Father Elkin said. Correa, an amiable man of sixty-three, was bald and corpulent, and dressed in a gray suit, a pink shirt, and a burgundy tie. He took me for a walk, and, two blocks from the funeral home, we came to an open-air café, painted bright yellow and orange, where men sat drinking beer and watching soccer on television.

Born in 1949 to a farmer and a schoolteacher, Escobar turned to crime at a young age. He sold fake diplomas, falsified report cards, and eventually turned to grand theft auto and smuggling. In the mid-1970s, he turned his attention toward cocaine, and the rest is history. At the height of his power, Escobar brought in an estimated $420 million a week in revenue, supplied 80% of the world’s cocaine, and smuggled 15 tons of cocaine into the US per day.

He’s living off the image of the father but realizes that he needs to be critical.” At the restaurant, Juan Pablo excused himself to speak briefly with a producer about a movie project. It was said that Escobar smuggled between 70 and 80 tons of cocaine from Colombia each month by the 1980s. He eventually went to heights as one of the richest men in the globe, however, he always found himself in battles with rival cartels both in his own country and abroad. Colombia became the world’s murder capital because of the number of murders and deaths of policemen, judges, citizens, and powerful leaders. Infamously brutal and ruthless, Pablo Escobar killed anyone who dared to stand in his way.

Also at the lunch were the widow and children of Colonel Valdemar Franklin Quintero, the murdered commander of the Antioquia state police department. In 1989, when police were being picked off right and left, Colonel Quintero was a symbol of fearless incorruptibility. Eventually, however, Quintero concluded that his days were numbered, so he dismissed his bodyguards, telling them there was no reason their families should lose their fathers. One of his sons and a nephew also participated in the Medellín ceremonies.