The Al Capone Of The 1970's

Pablo Escobar was one of the most well known men during the 1960’s-1980. He was born into a low-medium income family and grew up in the Medellin suburb of Envigado. Throughout his childhood years he was very optimistic in life and wanted to become the president of Columbia when he grew up. Growing up he become a criminal at a young age. He would steal tombstones and resell them to crooked Panamanians. After years of doing small acts of criminal acts he became a national drug cartel.

                In order to make the drugs he started to buy cocoa paste from Peru and Bolivia to transport and sell it to the United States. Not only was Pablo selling Marijuana, but also distributed cocaine in the United States. Soon after a local Medellin drug lord named Fabio Restrepo was murdered which then Pablo was able to become the leader of this cartel. Pablo had great power being in the Medellin cartel he was controlling all the crime and 80% of the cocaine transported to the United States.

                In addition Pablo conducted more illegal activity by having many people die if they did not agree to do what he said. He told his enemies, “Plato o plomo.” That phrase meant silver or lead. He always got what he wanted and if he did not, he would just terminate the people that were in his way of anything. All together there is no known number of people that he murdered, possibly over a thousand. In 1978, he was elected as a substitute city council member in Medellin. Being in congress, Pablo was able to get away with a lot of things.

                In the mid 1980’s, Pablo was one of the richest men in the world, having $24 billion in drug transport to the United States. During this time, Colombia was suffering its’ own cold war. The rural guerrillas were also involved in this violence. Pablo reacted with his “narco-terrorism” when he found out the guerrillas were kidnapping family members of the rest mafia families. The extradition was banned to talk about and write about. If someone was caught speaking of it or journalists writing about this were murdered or kidnapped.

                Finally in 1991, there was a surrender and no one won the war in Colombia. Pablo was sent to jail for all the criminal activity that he was involved with. The United States already had wanted to put him in jail for his drug charges. Then in 1992 Pablo escaped from La Catedral Prison and went into a hiding mode. No one was able to find him until the police was tracking Pablo’s phone records. This famous drug cartel criminal died as he fled across a Medellin rooftop and was shot dead by police. All in all, Pablo became a very famous criminal drug cartel during the 1960’s-1980. He became one of the richest men in the world due to the export of drugs to the United States. Columbia became the world’s third largest recipient of the U.S. aid.

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