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1949-1993
Who Was Pablo Escobar?
Pablo Escobar was a Colombian drug trafficker who collaborated with other criminals to form the Medellín cartel in the early 1970s. Eventually, he controlled over 80 percent of the cocaine shipped to the United States, earning the nickname “The King of Cocaine.” He amassed an estimated net worth of $30 billion and was named one of the 10 richest people on Earth by Forbes. He earned popularity by sponsoring charity projects and soccer clubs, but later, terror campaigns that resulted in the murder of thousands turned public opinion against him. After surrendering to the Colombian authorities in 1991, Escobar escaped detainment in 1992 and was a fugitive until his dramatic death in December 1993.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria
BORN: December 1, 1949
DIED: December 2, 1993
BIRTHPLACE: Rionegro, Antioquia, Colombia
SPOUSE: Maria Victoria Henao (1976-1993)
CHILDREN: Juan Pablo and Manuela
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Sagittarius
Early Life
Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was born on December 1, 1949, in the Colombian city of Rionegro, Antioquia. His family later moved to the suburb of Envigado. He was the third of seven children born in poverty to a schoolteacher mother and a peasant farmer father. From an early age, Escobar packed a unique ambition to raise himself up from his humble beginnings and dreamed of becoming the president of Colombia one day.
Escobar reportedly began his life of crime early, stealing tombstones and selling phony diplomas. It wasn’t long before he started stealing cars, then moving into the smuggling business. Escobar’s early prominence came during the “Marlboro Wars,” in which he played a high-profile role in the control of Colombia’s smuggled cigarette market. This episode proved to be a valuable training ground for the future narcotics kingpin.
Establishing the Medellín Cartel
It wasn’t by chance that Colombia came to dominate the cocaine trade. Beginning in the early 1970s, the country became a prime smuggling ground for marijuana. But as the cocaine market flourished, Colombia’s geographical location proved to be its biggest asset. Situated at the northern tip of South America between the thriving coca cultivation epicenters of Peru and Bolivia, the country came to dominate the global cocaine trade with the United States, the biggest market for the drug and just a short trip to the north.
Escobar, who had already been involved in organized crime for a decade at this point, moved quickly to grab control of the cocaine trade. In 1975, the drug trafficker Fabio Restrepo from the city of Medellín, Colombia, was murdered. It was widely believed his death came at the orders of Escobar, who immediately seized power and expanded Restrepo’s operation into something the world had never seen. Under Escobar’s leadership, large amounts of coca paste were purchased in Bolivia and Peru then processed and transported to America. Escobar worked with a small group to form the infamous Medellín cartel.
Also around this time, Escobar started a family with his marriage to Maria Victoria Henao, who was 11 years his junior and still a teenager at the time of their 1976 wedding. They went on to have two children.
Rapid Rise in Power
Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw
Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw
Escobar’s rapid rise brought him to the attention of the Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad (DAS), who arrested him in May 1976 upon his return from a drug trafficking trip in Ecuador. Authorities found 39 kilograms of cocaine hidden in the spare tire of his truck. Escobar escaped the charges by bribing a judge, and the two DAS agents responsible for his arrest were killed the next year, according to Mark Bowden book Killing Pablo. Around this time, Escobar developed his signature pattern of dealing with authorities called plata o plomo, Spanish for “silver or lead,” in which they could accept bribes or be assassinated, according to Bowden.
In 1978, Escobar spent millions to purchase 20 square kilometers of land in Antioquia, Colombia, where he built his luxury estate Hacienda Nápoles. It contained a sculpture garden, lake, private bullring, and other amenities for his family and members of the cartel. It also featured a collection of luxury cars and bikes, as well as a zoo with antelope, elephants, giraffes, hippos, ponies, ostriches, and exotic birds. After Escobar’s death, it was turned into a theme park. (Today, the hippo population—which traces back to Escobar’s original transplants—has swelled in the country, causing environmental destruction and providing tourism opportunities.)
As the demand for cocaine grew in the United States, Escobar established additional smuggling shipments and distribution networks in various locations. That included establishing a shipment base on a private island in the Bahamas with the help of cartel cofounder Carlos Lehder. By the mid-1980s, Escobar had an estimated net worth of $30 billion and was named one of the 10 richest people on Earth by Forbes. Cash was so prevalent that Escobar purchased a Learjet for the sole purpose of flying his money. At the time, Escobar controlled more than 80 percent of the cocaine smuggled into the United States; more than 15 tons were reportedly smuggled each day, netting the Medellín cartel as much as $420 million a week.
As Escobar’s fortune and fame grew, he dreamed to be seen as a leader. In some ways, he positioned himself as a Robin Hood–like figure, a description was echoed by many locals, by spending money to expand social programs for the poor. He spent millions to develop Medellín’s poor neighborhoods, where its residents felt he helped them far more than the government ever had. He built roads, electric lines, soccer fields, roller-skating rinks, and more, and paid the workers in his cocaine labs enough money that they could afford houses and cars, according to Bowden.
Escobar’s Short-Lived Stint in Politics
Still harboring his youthful ambition to become the nation’s president, Escobar entered politics and supported the formation of the Liberal Party of Colombia. In 1982, he was elected as an alternate member of Colombia’s Congress, but Minister of Justice Rodrigo Lara-Bonilla investigated him and highlighted the illegal means by which he had obtained his wealth, forcing Escobar to resign two years after his election. A few months later, Lara-Bonilla was murdered, according to the book Kings of Cocaine, by Guy Gugliotta and Jeff Leen.
A Large Body Count
Escobar was responsible for the killing of thousands of people, including politicians, civil servants, journalists, and ordinary citizens. When he realized that he had no shot of becoming Colombia’s president, and with the United States pushing for his capture and extradition, Escobar unleashed his fury on his enemies in the hopes of influencing Colombian politics. His goal was a no-extradition clause and amnesty for drug barons in exchange for giving up the trade.
Escobar’s terror campaign claimed the lives of three Colombian presidential candidates, an attorney general, scores of judges, and more than 1,000 police officers. In addition, Escobar was implicated as the mastermind behind the bombing of a Colombian jetliner. In November 1989, Escobar arranged for a bomb to be planted on Avianca Flight 203, a domestic passenger flight, as part of an assassination attempt against one of his political enemies, presidential candidate César Gaviria Trujillo. He missed the flight and avoided injury, but the bomb detonated and killed all 107 people on board.
Nine days after the airplane bombing, more than 50 people were killed and more than 2,200 were injured when a truck bomb detonated outside a DAS building in Bogotá, Colombia. The Medellín cartel was also believed to be responsible for this attack. Escobar’s terror eventually turned public opinion against him.
Escobar’s Luxury Prison
By the 1990s, Escobar was facing increasing pressure from the administration of President César Gaviria, particularly after Escobar’s alleged assassination of presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán in 1989. In June 1991, Escobar negotiated a surrendered to Gaviria’s government in exchange for a reduced sentence and preferential treatment during his captivity. A law at the time prevented his extradition to the United States.
Escobar built his own luxury prison called La Catedral, which was guarded by men he handpicked from among his employees. Often called “Hotel Escobar,” the prison came with a casino, spa, nightclub, football field, jacuzzi, waterfall, and giant doll house.
In June 1992, however, Escobar escaped when authorities attempted to move him to a more standard holding facility. A manhunt for the drug lord, with help from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, was launched that would last 16 months. During that time, the monopoly of the Medellín cartel, which had begun to crumble during Escobar’s imprisonment as police raided offices and killed its leaders, rapidly deteriorated.
Death
Escobar’s family unsuccessfully sought asylum in Germany and eventually found refuge in a Bogotá hotel. Escobar was not so lucky: Colombian law enforcement finally caught up to the fugitive Escobar on December 2, 1993, in a middle-class neighborhood in Medellín. A firefight ensued, and as Escobar tried to escape across a series of rooftops, he and his bodyguard were shot and killed. Escobar had just turned 44 years old the previous day.
Escobar’s death accelerated the demise of the Medellín cartel and Colombia’s central role in the cocaine trade. His end was celebrated by the country’s government and other parts of the world, and his family was placed under police protection. Still, many Colombians mourned his killing. More than 25,000 people attended Escobar’s burial. “He built houses and cared about the poor,” one funeral-goer said at his funeral, according to The New York Times. “In the future, people will go to his tomb to pray, the way they would to a saint.”
Wife and Children
In 1976, when he was 26, Escobar married 15-year-old Maria Victoria Henao. She was so young that before marrying her, Escobar had to get a special dispensation from the bishop, which was obtainable for a fee, according to Bowden. They were married until Escobar’s death. The couple had two children together: a son, Juan Pablo, and a daughter, Manuela.
Pablo Escobar: My Father
Pablo Escobar: My Father
Today Escobar’s son is a motivational speaker who goes by the name Sebastian Marroquin. Marroquin studied architecture and published a book in 2015, Pablo Escobar: My Father, which tells the story of growing up with the world’s most notorious drug kingpin. He also asserts that his father was not shot and killed, but rather committed suicide.
“My father’s not a person to be imitated,” Marroquin said in an interview. “He showed us the path we must never take as a society because it’s the path to self-destruction, the loss of values, and a place where life ceases to have importance.”
Pop Culture Portrayals
Escobar has been the subject of several books, films, and television programs. Among them was the popular 2012 Colombian television mini-series Pablo Escobar: El Patron del Mal, which was produced by Camilo Cano and Juana Uribe, both of whom had family members who were murdered by Escobar or his assistants.
Escobar was also portrayed by Academy Award-winning actor Javier Bardem in the film Loving Pablo (2017), which also starred Penelope Cruz as his girlfriend Virginia Vallejo.
The 2015 Netflix television series Narcos was based upon the Escobar’s life, told largely from the perspective of Steve Murphy and Javier Peña, two American drug enforcement agents who worked on the Escobar case for years. In 2016, Escobar’s brother Roberto announced he was prepared to sue Netflix for $1 billion for its portrayal of his family in Narcos. He later abandoned those efforts.
Quotes
- What is worth most in life are friends, of that I am sure. Unfortunately, along life’s paths one also meets people who are disloyal.
- In Colombia, people enter [drug trafficking] as a form of protest. Others enter it because of ambition.
- I want to be big.
- Better a tomb in Colombia than a prison cell in the United States.
- There have been many accusations, but I’ve never been convicted of a crime in Colombia.
- [Terrorism is] the atomic bomb for poor people. It is the only way for the poor to strike back.
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Colin McEvoy joined the Biography.com staff in 2023, and before that had spent 16 years as a journalist, writer, and communications professional. He is the author of two true crime books: Love Me or Else and Fatal Jealousy. He is also an avid film buff, reader, and lover of great stories.
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