William Youtter, the former director of the U.S. Drug Control Agency, commented on the Medellín drug cartel as follows: "They are the most vicious, dangerous, brutal, boldest criminal organization ever built in the world. Compared to this group, the Mafia in the United States is like a student in elementary school, and the Yamaguchi group in Japan is like a choir in a church. ”
Pablo Escobar is a legend, his wealth is too much to count, he was named the seventh richest man in the world by Fortune magazine by selling cocaine; he is bloodthirsty and brutal, more than 20,000 people have died directly or indirectly at his hands; he is ambitious and almost ascended to the presidency; he is a "murderous demon" in the eyes of the government, but he is a good father in the eyes of his family, and he is also a generous "Robin Hood" in the eyes of some people...
Pablo Escobar
Pablo Escobar was born on December 1, 1949, to a middle-class family in the small town of Sigado, about 20 kilometers southwest of Medellín, Colombia. His father was an ordinary farmer, while his mother was a statusless primary school teacher.
The family, which was not rich in the first place, was in a desperate situation because his father became addicted to gambling and eventually lost his farm, and his father's whereabouts were unknown. A family that was struggling to support her mother, Escobar, who was distressed by her mother, once said to her, "Mom, when I grow up, I will give you everything." ”
Escobar has been competitive and ambitious since childhood, dreaming of becoming a millionaire. Escobar's misdeeds began with the theft of tombstones, which he stole to scrape off and sell them at a low price. Seeing that this "business" could not make a few dollars, he smuggled consumer goods from Panama to Colombia for sale. Later, Escobar found an errand with a car salesman. With a $20 a month salary not enough to splurge, he took advantage of his profession to sell cars and steal them. After that, he started selling real estate.
He also smuggled cigarettes, sold fake lottery tickets, cheated, extorted, and even hired killers, doing whatever he could if he could make money.
By the mid-1970s, drug trafficking in Colombia had spread rapidly. Escobar saw that drug trafficking made more money than he did in the "business", so he began drug smuggling.
He followed alvaro Prieto, a drug smuggler, and soon fulfilled his dream of becoming a millionaire. He united five or six other illegal businesses in the Medellín region to create the Medellín Cartel Group, which would later frighten the whole of Colombia.
After entering the 1980s, the textile industry, which had been the main industrial pillar of the city of Medellín, declined rapidly, and the unemployment soared, with the unemployment rate reaching about 80%, and the entire city fell into a state of paralysis.
Escobar found this a fantastic opportunity to go deep into the various farms around Medellín and teach local farmers to grow coca (the main raw material for cocaine production), causing cocaine cultivation to grow at an alarming rate. Carefully organized by Escobar, coca, which was originally harvested at most twice a year, can now be harvested four times.
Escobar absorbed both the unemployed in the cities and the blind in the countryside into workers and clerks in coca farms and cocaine processing plants. According to the most conservative estimates, he employed at least 50,000 people.
Coca farmers
On 2 December 1981, at the age of 32, Pablo Escobar was elected head of the Medellín Cartel drug cartel. Since then, he has further improved the drug trafficking organizations and institutions of the Medellín Group and strengthened its strength. Under his painstaking management, a large number of drug processing factories have the scale and operating means of modern large enterprises, and a group of smuggling experts with high professional knowledge and magician-like brains have been recruited.
In order to ensure the safety of drug trafficking activities and organizations, Escobar also specially established a well-equipped armed drug trafficking army and purchased a large number of advanced weapons and equipment from abroad.
The submarine that Escobar used to transport drugs
The Medellín Group, which at its peak covered 80 percent of the world's cocaine market, earned $420 million a week, or $1,200 for the rubber rings used to bundle money alone. As a result, Escobar was named the world's seventh-richest man by Fortune magazine in 1989, with $25 billion in assets.
174 km from Medellín, there is one of his parks, covering an area of 600 hectares, with 1 medium-sized aircraft, 5 small passenger aircraft, 1 helicopter and 1 bulletproof vehicle. He registered as many as 96 similar manors and villas, and he even built a private zoo, which has more animals than the total number of animals in all zoos in Colombia combined. Of these, there are 4 elephants alone. In order to raise parrots, the monthly cost of buying sunflower seeds as feed is equivalent to a month's wage income of Colombian workers.
The violent acts of the Medellín cartel drug cartels have created a huge climate of terror in Colombia. Highly trained professional killers specialize in kidnapping and shooting people who dare to do justice, expose and try their crimes – from judges, journalists, officials, police officers, editors, to "mutineers" within the group.
In Colombia and even throughout the Americas, Escobar didn't take anyone seriously. The police officers who arrested him were shot within three days; the judge who tried him, after his wife was raped and killed, underwear was sent to the judge's office; the attorney general who wanted him, who in turn offered him a reward of $100 million, ended up on the streets; in 1987, his brother Ochoa was arrested, the president of the Supreme Court in charge of the trial resigned, and finally had to revoke the arrest warrant.
In the decade from 1981 to 1991, more than 20,000 colombians have died at the hands of drug traffickers, and 157 judges and 3,500 anti-drug officials have been killed, according to official Colombian statistics. In the first five months of 1991 alone, more than 4,000 people were killed.
The ambitious Escobar is not content to be a "civil emperor", he wants to ascend to the pinnacle of power - to become president.
In 1982, Escobar was elected as an alternate member of Parliament as a Candidate for the Liberal Party, and his political slogan was "For the people, emphasize doing things, and speaking the truth." "He bribed, threatened officials, and even killed presidential candidates.
The evil Escobar should have been spurned by the people, but he was a hero to the people of the Medellín region. He built kindergartens, schools, and as a football fan, he also founded football clubs, soccer fields and various sports fields, and funded children's football teams.
In addition, he had a plan to make the city of Medellín free of slums. He was generous and often distributed money to the poor, so the people of the Medellín region called him "Uncle Pablo the Great Good".
Escobar's favor is not a myth. In what economists have called the "lost decade in Latin America," the city of Envigado has indeed seen an unprecedented boom. Envigado is the only place in Colombia to offer unemployment and old-ageing benefits, and its public services are subsidized and 99% of the population is also unique in the country.
The Colombian government could do nothing about Escobar, but because Escobar had given all the drugs to the United States, the United States had always hated him.
The United States recommended that the Colombian government sign an extradition treaty to extradite Escobar to the United States to sanction this lawless devil. Escobar knew that once extradited to the United States, his life would be over, so he "compromised" with the Colombian government, offering to voluntarily serve a 5-year sentence, in addition to repaying the government a $15 billion foreign debt.
The Government of Colombia had agreed to the proposal and had missed an opportunity to address the scourge.
On June 19, 1991, Escobar came to the "prison" and said that he was in prison, but in fact the prison was built by Escobar himself. There are artificial waterfalls, bars, football fields, and even a zoo, where you are in prison, and you are clearly here for a holiday.
Escobar certainly didn't honestly stay in this "resort", and in 1992, Escobar went to jail.
This time, the United States can finally legitimately help the incompetent Colombian government arrest Escobar.
On December 2, 1993, the day after Escobar's 44th birthday, Escobar, who had been on the run for a year, was finally killed in a hail of bullets, ending a generation of drug kings.
Escobar was killed
Magically, about 25,000 people attended Escobar's funeral, the poor people in his hometown cried more than one sad and mourned his death, and his cemetery was cleaned every day, and flowers were brought every day.
Escobar's memorial service
In any case, the cruel demon finally went to where he was supposed to go— hell.