In the previous post we spoke about:
- Pablo Escobar’s Childhood.
- His beginnings in drug trafficking.
- Pablo Escobar in the formation of the Medellin Cartel.
- Pablo Escobar in politics.
5. Pablo Escobar’s “Hacienda Nápoles”
With so much money and so much success in his business, Escobar becomes an eccentric who also generated a multitude of legends. Such as that he once burned two million dollars to heat his son. Also that he wasted about 2,100 million dollars a month.
What was certain was the purchase of 7,400 acres in a town near Medellín. Paying about 50 million euros to build his house, the “Hacienda Nápoles”. Here he even managed to have a zoo, what?.
Hacienda Napoles” became his “fortress”. But it was also a place where unbridled parties were held full of underage girls. Escobar was fond of maintaining relationships with underage girls.
In spite of this, Escobar had married at the age of 25 a teenager of only 15. But, he did not repress himself and organized authentic orgies within the walls of his hacienda.
6. The murders of Pablo Escobar
Pablo Escobar’s biography is relevant in itself, but also very dark. Because all his success and wealth were comparable to his cruelty.
With his arrival in power, he turns Colombia into a place marked by narco-terrorism against judges, prosecutors, police, military and politicians.
Anyone who opposed his reign of cocaine was murdered by some “parrillero” (as those who accompany a motorcycle are called in South America) with a sub-machine gun.
“Hágale” was apparently the word used by Escobar to order the murder of someone. A practice that increased when Escobar was expelled from politics, when Colombian Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla was able to demonstrate his direct relationship with drug trafficking and that he was financed through drugs.
Lara Bonilla proved her reason, but it cost he his own life: he died in 1984, machine-gunned inside his car.
The violence demonstrated by Escobar had no limit. Although it culminated when in 1989 he ordered the explosion of half a kilo of dynamite near the building of the Administrative Department of Security. A total of 70 people lost their lives and more than 500 were injured.
That same year, “El Patrón” blew up an “Avianca” airplane in mid-flight. He believed that the presidential candidate César Gaviria, who had finally remained on the ground, was travelling on it. 110 people died.
It is at that time when colombian justice attributes to him (directly or indirectly) the authorship of the death of more than 10,000 people. A figure that earned him a multitude of unpleasant appellations among his enemies.
7. The entrance of Pablo Escobar in “La Catedral” (The Cathedral)
The U.S. DEA has had in Pablo Escobar one of its most difficult criminals it has fought against.
In 1979 they requested that the Colombian criminals who had acted on their borders be extradited and tried in their country.
Although the law was accepted in principle, the great wave of attacks perpetrated later by Escobar himself causes the South American government to backtrack. Although the president reached an agreement with the drug trafficker: they would only revoke the law if he surrendered to the local authorities and ended up behind bars.
The “capo” agreed, although he set a condition: the prison would be built by him.
On June 19, 1991, Pablo Escobar entered “La Catedral”. La Catedral was building built for the capo’s imprisonment but which was everything but a prison.
A gymnasium, a soccer field, several game rooms and even a natural waterfall were some of the “comforts” he had and he was not really locked up if we take into account that he came in, went out and the festivities were still being celebrated as in his hacienda.
The press discovered the story and the Government had no choice but to make public that it was going to transfer “El Patrón” to a real cell so that he escaped on July 21, 1992.
8. The end of Escobar’s life
After escaping, the government creates a special group with more than 500 men known as the “Search Block” to find and end his life.
After months of incessant surveillance, on December 1, 1993 (one day after Escobar’s birthday), the authorities prepare a special operation in order to catch him definitively.
It wasn’t until December 3, when Escobar contacted his son, that the authorities discovered that he was hiding in a villa in a middle-class urbanization in Medellín, where they were moving to arrest him along with Álvaro de Jesús Agudelo (a.k.a. “El Limón”), one of his best-known bodyguards.
Escobar did not surrender easily, he tried to escape through the roof but the police covering the back of the house shot them with R15 rifles.
“El Limón” fell on the sidewalk and Pablo on the roof easel. That’s how Pablo Escobar died, to whom surprisingly many cried in Medellín.
