Pablo Escobar: Murderous Drug Lord
What single man could become responsible for over 80% of cocaine shipment in the United States alone? What man would stop at nothing to get his way, even if it meant effortlessly killing those who stood in his path? Colombian drug lord, Pablo Escobar, was ruthless and willing enough to do just that. In place of becoming the leader of his home country, as he originally desired to be, he turned to a life of crime and violence to satisfy his hunger for leadership and respect. He was a man of great determination and ambition, who would not let even his country’s government nor his own emotion hold him down from fulfilling his desires. Pablo Escobar’s humble origin was not a good life in his mind; he craved more. As a result of his drive for respect, he became one of the most violent drug lords of all time.
Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was born in the modest town of Rionegro, Antoniqua, in Colombia. He grew up in a peasant family; his mother was a teacher and his father a cow and horse trader. Escobar sought out a better life- the president of Colombia. To achieve this, he turned to crime in order to gain recognition and respect. After being expelled from his school, he began his criminal career by stealing tombstones and cars. He would sand the names off of the tombstones, and resell them to smugglers. This was only the miniscule beginning of Escobar’s life as a criminal.
He began catching attention quickly during a period known as the
Joaquin Guzman best known as “El Chapo” is the world's greatest drug lord. He has been captured three times and has been able to escape twice, once in a laundry basket and the second time he managed to escaped in an underground tunnel built in his shower cell. He was recently recaptured after being fugitive for about six months. Joaquin entered the drug business as a teenager and later became in charge of the Sinaloa cartel. “He shops and ships by some estimates more than half of all the cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana that come into the United States”(Penn). Many argue that El Chapo is a really bad person that only does a lot of harm to the citizens in Mexico, but what most don't know is that he actually helps some of them.
The film The Two Escobar’s, directed by Jeff and Michael Zimbalist, is a documentary about “narco-soccer”, which was a time period in Columbia when it was prevalent for drug kingpins to use soccer clubs to launder their money. One of the most infamous kingpins was Pablo Escobar. Pablo was typically known as a murderer in Columbia, but did have one passion in life, and that was soccer. The other Escobar, Andres, who had no blood relation to Pablo, was the star defensive player for Columbia’s soccer team. One thing these two had in common, besides their last name, was that the people in Columbia disliked them because of difficult circumstances they were put in.
Thesis Statement: How Joaquín Guzmán Loera became a mythical figure in Mexico, both a narco folk hero and a villain
Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman Loera (El Chapo) was born on December 25, 1954 in the community of Badiraguato, Sinaloa, Mexico. His parents were Emilio Guzman Bustilos and Maria Consuelo Loera Perez. He grew up on his father’s cattle ranch with his two younger sisters, Amida and Bernarda, and four younger brothers, Miguel Angel, Aureliano, Arturo and Emilio. It is also known that his father was an opium farmer. Throughout Guzman’s childhood he was often beaten by his father for standing up to him. Usually protecting his younger siblings therefore he ended up taking his father’s wrath. Guzman dropped out of the third grade to work for his father, this was due to the fact that the nearest school was 60 miles away and the family could not afford to commute. With little education and few opportunities for employment in his hometown, he became to help cultivate opium for his father. His brothers also joined the family business when they came of age. They would harvest the plant by the kilos and his father would sell it to other suppliers. Guzman became tired of his father’s mismanagement, so he started growing and cultivating his own marijuana plantation with a few distant cousins. He then became financially able to support his family, while his father could not. This ended up leading to his father kicking him out due to jealousy. He then went to live with his grandfather, this is where he earned his nickname El Chapo, which means shorty. This due to the fact that he was 5’6” and
Some may say that Pablo Escobar helped his country Columbia greatly by spreading his illegitimate wealth across Columbia but the amount of terror and killing he spread across the western hemisphere far outweighed the money he put into the less fortunate communities. December 1, 1949, Rionegro, Colombia, Escobar was born. His family was extremely poor, for example one time he and his brother Roberto were sent home from school because they were unable to buy shoes. From an early age, Escobar had possessed a unique drive and ambition to raise himself up from his humble beginnings. As a boy, he told his friends and family that when he grew up, he wanted to become president of Colombia. Yet as he grew older he realized his path to wealth and legitimacy
In the late 1970’s, Guzman worked under the drug lord Hector “El Guero” Palma by transporting narcotics near U.S.-Mexico border through aircraft. Although Guzman’s rank in the cartel was very minimal, he took his job very seriously. For example, if any of his drug shipments were not on schedule, he would kill the smuggler himself usually letting them experience a slow and painful death. Business partners quickly learned that ripping Guzman off or betraying him was not an option. The way Guzman handled business helped him gain popularity. In the 1980’s, the dominant Guadalajara Cartel introduced him to Felix Gallardo, one of Mexico’s high ranked drug lords. Guzman began working for Gallardo as a chauffeur then quickly moved up in the business with the role of coordinating drug shipments from Columbia to Mexico through land, air, and sea. Palma on the other hand delivered his drugs into the United States. Guzman earned himself a lot of respect for his work and began working for Gallardo directly. Throughout the late 70’s and early 80’s, Mexico drug traffickers were the middlemen for Columbian drug trafficking groups. They would simply transport drugs into the U.S. and receive a fee for each kilogram. At this point Gallardo was the top drug kingpin in Mexico. When Gallardo was arrested, Guzman reportedly lived in Guadalajara, Jalisco. He owned several houses throughout
Pablo Escobar was born on December 1, 1949 into a lower-middle class family, young Pablo grew up in the Medellín suburb of Envigado. As a young man, "he was driven and ambitious, telling friends and family that he wanted to be President of Colombia some day. " (Christopher W. Minster) His elder brother, Roberto, reported him as a good brother, who was kind, friendly and intelligent and someone who would achieve greatness. Escobar's drive unfortunately began to find the wrong outlets and he was soon involved in small-time hustling with his gang in the streets of Medellin. There are unproven rumours that, while still at school, Escobar would steal tombstones from the local graveyards, sandblast off the names and sell them to Panamanian smugglers.. Doing whatever he could to make money, by the age of 20, Escobar was dealing cannabis, skilled at stealing cars and starting to build a name for himself in the Colombian criminal underworld. (Pablo Escobar Gavira-Archivos, 2000) Pablo was introduced to crime at a very young age. One must look at the society's state and how he got involved into crime. It could be argued that if Pablo was in a better environment his kindness and ambitions could of lead him to great things instead of becoming a drug lord. Escobar was born with ambitions and dreams
Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was born on December 1, 1949- December 2, 1993 he was known as Colombia drug lord and cocaine traffic. He also was known in the 1983 as the King of cocaine. He also was the wealthiest criminal in the history with an estimated net-worth of $ 30 billion by the early 1990s. Pablo Escobar stared his criminal carrier when he was a teenager, being a teenager in the street of Medellin without the love of his family he started to commit server crime like stealing, gravestone, allegedly. Pablo also when to school for a short time he attempt to University of Antioquia. He also was involved in many crimes selling contraband cigarette, selling fake lottery ticket and stealing cars. He was committed a lot
According to Buchanan, L. Keller, J. and Watkins, D. “Joaquin Guzman Loera, a drug kingpin known as El Chapo, has been arrested by the Mexican authorities nearly six months after his escape from a maximum security prison, according to an announcement from Mexico's president. Mr. Guzman's escape last year humiliated officials who had promised that his escape in 2001 would never be repeated”
The U.S decided to work with the Colombian government to establish an extradition treaty between the countries in 1979 (United States Congress ). This treaty would allow the U.S to extradite the cartel traffickers for a trial in the U.S. This caused Pablo to attack the government and this ultimately caused the Medellin cartel’s downfall. In the early 1990’s the cartel’s leaders were apprehended and the leader Pablo Escobar was killed in a firefight after having to run for his life. (PBS2).
During the early 1990’s Colombia being one of the biggest exporters of narcotics in history, led by Pablo Escobar, who had a wide range of organized crime affiliations throughout Latin America. Pablo Escobar was a Colombian drug lord and he smuggled narcotics all the way to South Florida as when authorities tried to capture him. One of Pablo Escobar’s most important alliances was that of the Mexican-based traffickers. Escobar knew that this was an important trade route because of its geography and how it would be easier to smuggle the narcotics into the United States. This allowed a smuggling partnership between both countries and Mexico was to eventually lead their own drug based trafficking system with the help of Pablo Escobar. From the distributed drugs, cartels would take a certain amount of profit, and would use that money to bribe Mexican officials. By bribing Mexican officials it was insured that if smugglers were to be arrested they would either be let go, the case would be dropped or taking action against a rival smuggling group by giving away information about the rival’s plan to carry
How ever law enforcement was closing in on Escobar. The U.S. want him to be extradited to the U.S. but Escobar surrendered to the Colombian’s in exchange for a promise not to be extradited to the U.S. He was able to design his own luxurious prison and continued to run his business behind the walls. Fifty new charges were brought against Pablo, including political assassination and mass murder. Escobar confessed to just one shipment of cocaine to Europe. When two men came and told Pablo he was being transferred to a military prison, Pablo would have none of this, and he took out hidden weapons, taking the two men hostage. After a night of negotiations 400 army commandos stormed the jail, but Escobar and his brother, along with many others, were gone. After 16 months on the run, he was finally hunted down by Columbian police with the aid of U.S. technology that recognized Escobar’s voice on a cell phone. On December 2, 1993 Pablo Escobar was killed trying to run away on a roof top in one of his safe houses in Columbia.
Let’s start from the beginning in the story about “El Pablo Escobar”, who became the king of coke. First of all, Pablo Escobar was from Colombia, Antioquia and born in 1949. Before his time as a drug lord and a murderous criminal, who organized one of the biggest drug trades in the world. He was a boy like any other regular child, who would spend his time cutting people grass to make money. Going camping on the weekends with the boy scouts, learning how to live in the wild. But he was raised up in the harsh time of economy, where people protested, and fought with one another. Escobar seen many deaths growing up, people beating each other up, protesting for better future for Colombia, and riots where hundreds of people who would fight. Where it all began to create a person like
For many years in Medellin a civil war had occurred costing many lives between both sides of the parties concerning government and guerilla groups, later to become the Medellin Cartel (Fukuyama and Colby 2011). The war had begun and had been prolonged due to the weakness of Colombia’s national government who only commanded a small army and police all around Colombia (Fukuyama et al. 2011). It was by this that the beginning of The Medellin Cartel was able to start strong and continue a successful business. In the book Kings of Cocaine an Astonishing True Story of Murder, Money, and Corruption, authors Guy Gugliotta and Jeff Leen (Gugliotta and Leen 1989) name the founders of what can
The King of Cocaine, Pablo Escobar, was a Colombian drug lord who created the Medellin Cartel and was once one of Forbes’ Magazines wealthiest people (Levinthal, 2012). Pablo Escobar was born in 1949 in Colombia to a father was a peasant farmer and mother who was a school teacher (Thompson, 1996). His aspirations for a large life began when he was young and he dreamed of becoming the president of Columbia. However things changed when he realized that being legitimately wealthy would require him to be a criminal. Prior to being involved in drugs and smuggling, Pablo was a petty street thief and would steal cars (Jenish, & Wirpsa, 1993). As his criminal activity grew he would gain a name for himself on the streets that would ultimately prepare