Pablo Escobar spoke in full as Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria, also known as El Doctor, El Patrón, Don Pablo, El Señor and The Tsar of Drugs was a Colombian drug lord and drug terrorist who gained the upper hand in the 1990s. His cartel – the Medellin Cartel – was an organized group of drug suppliers and smugglers based in the city of Medellin, Colombia. The cartel was solely responsible for 80% of the cocaine illegally smuggled into the USA at the time. At the height of his career, he earned over $60 million a year in drug profits. This earned him a place on Forbes’ list of the then 10 richest people in the world.
Pablo was a remarkable philanthropist who built and expanded many social projects to help the poor, but the terror campaigns to fight the government police and maintain his lucrative business caused the deaths of many people: policemen, judges, social leaders, politicians, and virtually everyone who stood in his way. This turned public opinion against him, and he was soon shot dead by the Colombian police on 2 December 1993 in an exchange of fire during an attempt to capture him. This put an end to the 16-month hunt for him and ended the debacle of the Medellin cartel and Colombia’s prominent role in the cocaine trade.
Pablo Escobar Wiki, Mother
Pablo Escobar was born on December 1, 1949, in the Colombian city of Rionegro, Antioquia, in the family of the farmer Abel de Jesús Dari Escobar (father) and the elementary school teacher Hermilda Gaviria (mother); his family later moved to the suburb of Envigado. He studied briefly at the Universidad Autónoma Latinoamericana in Medellin but left it without a degree.
Even at a young age, Escobar had a unique drive and ambition to rise from his humble beginnings by any means necessary. Unfortunately, he chose the fast but deadly path to wealth and began his criminal lifestyle as a teenager, selling smuggled cigarettes, stealing and selling tombstones, fake lottery tickets, and later cars.
He was well versed in this dark lifestyle, which earned him the recognition of the then ruling drug lords, who later put him out of business. In the 1970s he started working for various smugglers, often kidnapping people and holding them for ransom. He did this very well and took on a new role in the drug world by distributing cocaine powder and in 1975 he started the first smuggling routes into the United States.
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Pablo was very successful in his deadly drug smuggling business, and with the exponential growth in demand for cocaine in the United States, it was estimated in the 1980s that a whopping 70 to 80 tons of illegal cocaine was shipped from Colombia to the United States each month. This earned him the popular title “The King of Cocaine”.
As a young man, Pablo dreamed of one-day becoming president of Colombia, which he revealed to his friends and family. As a man of the people, he ran for it and was elected as a deputy member of the Colombian Congress in 1982. But in 1984, the illegal source of his wealth could not be kept secret for long, forcing him to give up his seat in Congress. The Minister of Justice, who had exposed him, was later murdered, and one can rightly conclude the cause of his death.
Pablo Escobar Siblings, Cousin
Pablo had 6 brothers and sisters from his parents: Roberto Escobar, Luz María Escobar, Argemiro Escobar, Alba Marina Escobar, Luis Fernando Escobar, Gloria Inés Escobar.
Of all his siblings, however, only Roberto Escobar and Alba Marina Escobar were close to him and had access to his money during his life and after his death. The only cousin of him who was close to his business was Nicholas Escobar. While Pablo was more open to violence, his cousin Nicholas was calmer and more involved in running the cocaine business.
The rumor was that Pablo had lost confidence in his brother in his dwindling days, as he later apparently became a DEA informant. Netflix’s “Narcos” portrayed him in this light in the film to his great sorrow. He announced that he would sue Netflix for $1 billion because of the misrepresentation of his family in the show. Roberto was Pablo’s accountant for his drug gang in real life, but in the series, the accountant is portrayed as a non-family member who turns out to be a C.I.A. agent. Roberto demands the right to review the story of the second season and to receive appropriate compensation.
In an interview he granted earlier this year, he was quoted as follows
“I do not want Netflix or any other film production company to make any films in Medellin or Colombia that involve me or my brother Pablo without permission from Escobar Inc. “This is very dangerous. Especially without our blessing. This is my country.”
However, no update has yet been released on his intention to sue Netflix.
Pablo Escobar’s Net Worth and House
In his days as a drug lord, Pablo had the best money could afford, his house was no exception. In his country house in Colombia, he built a palatial estate he called the Hacienda Napoles. There he maintained a colonial house, a sculpture garden, and a private zoo, which featured reconstructed dinosaurs as well as several imported animals from different continents.
Pablo owned a 4 bedroom mansion in his name on a 6500 square foot lot located at 5860 North Bay Road in Miami Beach, Florida USA. This was later confiscated by the government in the 1980s.
When he was to serve his time in a Colombian prison, he specifically asked to be allowed to build his own special prison. After about six months of negotiations, he prevailed against the government and had his prison “La Catedral” or the cathedral built according to his specifications.
The luxurious prison building was unofficially known as “Club Medellin” or “Hotel Escobar” and “Resort”. It had a bathroom with a whirlpool and a bedroom with a round, rotating bed. On the premises, there was a football field, a disco, a doll’s house for his daughter, and a private bar. In addition to cell phones, radio transmitters, and a fax machine, there was a waterfall to keep him going, earning his cartel a peak of $60 million a day and controlling up to 80 percent of the cocaine shipped into the United States.
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According to Forbes, Escobar made the list of the 10 richest people in the world who were on the list at the time. He was undoubtedly one of the richest criminals to ever walk the earth. His net worth was estimated at $30 billion in the early 1990s (equivalent to about $55 billion in 2016).
Quick Facts about Pablo Escobar
- Pablo Escobar married his wife Maria Victoria Henao when she was just 15 years old.
- Pablo was so wealthy in his illegal cocaine smuggling business that an estimated $25, 000 was spent monthly on rubber bands to tie his cash.
- He wrote off millions as spoilt money due to rats nibbling them or being spoilt by water. Most of his ill-gotten money was kept in storage houses and underground
- Millions of his money were buried underground in rubber drums. In 2016, a Colombian farmer was reported to have discovered millions of cash which were buried in an oil drum where he was farming.
- Despite killing so many people who stood in his way (more than 4,000 people which include about 1, 000 policemen), at his death, more than 25,000 people held a funeral procession for him. The majority of these people were those he helped through the social projects he executed in his lifetime.
- After the fall of Pablo Escobar’s house, the Hippopotamus in his private zoo wandered off and this contributed to more than 60 Hippos that swim in Colombian waters today.
- In his memory, his Colombian home was turned into a theme park, Ati Shares. It contains huge dinosaur statues, his collection of cars, and a few of the animals he once kept in his private zoo.
- As officials repossessed his home after his death, one of the things they found was a self-help book titled “The Power of Positive Thinking.”
- Most of Pablo’s family members chose to stay out of the spotlight since his death except for his son Juan Pablo Escobar who now goes by the name Sebastián Marroquín.