Why pablo escobar was killed

His boss continues on his way through La Catedral, the jail he built for his own incarceration in But what they were seeing was only one side of a very sordid story.

This was how corrupt Colombia had become. In , more than explosive devices went off in the city between September and December. Survivors do not believe that this is adequately conveyed either in Narcos or any other movie or series that has subsequently aired on the subject. The fascination with the legend of Escobar has shifted attention away from his crimes. Frequently, the bizarre takes precedence over the tragic. Or the odd anecdote of Escobar giving his daughter a unicorn for her birthday, fashioned from the severed wings of an ostrich and a horn nailed to a live pony, which died within days.

Narco-tours in Medellin may be less popular then they were but they still attract their share of tourists. In the Puerta del Sol in Madrid, Christmas was ushered in with a controversial billboard from Netflix that made reference to cocaine, as part of the promotion of the second season of the show.

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.

This episode proved to be a valuable training ground for the future narcotics kingpin. In , Escobar married year-old Maria Victoria Henao. The couple had two children together: a son, Juan Pablo, and a daughter, Manuela.

He also asserts that his father had committed suicide. Beginning in the early s, the country became a prime smuggling ground for marijuana. 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, just a short trip to the north.

Escobar moved quickly to grab control of the cocaine trade. In , drug trafficker Fabio Restrepo from the city of Medellin, Colombia, was murdered.

Escobar worked with a small group to form the infamous Medellin Cartel. Cash was so prevalent that Escobar purchased a Learjet for the sole purpose of flying his money. In some ways he positioned himself as a Robin Hood -like figure, which was echoed by many locals as he spent money to expand social programs for the poor.

As a young man, Escobar told friends and family that he wanted to become president of Colombia. Yet as he saw it, his path to wealth and legitimacy lay in crime. But the reasons for his wealth could not stay hidden, and two years after his election he was forced to resign. The justice minister who revealed Escobar's notorious background was later slain.

Escobar was responsible for the killing of thousands of people, including politicians, civil servants, journalists and ordinary citizens. His goal was a no-extradition clause and amnesty for drug barons in exchange for giving up the trade. His damaged eye was a milky blue, and he periodically squirted drops of medicine into it. Roberto was a gruff tour guide, hustling guests from room to room, but his visitors seemed too awestruck to complain. An exterior wall was speckled with ragged bullet holes, the result of a kidnapping attempt.

Inside, a Jet Ski—supposedly one that Roger Moore used in a James Bond film—sat near a photograph of Escobar driving it across bright-blue water. Beneath a writing desk in the living room, Escobar lifted a plank to reveal a hidden compartment. In the dining room, he pointed to an oil painting of a brown stallion, a racehorse named Earthquake.

Angrily, he recounted how enemies had stolen the horse from him and returned it castrated. In , Roberto founded a holding company, Escobar, Inc. But he is a minor player in a growing industry. An increasing number of people who knew Pablo Escobar—employees, relatives, and enemies—are trying to sell versions of his epic life and death, encouraging a cottage industry of books, television shows, and documentaries.

Netflix does not disclose viewership numbers, but the audience for the show, which will launch its fourth season this year, has been estimated at three million. In , Escobar, Inc. No one disputes that Pablo Escobar was a murderer, a torturer, and a kidnapper.

At his zenith, he was the most notorious outlaw on the planet, with control of some eighty per cent of the cocaine entering the U. In Colombia, his legacy touches nearly everyone, but few people agree on whether his story should be seen as entertainment or as a cautionary tale.

Before I left, I asked him why his brother continued to inspire people around the world. It was a kind of catechism; he did not explain further. Correa, an amiable man of sixty-three, was bald and corpulent, and dressed in a gray suit, a pink shirt, and a burgundy tie.

He began hanging out with the crowd at Las Dos Tortugas, coming and going on a Lambretta motorbike. Escobar found his niche as the U. When Correa assured him he could, the pistolero gave him an order. After that, the gangsters started buying perfume for their girlfriends, and Correa became known as El Perfumero.

Correa took pleasure in associating with men who had monikers like Filth and Spider. Some were policemen, who came to change out of their uniforms and then attack their colleagues. Correa was fascinated, and gradually he became a welcome visitor. My friends warned me that I would be dead within six months. One day, he recalled, some Escobar men began discussing a murder they were planning. We trust you. But the morbid curiosity—you know, it was like Alka-Seltzer.

I felt something here, inside me. When Escobar began to establish himself as a public figure, in the early eighties, he found other people willing to tell his story without judgment. Semana described Escobar as a politically ambitious and civic-minded thirty-three-year-old businessman who owned an immense private ranch and a fleet of helicopters and airplanes.

Escobar, undaunted, joined a different branch of the Party, with the help of a powerful, corrupt senator named Alberto Santofimio. At the moment he is moving forward with a program to build a thousand homes on a giant lot he owns.

His electoral ambitions did not go very far. Escobar fought back, falsely accusing the minister of being in the pocket of narcos. But then an influential newspaper editor named Guillermo Cano dug up an old news story showing that Escobar had been arrested, seven years before, for the possession of thirty-nine pounds of cocaine.

Escobar was ejected from Congress, and the F. He went underground, and a long hunt began. Escobar spent seven years as a fugitive, but his concern was less the Colombian justice system than the United States Drug Enforcement Administration. To force the state to withdraw from its extradition treaty with the U.

To force the government to negotiate, he abducted prominent Colombians, many of them journalists, including the daughter of a former President. His fans love it. The YouTube show has some six hundred thousand subscribers, mostly young, right-wing men. A slim, youthful man in his mid-fifties, with short-cropped silver hair and a camera-ready smile, he wore jeans and a black T-shirt, and his neck and arms were tattooed. The apartment had the feeling of a studio set.

In the living room, a large window looked out on an adjacent apartment tower, and a camera on a tripod was placed near it. On the walls, an oil painting showed two cocks fighting against a black backdrop; another depicted an army of sperm breaking into eggs. The narcoturistas are coming to Colombia in part because the country is experiencing unusual stability, after decades of vicious fighting.

In , the government, led by President Juan Manuel Santos, signed a peace treaty with the Marxist guerrilla army known as the FARC , ending a half-century insurgency.

Popeye wanted no part of it. Popeye was not opposed to violence. Uribe denies the accusations. However, his brother is on trial for leading a terror group, and numerous associates of his have been imprisoned for similar crimes.

He had killed innocent people, he said, and cut victims into pieces, but had done so because his enemies had done that to his people, too. Anyway, in those days it had been his job. He had been fighting what he thought was a war against a corrupt state and its extradition treaty with the United States. How did he sleep at night? By getting in bed, pulling up the covers, and closing his eyes. Popeye complained that he had done his time and had helped prosecutors with investigations, but still the authorities interfered with his efforts to make a living, through his books and films.

On his YouTube show, he claims that the police frequently stop him to ask questions about being involved in the cocaine trade. My apartment is nothing fancy, and my car is ordinary.