Pablo Escobar Biography (1949–1993)

Pablo Escobar Biography

(1 DECEMBER 1949– DEC 2,1993)

Pablo Escobar was a Colombian drug lord whose ruthless ambition, until his death, implicated his wife, daughter and son in the notorious Medellin Cartel.
Who Was Pablo Escobar?

Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was a Colombian drug trafficker who eventually controlled over 80 percent of the cocaine shipped to the U.S., earning him the rank of one of Forbes Magazine’s 10 wealthiest people in the world. 

Escobar entered the cocaine trade in the early 1970s, collaborating with other criminals to form the Medellin Cartel. He earned popularity by sponsoring charity projects and soccer clubs, but later, terror campaigns that resulted in the murder of thousands turned public opinion against him. 

Early Life
Escobar was born on December 1, 1949, in the Colombian city of Rionegro, Antioquia. His family later moved to the suburb of Envigado. 

Escobar came from a modest family: His father worked as a peasant farmer while his mother was a schoolteacher. From an early age, Escobar packed a unique ambition to raise himself up from his humble beginnings. 

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. 


Escobar’s early prominence came during the “Marlboro Wars,” in which he played a high-profile role in the control of Colombia’s smuggled cigarette market. This episode proved to be a valuable training ground for the future narcotics kingpin.

Escobar's Wife, Son and Daughter

In 1976,  Escobar married 15-year-old Maria Victoria Henao. The couple had two children together: a son, Juan Pablo, and a daughter, Manuela. 

Today Escobar’s son is a motivational speaker who goes by the name Sebastian Marroquin. Marroquin studied architecture and published a book in 2015, Pablo Escobar: My Father, which tells the story of growing up with the world’s most notorious drug kingpin. He also asserts that his father had committed suicide. 

"My father's not a person to be imitated,” Marroquin said in an Agence France-Presse interview. “He showed us the path we must never take as a society because it's the path to self-destruction, the loss of values and a place where life ceases to have importance.”   

Pablo Escobar estate photo
Escobar’s lush and expansive estate, known as Hacienda Nápoles, included a zoo filled with exotic animals from around the world and large sculptures of dinosaurs in one of its gardens.

Photo: Timothy Ross/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images


Medellin Cartel
It wasn’t by chance that Colombia came to dominate the cocaine trade. Beginning in the early 1970s, the country became a prime smuggling ground for marijuana.

But as the cocaine market flourished, Colombia’s geographical location proved to be its biggest asset. 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 1975, drug trafficker Fabio Restrepo from the city of Medellin, Colombia, was murdered. His killing, it’s believed, came at the orders of Escobar, who immediately seized power and expanded Restrepo’s operation into something the world had never seen.

Under Escobar’s leadership, large amounts of coca paste were purchased in Bolivia and Peru, processed, and transported to America. Escobar worked with a small group to form the infamous Medellin Cartel.

By the mid-1980s, Escobar had an estimated net worth of $30 billion and was named one of the 10 richest people on Earth by Forbes. Cash was so prevalent that Escobar purchased a Learjet for the sole purpose of flying his money.

At the time, Escobar controlled more than 80 percent of the cocaine smuggled into the United States; more than 15 tons were reportedly smuggled each day, netting the Medellin Cartel as much as $420 million a week.

As Escobar’s fortune and fame grew, he dreamed to be seen as a leader. 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.

Escobar’s Short-Lived Stint in Politics

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.

In 1982 Escobar was elected as an alternate member of Colombia’s Congress. 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.

How Many People Did Pablo Escobar Kill?

Escobar was responsible for the killing of thousands of people, including politicians, civil servants, journalists and ordinary citizens.

When he realized that he had no shot of becoming Colombia’s president, and with the United States pushing for his capture and extradition, Escobar unleashed his fury on his enemies in the hopes of influencing Colombian politics. His goal was a no-extradition clause and amnesty for drug barons in exchange for giving up the trade.

Escobar’s terror campaign claimed the lives of three Colombian presidential candidates, an attorney general, scores of judges and more than 1,000 police officers. In addition, Escobar was implicated as the mastermind behind the bombing of a Colombian jetliner in 1989 that killed more than 100 people.

Escobar’s terror eventually turned public opinion against him and caused a breakup of the alliance of drug traffickers.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S PABLO ESCOBAR FACT CARD

Pablo Escobar Fact Card
Prison: 'La Catedral'
In June 1991, Escobar surrendered to the Colombian government of President Cesar Gaviria. 

In return, the threat of extradition was lifted and Escobar was allowed to build his own luxury prison called “La Catedral,” which was guarded by men he handpicked from among his employees. The prison lived up to its name and came complete with a casino, spa and nightclub.

In June 1992, however, Escobar escaped when authorities attempted to move him to a more standard holding facility. A manhunt for the drug lord was launched that would last 16 months. 

During that time the monopoly of the Medellin Cartel, which had begun to crumble during Escobar’s imprisonment as police raided offices and killed its leaders, rapidly deteriorated.

Death
Escobar’s family unsuccessfully sought asylum in Germany and eventually found refuge in a Bogota hotel. 

Escobar himself was not so lucky: Colombian law enforcement finally caught up to the fugitive Escobar on December 2, 1993, in a middle-class neighborhood in Medellin. 

A firefight ensued and, as Escobar tried to escape across a series of rooftops, he and his bodyguard were shot and killed.

Pablo Escobar raid photo via Getty Images
Colombian police and military forces storm the rooftop where drug lord Pablo Escobar was shot dead just moments earlier during an exchange of gunfire between security forces and Escobar and his bodyguard on December 2, 1993. 

Photo: JESUS ABAD-EL COLOMBIANO/AFP/Getty Images

After Escobar’s Death
Escobar’s death accelerated the demise of the Medellin Cartel and Colombia’s central role in the cocaine trade. 

His end was celebrated by the country’s government and other parts of the world. His family was placed under police protection. 


Still, many Colombians mourned his killing. More than 25,000 people turned out for Escobar’s burial. 

“He built houses and cared about the poor,” one funeral-goer stated at Escobar’s funeral in a story reported by The New York Times. “In the future, people will go to his tomb to pray, the way they would to a saint.” 

'El Patron del Mal'
Escobar was the subject of a popular 2012 Colombian television mini-series, El Patron del Mal. 

The program was produced by Camilo Cano and Juana Uribe, both of whom had family members who were murdered by Escobar or his assistants. 

'Narcos'
Assisting in the manhunt for Escobar were two American Drug Enforcement agents, Steve Murphy and Javier Peña, both of whom had been working the Escobar case for years. Their story formed part of the backbone of the 2015 Netflix series Narcos.

In 2016, Escobar's brother Roberto announced he was prepared to sue Netflix for $1 billion for its misportrayal of their family in its series Narcos. 

Roberto was Escobar's accountant for his drug gang in real life, but in the show, the accountant is depicted as a non-family member who turns out to be a CIA agent. Roberto Escobar has since abandoned his efforts. 

PABLO ESCOBAR AND SEIGE OF
COLUMBIA`S PALACE OF JUSTICE ,
KILLED 115 ON NOVEMBER 6, 1985

Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, the wealthiest criminal in history once responsible for 80 percent of the cocaine entering the U.S., was also believed to be the force behind the siege on Colombia’s Supreme Court on November 6, 1985. The assault marks one of the deadliest conflicts between the Colombian government and revolutionary groups. By the end of the operation, 12 Supreme Court Justices had been killed, along with 48 Colombian soldiers. 35 members of the M-19 guerilla group and their leader also died; in total, over 100 lives were lost.

Escobar’s reach extended to government and politics, with his famous saying “plata o plomo” (silver or lead) when dealing with politicians and police: those who would not accept bribes would be eliminated. Escobar and the Medellin Cartel allegedly provided $2 million to the M-19 rebels to finance the siege.

Charles Anthony Gillespie Jr. was the United States’ Ambassador to Colombia from 1985-1988, during the height of tensions in the country. He was interviewed by Charles Stuart Kennedy in September, 1995.

“They would get on a motorcycle, ride up behind somebody, put their gun as near as they could to the back of someone’s head and blast away”

Charles Anthony Gillespie, U.S. Ambassador to Colombia, 1985-1988

GILLESPIE: I could begin to see that this narcotics trafficker group made “ruthless” a real word. They just simply were not willing to stop short of anything. The fictional creations of Tom Clancy and others and the way those traffickers have been portrayed in the movies, while ostensibly exaggerated and overdrawn in some respects, basically were not far off from the reality we saw in Colombia. These traffickers were men and women who think nothing of exterminating or snuffing out lives if it seems to serve their purpose.

A class of assassins had developed in Colombia. They are called sicarios (hired assassins) in Spanish. These are kids, often street kids who were basically brought up in small gangs where they learned how to kill people. They were tested by being given a gun. They would go out and get on a motorcycle, ride up behind somebody, put their gun as near as they could to the back of someone’s head or the rear window of the car, and blast away. Or they would do that when the car was stopped at a light. If the car is not armored or does not have some armor plate, that’s goodbye to the victim. That’s the end of it.

Medellin had basically gone over to the narcotics traffickers. Ambassador Tom Boyatt [Ambassador to Colombia from 1980-1983] had closed our Consulates in Medellin and Cali. One of the arguments was that it was no longer safe to have U.S. Consulates in Medellin or Cali because the drug traffickers were so strong there. During the three years that I was in Colombia, I made two trips to Medellin but did not spend the night there. It wasn’t considered safe.

Ambassador [Lewis] Tambs [Ambassador to Colombia from 1983-1985] had been trying to sound the trumpet against drug trafficking in Colombia. However, he had generated a tremendous amount of resentment. Although much of what he said was right, he was probably a prophet ahead of his time.

In roughly 1983 or 1984 Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel began to appear on the scene and became visible. In 1984 President [Belisario] Betancur agreed to the extradition of Colombian citizens to the United States to stand trial for narcotics offenses. This created a tremendous, negative reaction in Medellin from Escobar and those around him and led to a wave of violence. The Colombian Minister of Justice was assassinated. There were all kinds of problems which I have mentioned in connection with the security situation in Bogota. A bomb was exploded near the American Embassy in 1984. Threats were made against the American School, which had all of the consequences that we’ve described. This really set Colombia on edge.

“It was pretty clear that…whoever was in the building was, indeed, executing people”

In 1985 the situation continued to deteriorate. I arrived in Bogota in August, 1985, and spent the month of September getting my feet on the ground and learning a little bit about the lay of the land. Then in early November 1985, the first major development occurred. We learned that some group attacked and apparently took over, and occupied the Palace of Justice in downtown Bogota.

The Palace of Justice is the site of the Colombian Supreme Court. It is a large building, facing on a large courtyard perhaps two blocks across or 500 meters wide, of open space. At the other end of this open space is the Presidential Palace. The Presidential Palace is called the Casa Narino.

An unknown number of people were reportedly being held hostage in the Palace of Justice. Among the hostages were several members of the Colombian Supreme Court. Initially, it wasn’t clear who was doing this or why it was being done. As the facts began to emerge, the group occupying the Palace of Justice appeared to be one of the four most active, revolutionary groups, the M-19 Movement…

Q: Is this the same group that had taken our Ambassador, Diego Asencio [Ambassador to Colombia from 1977-1980], prisoner?

GILLESPIE: Yes.

Remember, this was the mid-1980s. The term, “hostage situation,” was then very current. In this case it meant the takeover of a Colombian Government building by armed people. There was shooting going on. Nobody knew exactly what was happening. However, this was a true crisis.

Under those circumstances, of course, the U.S. had a very definite, policy position of its own on terrorism, kidnapping, and hostage situations. So we reported this situation to Washington. The Department asked us to stay on top of the developing situation. I was authorized to offer the Colombian Government any assistance that they might need, obviously within reason, to help to deal with the situation. We wanted to know how the Colombian Government was going to handle it, what they were going to do, and then see how we could help them.

I asked for an appointment with President Betancur, who had received me rather well when I presented my credentials. I had met him here in the U.S. several months previously before my departure for Colombia. I met with him and offered him any facilities that we could provide.

On instructions, I offered in particular communications or other technical equipment – not armed troops or anything like that, although I did say that we could make available experts in both terrorism and hostage situations – should he desire such help. We were in contact with SOUTHCOM, the Southern Command of the U.S. Army in Panama, which had some people in its headquarters who were quite adept or supposed to be adept at dealing with situations of this kind or training to deal with them.

We entered into a dialogue with the President, which I handled directly. We also dealt with his chief of staff, who was acting as the day-to-day crisis manager. This was a very nasty situation. Demands and threats were made by the M-19 terrorists within the Palace of Justice.

Reports came out that, first, this or that Justice of the Supreme Court had been killed, that another Justice had been shot, and that terrible things were happening… This covered a period of three or four days….

It was pretty clear from communications that were coming out during the takeover and during the crisis and occupation of the Palace of Justice itself that whoever was in the building was, indeed, executing people. This was in a country that was already known for its violence. This seemed to be a further affront to any standards of decency that you could think of. Colombian public sentiment was very strong about this…

It was finally ended when the Colombian military attacked the Palace of Justice through the roofs, the front door, and any available openings in the building. They even used tanks… over 100 people lost their lives.

“We know exactly where your family is. If you do not act in our favor, you will not see your wife and your daughter again”

As time went on, the events at the Palace of Justice began to become clearer, and there were explanations for what had happened. However, we were not quite sure, at least not initially, what the motivations for the takeover of the Palace of Justice were.

Over time it seemed to become pretty clear that this action may have had a revolutionary or rebellious content contributed by the M-19 group. Nevertheless, there seemed to be very strong evidence that Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel, as well as those who were trying to resist any further extradition to the U.S., had their fingers in that pot.

We learned almost immediately from people who were inside the Palace of Justice, and who survived this event, that documents concerning certain people, certain crimes, and certain cases had been taken out of the Ministry of Justice archives and destroyed or burned, before a lot of other things happened. Certain Justices of the Colombian Supreme Court, who were known to favor the extradition of Colombians wanted on narcotics charges in the United States, were summarily executed, within a short period of time…

We later learned that they were operating at the direction of, and certainly with the encouragement of, Pablo Escobar’s Medellin Cartel.

Afterwards, the President of the Supreme Court came to me privately and almost secretly to say, “You’ve got to get my family out of here. You in the United States must help me. I have nowhere else to go.” He brought with him an audio cassette mailed to him by the drug traffickers which included the voices of his wife and daughter, talking on their telephone. The message was implicit, “You see, we know exactly where your family is. If you do not act in our favor, you will not see your wife and your daughter again. We’ll deal with them.”

This was quite different from asking him to step back from issues of interest to them or to be neutral where they were concerned. He said that if he did things for the narcotics traffickers, he would receive fantastic amounts of money. He said that if he refused to do this and tried to be either neutral or negative toward the narcotics traffickers, then they would kill his family.

So he asked us to help him get his family out of the country. We did. We eventually got him out of the country as well. We helped him to get a post in an international organization. That was apparently enough to move him out of the sights of the narcotics traffickers. So he and his family are still alive.

As recently as 1996, 10 or 11 years after the fact, the Colombian Government and other Colombian authorities, are still trying to deal with the question of how to allocate responsibility and accountability for what happened in connection with the Palace of Justice occupation and the decisions that were taken at that time. In the course of that process you could never be sure of how much revisionism of history was going on. This was a consideration, particularly as we couldn’t follow these events too closely, since we never had enough time to do so. We couldn’t be sure of how the Colombian military acted and whether Colombian civilians controlled the situation or not – or wanted to do so. So this incident was never really over…

How Virginia Vallejo’s Love Affair With Pablo Escobar Catapulted Him To Superstardom

By Gina Dimuro

Published March 15, 2018

Updated September 4, 2019

Virginia Vallejo and Pablo Escobar's affair benefited the careers of both the crime lord and journalist. It also provided Vallejo with a treasure trove of secrets and dirt.

n 1982, Virginia Vallejo caused something of a national sensation in her home country of Colombia. The 33-year old socialite, journalist, and TV personality had starred in a series of ads for Medias Di Lido pantyhose, which captivated the nation and brought her to the attention of someone who would soon outrank her in terms of celebrity: Pablo Escobar.

Despite having a wife, Escobar reportedly declared “I want her” after seeing the famous commercial and ordered his associates to arrange a meeting with the television star. He extended an invitation to her to visit his Nápoles villa in 1982 that she accepted.Vallejo came from a prestigious family with members being a finance minister, a general, and several European nobles who could trace their heritage back to Charlemagne. She also already had an established career by the time she met Escobar.

Having made her television debut somewhat reluctantly back in 1972, she was soon known across South America and was hosting her own news program when she first met with the man who would become her lover back in 1982. Escobar was not just smitten by a pretty pair of legs; he realized Vallejo’s influence could be of tremendous use to him.

Virginia Vallejo was immediately charmed by the crime lord, who, despite his bloody lifestyle and fierce reputation, was known for his affability and sense of humor. Vallejo would later write about this duality in her book Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar (which was later turned into a film starring Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz).

For his part, Escobar seemed equally enthralled, although there has always been a debate about the extent of his true feelings for her. Many people believed he was simply using Vallejo to promote his public image, which she certainly helped him do.When the two first met, Escobar was only a minor public figure, but over the course of their five-year relationship he would transform into “the most notorious terrorist in the world.” Vallejo’s reputation as a prestigious journalist was crucial in helping Escobar establish his role as a “man of the people,” which, indeed, is still how he is remembered by many of the poor in Medellín today. Vallejo herself stated that the reason she fell in love with him was “he was the only rich man in Colombia who was generous with the people, in this country where the rich have never given a sandwich to the poor.”

In 1983, a year after the pair had first met, Virginia Vallejo interviewed Escobar on her new program. The interview showed the cartel leader in a favorable light and he talked about his charity work Medellín Sin Tugurios, or Medellín Without Slums. This television appearance not only brought him to national attention but helped to establish his philanthropic image with the public. When major newspapers hailed him as “the Robin Hood of Medellín,” he celebrated with a champagne toast.

Vallejo’s relationship with Escobar ended in 1987. According to Pablo Escobar’s son, the affair ended badly after Escobar learned he was not her only lover. Escobar Jr. recalled that the last time he saw her was outside the gate of one of his father’s estates, where she remained sobbing for hours because the guards refused to let her in on their boss’ orders.

Virginia Vallejo, unfortunately, found that as the power and popularity of her former lover waned, so did her own. She wound up being shunned by her former elite friends and blacklisted from high social circles. She disappeared into relative anonymity until she suddenly resurfaced in the United States in July of 1996.

Loving Pablo Hating Escobar Book

Amazon

Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar by Virginia Vallejo.

Escobar had always enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship with the elites of Colombia: politicians would turn a blind eye to his crimes and accept his money. Vallejo, having been a member of the cartel’s inner circle, was privy to most of these secrets, and years later decided to expose the elites who had lauded then shunned her.

In a tell-all interview on Colombian television, Virginia Vallejo “held up an unflattering mirror to Colombian society” and named “the legitimate businesses that launder drug earnings, the elite social clubs that open their doors to drug lords, and the politicians who exchange favors for briefcases filled with cash.”

She accused several high ranking politicians of benefiting from the cartels, including ex-presidents Alfonso López, Ernesto Samper, and Álvaro Uribe. She described all of their sordid relations with Escobar, including the request from a former justice minister to have a presidential candidate killed.

Virginia Vallejo had exposed the hypocrisy of Colombia’s elite (which had been demonstrated by her own social exile), but in doing so endangered her own life. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration secreted her to the United States, which offered her political asylum, and is where she has remained ever since, fearful of the repercussions of returning to her homeland.

Enjoy learning about Virginia Vallejo? Next, learn about what happened to Maria Victoria Henao, Pablo Escobar’s wife. Then read about Pablo Escobar’s death and the final phone call that brought him down.