He Hid Behind His ‘Robin Hood’ Image
Unbelievably, during his reign of terror, Escobar was also looked upon as a Robin Hood-like figure. He built schools and sports fields for the local communities, donated large sums of money to charity, funded people’s medical expenses, and built houses for the poor. His construction, Barrio Pablo Escobar, still exists today and houses more than 12,000 people in 2,800 homes; there are even images of him at the site with the sign: “Welcome to Barrio Pablo Escobar. Here, you breathe peace.”
He never missed a PR opportunity and dreamed of one day becoming Colombia’s president. In his own uncle’s newspaper, one anonymous admirer said, “His hands, almost priest-like, drawing parabolas of friendship and generosity in the air. Yes, I know him, his eyes weeping because there is not enough bread for all the nation’s dinner tables. I have watched his tortured feelings when he sees street children—angels without toys, without a present, without a future.”[3]
Javier Pena, a former DEA agent who successfully tracked down Escobar, said, “People loved him and that often got in our way. Many in Colombia looked up to him as a God but he was just a master manipulator.”
7 He Turned Medellin Into Colombia’s Murder Capital
In 1989, Medellin reportedly had the highest homicide rate in Colombia. In that year alone, more than 2,600 people were brutally murdered in a city with a population of two million.
According to Charles Anthony Gillespie, who was the US ambassador to Colombia between 1985 to 1988, the city was under the control of the narcotics empire, and the daily slayings were out of control. He said:
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.
He added:
Medellin had basically gone over to the narcotics traffickers. [ . . . ] 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
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