2 Bribing The Colombian Government
Escobar was so feared that he was able to bribe even the highest-ranking politicians, officials, and judges. His motto was “Plata o plomo,” meaning “silver or lead”—those who could not be bribed with money would be shot and killed.
As Mark Bowden, author of Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw, described it:
Between 1976 and 1980, bank deposits in Colombia’s four major cities more than doubled. So many illegal American dollars were flooding into the country that the country’s elite began looking for ways to score its share without breaking the law. President Alfonso Lopez Michelsen’s administration permitted a practice that the central bank called “opening a side window,” which allowed unlimited quantities of dollars to be converted to Colombian pesos. [ . . . ] The government played along by turning a blind eye.[9]
1 His Own Brother Turned Against Him
During the takedown of Escobar, he was turned on by his own brother, former accountant Roberto Escobar. Juan Sebastian Marroquin Santos, Pablo’s son, wrote in his book, Pablo Escobar: My Father, “My uncle Roberto Escobar, the official informant of the DEA, actively contributed to delivering him to his enemies. Him, his siblings, and even his own mother. It is a story that I’m not proud of, and I wish it had been a story about family values, respect, and company, and affection, but sadly it was not like that.”[10]
The paramilitary group Los PEPES, which stands for “People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar,” the Cali Cartel, the US and Colombian governments, and Roberto split the Medellin cartel and made those closest to Escobar into his enemies. On December 2, 1993, after 16 months of chasing Escobar, he was traced by a phone call made to his son and gunned down on a rooftop in Medellin. More than 25,000 locals held a funeral procession for the kingpin. After his death, the New York Daily News reported the “locals wailed and moaned, hailing the dead drug lord as a savior of the poor.” His grave in Cemetario Jardins Montesacro, Itagui, is the second-most-visited tomb in South America.
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