Pablo Escobar Influence

Some may say that Pablo Escobar helped his country Columbia greatly by spreading his illegitimate wealth across Columbia but the amount of terror and killing he spread across the western hemisphere far outweighed the money he put into the less fortunate communities. December 1, 1949, Rionegro, Colombia, Escobar was born. His family was extremely poor, for example one time he and his brother Roberto were sent home from school because they were unable to buy shoes. From an early age, Escobar had possessed a unique drive and ambition to raise himself up from his humble beginnings. As a boy, he told his friends and family that when he grew up, he wanted to become president of Colombia. Yet as he grew older he realized his path to wealth and legitimacy

The film The Two Escobar’s, directed by Jeff and Michael Zimbalist, is a documentary about “narco-soccer”, which was a time period in Columbia when it was prevalent for drug kingpins to use soccer clubs to launder their money. One of the most infamous kingpins was Pablo Escobar. Pablo was typically known as a murderer in Columbia, but did have one passion in life, and that was soccer. The other Escobar, Andres, who had no blood relation to Pablo, was the star defensive player for Columbia’s soccer team. One thing these two had in common, besides their last name, was that the people in Columbia disliked them because of difficult circumstances they were put in.

The United States agency of drugs have discovered that for all of the illegal drugs consumed in the nation has been transported by the Mexican cartels. “U.S. federal officials say that the mexican cartels operate in dozens of U.S. cities and analysts say they are moving to consolidate their control of the entire supply chain of illegals drugs”(Schwartz, 1). The government of the United States have been conducting the investigation to now if the cartels are north. Many big cities today have a piece of the cartel organization working there and also producing drugs to distribute within the city. According to the investigation done by the DEA and U.N officials “Mexican cartels have established command - and - control centers to orchestrate cocaine shipments by sea and air along the still wild caribbean coast with the help of local authorities”(Booth, 2). All though that the cartel are moving to the United States they are still leaving command center in mexico to conduct shipments by ground or any other shipments overseas. The cartel is able to transport such quantities of drugs with help of the local authorities and other corrupt government officials.

This paper will analyze whether Pablo Escobar was a Modern day Robin Hood or a Murderous Tyrant. Escobar to this day is still a highly controversial character and is perceived differently throughout Columbia. The topic was undertaken by thorough research and analyzing documents and interviews. Due to lack of Primary Documents, the majority of my research was from secondary sources. Pablo Escobar grew up in a time period which was referred to simply as the Violencia, Pablo was known as a loving father and the people saw him as a local boy who had done well for himself and gave back millions to the community. Escobar was not always seen as a charitable figure he was targeted by extreme left winged guerrillas. Intimidation and violence were the

However, it seemed as if an even bigger problem for the DEA would be to find the source of the drugs and eliminate the drug trade. The focus moved to Colombia, the base of many sophisticated drug trafficking organizations. The notorious Pablo Escobar became one of the world’s leading drug traffickers. Violence and corruption erupted in Colombia during this era. During the Medellin Massacre, the Columbian mafia killed forty people in one weekend after authorities seized about six hundred kilos of cocaine. This event truly solidified the power and success of the drug mafias in Colombia. What did this mean for America? It only heightened the amount of drug trafficking. Anxiety grew in the hearts of Americans who feared that the new drug epidemic would also bring about brutal violence in their country. However violence only contributed partially to the problem. Organizations based in America grew to power off of the drug trading business. This did not just include mobsters but people like Larry Lavin. Lavin, an Ivy-league educated dentist, became the head of a major drug trafficking business. Those involved in his heist also included teachers, lawyers, and businessmen. Situations similar to these further validated America’s fear of violence and corruption being associated with drugs. The

Nowadays, when someone thinks of Colombia, they unfortunately almost always think of two things, coffee and cocaine (with its associated guerilla warfare). It is true that during the last 50 years these two products, one legal, and the other not, have been great monetary contributors to the Colombian economy. Coffee is Colombia’s principal agricultural product, and it is also the country’s second largest export. The production of coffee uses 300,000 farms and employs almost one million people (Steiner 6). Conversely, cocaine is a completely illegal product, but it earns almost twice as much money as coffee (Steiner 6). Also, in contrast with the production of coffee, cocaine uses fewer employees but earns

During the early 1990’s Colombia being one of the biggest exporters of narcotics in history, led by Pablo Escobar, who had a wide range of organized crime affiliations throughout Latin America. Pablo Escobar was a Colombian drug lord and he smuggled narcotics all the way to South Florida as when authorities tried to capture him. One of Pablo Escobar’s most important alliances was that of the Mexican-based traffickers. Escobar knew that this was an important trade route because of its geography and how it would be easier to smuggle the narcotics into the United States. This allowed a smuggling partnership between both countries and Mexico was to eventually lead their own drug based trafficking system with the help of Pablo Escobar. From the distributed drugs, cartels would take a certain amount of profit, and would use that money to bribe Mexican officials. By bribing Mexican officials it was insured that if smugglers were to be arrested they would either be let go, the case would be dropped or taking action against a rival smuggling group by giving away information about the rival’s plan to carry

The U.S decided to work with the Colombian government to establish an extradition treaty between the countries in 1979 (United States Congress ). This treaty would allow the U.S to extradite the cartel traffickers for a trial in the U.S. This caused Pablo to attack the government and this ultimately caused the Medellin cartel’s downfall. In the early 1990’s the cartel’s leaders were apprehended and the leader Pablo Escobar was killed in a firefight after having to run for his life. (PBS2).

For many years in Medellin a civil war had occurred costing many lives between both sides of the parties concerning government and guerilla groups, later to become the Medellin Cartel (Fukuyama and Colby 2011). The war had begun and had been prolonged due to the weakness of Colombia’s national government who only commanded a small army and police all around Colombia (Fukuyama et al. 2011). It was by this that the beginning of The Medellin Cartel was able to start strong and continue a successful business. In the book Kings of Cocaine an Astonishing True Story of Murder, Money, and Corruption, authors Guy Gugliotta and Jeff Leen (Gugliotta and Leen 1989) name the founders of what can

Violence in modern Colombia takes place in many forms. The three major categories are crime, guerrilla activities, and attacks committed by drug traffickers. Violence has become so widespread and common in Colombia that many people have now become numb to it. The Colombian economy has also benefited from the illicit drug trade; however violent it may be. During the 1970s, Colombia became well known, as one of the world’s most important drug processing, production, and distribution centers for marijuana and cocaine.

In order to understand the magnitude of the Sinaloa Cartel, it must be compared with other cartels from the past. In the 1970s and 80s, the marijuana and cocaine trades were dominated by the Columbians, most notably, the Medellin Cartel. Making its prominent rise under the direction of drug queen-pin Griselda Blanco, the Columbians reached their height of power while following the lead of the legendary drug trafficker Pablo Escobar. A Columbian, Blanco made her name on the streets of New York and Miami. She is responsible for an estimated 250 deaths. Many of the murders Blanco committed personally (McGasco, 2015, par. 12).

Let’s start from the beginning in the story about “El Pablo Escobar”, who became the king of coke. First of all, Pablo Escobar was from Colombia, Antioquia and born in 1949. Before his time as a drug lord and a murderous criminal, who organized one of the biggest drug trades in the world. He was a boy like any other regular child, who would spend his time cutting people grass to make money. Going camping on the weekends with the boy scouts, learning how to live in the wild. But he was raised up in the harsh time of economy, where people protested, and fought with one another. Escobar seen many deaths growing up, people beating each other up, protesting for better future for Colombia, and riots where hundreds of people who would fight. Where it all began to create a person like

The King of Cocaine, Pablo Escobar, was a Colombian drug lord who created the Medellin Cartel and was once one of Forbes’ Magazines wealthiest people (Levinthal, 2012). Pablo Escobar was born in 1949 in Colombia to a father was a peasant farmer and mother who was a school teacher (Thompson, 1996). His aspirations for a large life began when he was young and he dreamed of becoming the president of Columbia. However things changed when he realized that being legitimately wealthy would require him to be a criminal. Prior to being involved in drugs and smuggling, Pablo was a petty street thief and would steal cars (Jenish, & Wirpsa, 1993). As his criminal activity grew he would gain a name for himself on the streets that would ultimately prepare

Pablo started his criminal career when he was in school by staling tombstones and selling then to a person in panama. In the 1970s he moves to the cocaine business, he started to make such a big empire of drug and cocaine which became know the Medellin cartel. By the 1980s everybody started to know about Pablo Escobar worldwide as el cartel de medallin. El cartel de medallin was in charge to controlled big portion of the drugs that was going into the United Stated, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic he also has cocaine coming from Peru and Bolivia because the coca from Colombia was initially of substandard quality. Pablo came from stealing to sell drug and also to kill people for example “Pablo was responsible for the murder of Colombia presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan, one of the three assassinated candidates who were all competing in the same election, as well as the bombing of Avianca flight 203 and the Das building bombing in Bogota in 1989. The cartel de Medellin was also involved in a deadly drug war with its primary rival, the cartel de Cali, from most of existence” while Pablo was committed crime by selling drug killing people the Forbes magazine estimated Pablo to the seventh- richest man in the world it was so crazy how the medellin cartel was making up to $ 30 billion annually and controlling the 80 percent of the global cocaine market. Even though Pablo was a criminal and an any of the United States and Colombia many people in Medellin was looking at him like if he was a hero he was helping the poor community and also he was there sponsoring little league football (soccer) also the Atletico National. He not only made football fields and multisport he also was responsible for the construction of many churches in Medellin. Pablo was very smart because he was committed s lot of crime but was had I very good back gourd I think he knew he was

Pablo Escobar had a great impact on drug trade to the U.S. in the 1980s. How he got into cocaine, how he smuggled, it shows and how he was brought down.