1 Pablo Escobar was born on a cattle ranch in 1949,
the second year of The Violence, a civil war that left hundreds of thousands
dead. It was popular to stab a victim in the neck, pull the tongue through the
gap and hang it down the chest, which was called wearing a Colombian Necktie.
2 The atmosphere at home was heavily religious. They
had a figurehead of Jesus with realistic blood. After his mother told him
Christ’s story, young Pablo was so sad that when lunch was served, he put a
piece of meat in his corn cake and took it to the figurehead. “Poor man, who
made you bleed? Do you want a little meat?” This act convinced his mother that
he was kind and religious. For the rest of his life, Pablo always tried to
sleep with an image of Jesus nearby.
3 In Peru, Pablo hooked up with suppliers of cocaine
paste who were offering it for $60 a kilo at a time when a kilo of cocaine was
selling for up to $60,000 in America. Pablo discovered he could sell any
amount. To outsmart the authorities, his methods of transportation varied. He
invested in submarines, commissioning his brother, Roberto, to manufacture them
with the help of foreign engineers.
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| Cocaine submarine |
He made so much money from cocaine that he became
the seventh richest man in the world according to Forbes Magazine. From 1987, he made the Forbes richest list seven years in a row. Estimates of his net
worth range up to $30 billion.
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| Pablo and his son outside of the White House. Pablo aspired to be the president of Colombia |
4 A lover of birds, Pablo owned a parrot that
recited the names of Colombian soccer players. Unfortunately, she fell asleep
after drinking some whiskey and was eaten by a cat. After that, Pablo banned
all cats from the zoo at his $100 mill ranch, including lions and tigers.
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| Entrance to Pablo's ranch, Hacienda Napoles |
5 In 1983, his zoo received 60,000 visitors, who
drove through the grounds to watch animals such as antelope, elephants, gazelles,
zebras, exotic birds, giraffes, hippopotami, ostriches, a soccer-playing
kangaroo and an elephant that stole food from people’s cars. On November 17,
1983, Pablo was fined 450,000 pesos for the illegal importation of eighty-five
animals, including camels, elk and a large Amazonian rodent called a capybara.
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| Capybara |
6 Pablo bought a 1930s Cadillac that looked like the
one driven by Al Capone. To make it seem as if Capone had actually owned it,
Pablo strafed it with gunfire.
7 Pablo sang in the shower and had a dry sense of
humour.
When asked by a journalist, “Do you feel bigger than
Al Capone?”
Pablo replied, “I’m not that tall, but I think Al
Capone was a few centimetres shorter than I am.”
8 To shield himself from his enemies, including
the government and the rival Cali Cartel, Pablo commissioned the building of
his own prison called the Cathedral, which he surrendered to. After adorning
the prison with luxuries and ordering the murder of two of his associates who’d
visited the prison, the Galeano and Moncada brothers, special forces raided the
Cathedral, but Pablo escaped on a foggy morning through a hole cut in the fence.
9 Pablo was doomed after a much bigger gangster
tried to take him out: George HW Bush. As part of
his War on Drugs crusade, Bush dispatched multiple agencies including the CIA,
Delta Force and Centra Spike, who worked with the Colombian special forces and a
death squad called Los Pepes, which murdered anyone associated with Pablo. Ex-CIA pilot Chip Tatum has alleged that some of Pablo’s billions in Panama ended up in George HW Bush’s hands, just like Pablo liquidated the assets of the Galeano and Moncada brothers. It was a case of a big gangster shaking down a smaller one.
10 There are conflicting versions of how Pablo
died. His family believes that he
committed suicide. His motto was, “Rather a coffin in Colombia than a jail cell
in America.” Surrounded by special forces, Pablo was shot three times: in his
back, leg and above his right ear. His brother, Roberto, believes the wound
above the ear was the suicide shot. Having pledged to never be captured or
killed, he shot himself in the head to deprive the government of being able to
claim that they had killed him.
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| Troops pose with Pablo's corpse |
