Pablo Escobar Research Paper

PABLO ESCOBAR
“Power like-love is a double edge sword.” With that sword, Pablo Escobar, Colombia’s powerful drug capo, held tight to. On one edge, Pablo Escobar was a man who was infatuated with power, and used it to his advantage to corrupt Colombia’s political force for his own good. Because of his power status, Escobar was feared by many people because of what he can have done to them. And on the other edge, Pablo Escobar used his power to help those who were less fortunate, and he would be worshiped by many people. Escobar had the need to control everything in his path. Escobar would use his power to manipulate politics, economics, and people way of life.
Pablo Escobar used corruption and propaganda to get his way with non-extradition to the United States. Escobar was born and raised in Medellin, Colombia; a country that produced the most addictive drug, cocaine. Because there was a high demand for cocaine in the United States, Escobar saw this as an opportunity for him to make fast money. He would begin producing and exporting the good. Escobar bribed government officials, judges and other
politicians, so he wouldn’t have to face non-extradition to the United States. Escobar kidnapped or killed those who he felt was a threat towards his cocaine trafficking business. People such as: journalist, judges, police officers, presidents and government officials were main his targets. “Four presidential candidates had been assassinated before the 1990 campaign. Carlos Pizarro, the M-19 candidate, was killed by a lone assassin on a commercial plane” (Marquez 128). “In 1989, presidential candidate, Luis Carlos Galan was assassinated during a public meeting as he was campaigning” (Restrepo 261). In the book, News of a Kidnapping, author Gabriel Garcia Marquez tells a story about two women, Maruja Pachón and Beatriz Villamizar, whose lives would be forever changed once they were kidnapped by Escobar’s group, the M-19. “Between September 1983 and January 1991, twenty-six journalists working in various Colombian media were murdered by the drug cartels” (Marquez 130). Escobar sent out the M-19’s to kidnap Maruja and Beatriz because of Maruja sister, Gloria Pachón, who was the wife of Luis Carlos Galan, the founder of the New Liberalism. Escobar would use Maruja as a bribe “to force non-extradition and obtain an amnesty (Marquez 151). Maruja knew she was being kidnapped for political reasons. “when she learned of the abductions of Marina Montoya and Francisco Santos, Diana understood that her kidnapping was not an isolated act, as she thought at first, but a long-term political operation to force the terms for Escobar’s surrender” (Marquez 58).
Pablo felt “the law is the greatest obstacle to happiness; it is a waste of time learning to read and write; you can live a better, more secure as a criminal than as a law abiding citizen” and some people would abided by those words (Marquez 130). Pablo Escobar trained and hired people to protect him and his well-paid cocaine operation, in case anything went wrong. Some people wanted to be part of Escobar’s achievement. “2,000 people in the slums were working for Escobar’s; many of them were adolescents who earned their living hunting down police. A total of 457 police had been killed in only a few months. For each dead officer they received five million pesos, for each agent a million and half, and 800,000 for each one wounded” (Marquez 178). “"The Extraditables", an organization form by Pablo Escobar and some allies, unleashed a wave of violence and terrorism that shook Colombia in the final years of the 1980s and the early 1990s. Judges were kidnapped or murdered, as were state security agents and politicians, while sudden terrorist attacks with dynamite (in supermarkets, for instance) wrought havoc and claimed countless victims among the civilian population, people who had no connection whatsoever with the problem” (Restrepo 262). Because of the constant violence that the people were witnessing, many of them would begin to either live their life in fear or learn to live in fear.
Pablo Escobar used his power to continue the trafficking of cocaine. There was a high demand for cocaine in the United States and Escobar would continue to supply the U.S with the drugs. “In Colombia, Medellin and Cali, handled over 60% of Colombian drug exports in the 1980s and up until the mid-1990s” (Restrepo 259). Escobar felt that the cocaine traffic was “a route to power and quasi-respectability in societies where legitimate economic opportunities tend to be monopolized by a few established families, dominated by foreign capital, or circumcised by government” (Lee 91). In a way it was true. “In 1987, according to Colombian economist Mario Arango, cocaine traffickers repatriated about $300 million to Medellin; in so doing, they generated 28,000 new jobs in commerce, industry, personal services, and in the informal economy” (Lee 91). “People trafficking in cocaine were accumulating a lot of money that they did not know how to manage it, so they hired administrators, lawyers, economists, and other professionals capable of managing such enormous sums of money” (Restrepo 260).
Pablo Escobar did not only use his power to corrupt, but he used his power to help those who were destitute.
“Escobar built 450 – two bed room housing units for the slums – delivering families of Medellin. This project was called the “Barrio Pablo Escobar” (Lee 96). The people of Medellin saw Escobar as a God, and glorified him for his works in Colombia. “People put up altars with his picture and lit candles to him in the slums of Medellin. It was believed he could perform miracle” (Marquez 181). Although Escobar help the less fortunate, and share his wealth to help build homes for the people in the slums of Medellin, it was still dirty money, money by those who either destroy their life or lost their soul using the addictive substance, cocaine. “In 1987, cocaine overdose was responsible for about 26,000 hospital emergency cases and 1700 deaths” (Lee
88).
There is a saying “everything has to come to an end”, and Pablo’s Escobar double edge sword power came to an end in December 1993, when he was shot in a police operation supported by the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). Pablo Escobar would always be remember as Colombia’s most powerful drug capo, who had a profound effect in politics, the economy, and the peoples way of living.

Works Cited

García, Márquez Gabriel, and Edith Grossman. News of Kidnapping. London: Penguin, 1998. Print.
Lee III, Rensselaer. "Dimensions of the South American Cocaine Industry." Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs (1988): 87-103. JSTOR. Web. 21 Sept. 2013
Restrepo, Andres Lopez, and Alvaro Camacho Guizado. "From Smugglers to Warlords: Twenthieth Century Colombian Drug Traffickers." Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies (2003): 249-275. JSTOR. Web. 21 Sept. 2013