Pablo Escobar was born in Western Colombia on December 1, 1949, in a family that had very little money. They had the basic necessities, however, because everyone worked. Pablo had a brother and a sister. His mom, Hermilda, was a schoolteacher and his dad, Abel, a worker on different farms. While a teenager, Pablo’s family was assigned a house with government help in the town of Envigado, near the big city of Medellin. Pablo had to change schools, but he did and passed the year. With his cousin Gus, who was a little older, he also began stealing things and smoking pot. They bought a motorcycle with the money they got by stealing and used the bike to commit more crimes.
In 1975 Pablo had to go to jail for one of his crimes. There he found out about the high price some people paid for illegal drugs like cocaine. That kind of money interested him a lot. When he got out of jail in 1976, Pablo became a drug trafficker. They are people who get and sell drugs without permission of the government. He also married his girlfriend, Victoria, who was only 14 years old (He was 27 now).
Pablo and his friends and helpers continued their drug activity. At the end of 1977, he had made at least one million dollars. He began to buy all kinds of property and fancy cars with the money. The customers for Pablo’s drugs lived in different countries on different continents. It is said that just in the United States, certain people were buying more than 20 tons of cocaine each year. When police officers tried to stop Pablo’s activities, he would hire somebody to kill them. Also, all kinds of citizens actually helped Pablo because they wanted the quick money he offered them. They didn’t want to work many years to get money, which, most people agree, is the normal way to get it.
In 1989 Pablo ordered the deaths of 3 very important men in Colombia, it is said. They were trying to stop him from making his millions of dollars. These men were quickly killed. One of them was the leading candidate to be President of Colombia in 1990. His name was Luis Galan. Of course, these murders made the government very angry. It then began sending criminals to the United States to be in jail in that country. It’s called extradition. This decision made Pablo super angry. He began paying his men to kill police officers. It was like a war between the government and Pablo. Pablo would pay 1 million Colombian pesos for each dead police officer. More than 250 police officers died in one year. Most of them were killed by Pablo and other criminals. Pablo also ordered bombs to be exploded near shopping centers. Those bombs killed a lot of innocent citizens.
Now many people were looking for Pablo. Usually, they were different kinds of police officers. The government had offered 5 million dollars for Pablo’s capture or for information about where he was living. After a lot of hard work, the government found Pablo’s hideout in Medellin on December 2, 1993. It was after noon. When the police arrived, Pablo tried to escape by going out onto the roof. The police officers shot him there and he fell off onto the ground.
In the end Pablo had to hide all the time. He had no more freedom to go here or there. He had loved football all his life, but this love didn’t help him now. Many poor and humble citizens in Medellin attended Pablo’s funeral. This is because he had given a lot of money to poor people, similar to Robin Hood. In fact, some people had called him the Robin Hood of Colombia.
