Pablo Escobar: How His Instinct Saved Him And Members Of The Medellin Cartel

Pablo Escobar Gaviria is one of the most revered drug lords in history. Born in 1949 in Colombia, he grew up in the lower-middle class neighborhood of Envigado in Medellin. As a kid, Pablo always told his friends that he would one day become the President of Colombia, an endeavor that he strived to fulfill as an adult. He is believed to have gotten into the cocaine trafficking business after ordering the assassination of Fabio Restrepo, a powerful Medellin drug lord. The power vacuum enabled him to take over his organization.

Pablo’s power and influence grew immensely from there, and by the late 70s, he had began smuggling cocaine into the United States. As explained by Jorge Ochoa, a member of the Medellin cartel, in a PBS interview, the cocaine trafficking business was known to only a few in the late 70s and early 80s.

And with the increasing demand for the drug in the United States, it was easy for traffickers to become rich overnight. Moreover, the Colombian and United States government hardly paid any attention to cocaine trafficking as marijuana was the more common drug. The following was Jorge’s revelation in regard to this.

“The [cocaine] business started growing like any business. It becomes like a ball of snow. It grows by itself, and demand it makes it grow. The business grows on its own–not because you want the business to grow, but it’s that the business itself starts growing. It seemed like a game, and nobody paid any attention to it. Nobody, nobody. ‘That was something very easy,’ I thought….”

Pablo Escobar headed the Medellin cartel, whose members included Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, the brothers Jorge Ochoa, Juan David and Carlos Lehder. With the help of the cartel, he was able to capture 80 percent of the cocaine market in the United States.

At the height of his success, Pablo Escobar’s net worth was estimated to be about $30 billion dollars, and according to a report by Business Insider, he was at one time making as much as 420 million dollars a week. Much of it was hidden in warehouses and walls in the homes of his associates.

According to Roberto Escobar, Pablo’s chief accountant, about 10 percent of the money had to be written off each year because of mold and rats. As to his lifestyle, Pablo Escobar’s son Sebastian Marroquin has described the life their father gave them as grand. The following was his revelation on this while speaking to the Daily Mail.

“We had houses, apartments, planes, cars, motorbikes, 4x4s, jetskis… The huge ‘finca’ where my dad built a zoo and an airport, artificial lakes, we had more than 600 employees, 60 vehicles, 10 houses… there were no limits.”

That said, Pablo Escobar is reported to have been a great strategist and according to his hitman John Jairo Velasquez, he was a visionary and a businessman. This is according to the Telegraph. He was also alleged to have great instincts. At one time, this gift helped prevent him and his colleagues from being arrested while in Panama. The incident happened soon after Pablo Escobar ordered the murder of Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, the Minister of Justice in Colombia.

At the time, members of the Medellin cartel were trying to escape from the Colombian authorities and had chosen Panama as the ideal place to lie low until things cooled down. Unfortunately for them, Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega of Panama, a money launderer for the Medellin cartel, was also playing them against United States authorities.

He had planned on arresting Pablo Escobar and his colleagues immediately after touchdown. However, Pablo Escobar’s instincts saved the lot after his pilots reported the flight controllers’ instructions to be odd. The following is a description of how things unfolded according to Fernando Arenas, one of the Medellin cartel’s pilots.

“Their voices (the controllers), and the way they instructed the pilots how to land, where to land, where to park, everything… The instructions were not clear enough, were kind of shaky, and were kind of an order instead of an instruction. So they (the pilots) said, ‘Something is not clear here.’ And Pablo immediately jumps and said… ‘Do not land. How much gas do we have?’ And the pilot said, ‘We have enough to go to Nicaragua, or to return to Colombia, either way.'”

He revealed this during an interview with PBS. The group ended up in Nicaragua. A few years later, Pablo Escobar was shot dead (in 1993) by Colombian authorities in a neighborhood in Medellin, while trying to escape via the rooftops. Presently, Pablo Escobar’s wife Maria Victoria Henao, his son, and daughter Manuela Escobar reside in Argentina. Pablo Escobar’s death is said to have led to the dissolution of the Medellin cartel.

[Featured Image by Luis Benavides/AP Photo]