MAP's index for the series: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n000/a251.html

Bookmark: Reports about Colombia: http://www.mapinc.org/area/Colombia

ESCOBAR'S RISE TO POWER: FROM SMALL-TIME GANGSTER TO THE TERROR OF COLOMBIA

Pablo Escobar was arguably the richest and most violent criminal in
history. Forbes Magazine in 1989 listed him as the seventh-richest man
in the world.

A small-time gangster and car thief from Medellin, the second-largest
city in Colombia, Escobar violently consolidated the cocaine industry
there in the late 1970s. Elected as an alternate to Colombia's
Congress in 1983, Escobar enjoyed widespread popularity among the poor
in Colombia, especially in his home state of Antioquia.

He turned his violent methods against the state in 1984, when Colombia
began cracking down on the cocaine exporters and extraditing them to
the United States for trial.

His campaign of murder, kidnapping, bombing and bribery from then
until his death in 1993 forced a constitutional crisis in Colombia. He
cowed the government into banning extradition, and his murder campaign
against judges and prosecutors so intimidated the nation that it
abandoned trial by jury and began appointing anonymous, "faceless"
judges to prosecute crimes.

At the height of his power in the late 1980s, Escobar and his Medellin
drug cartel controlled as much as 80 percent of the
multibillion-dollar export of Colombian cocaine to the United States.

Escobar was blamed for assassinating three of the five candidates for
Colombian president in 1989, and for instigating a takeover of the
Palace of Justice in Bogota in 1986. More than 90 people died in the
subsequent siege, including 11 Supreme Court justices.

When one of Escobar's bombs brought down an Avianca Airliner in
Colombia in November 1989, killing 107 people, he became one of the
most feared terrorists in the world.

Men working for Escobar were caught that same year trying to buy
Stinger antiaircraft missiles in Miami.

A heavy pot-smoker, Escobar cultivated a relaxed, informal style with
his friends and associates, but he was so vicious to his enemies that
he was feared by everyone. In his battle with Colombian police, he
placed a bounty on the head of officers in Medellin, paying higher
rewards for killing those of greater rank. By the time of his death at
age 44, Dec. 2, 1993, Escobar was considered responsible for thousands
of deaths in Colombia, yet he was mourned publicly by large crowds in
his home city.