Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cocaine Cartel

Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was a Colombian criminal kingpin most renowned for his leading role in smuggling cocaine to the USA. At the height of his power, Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel were smuggling 15 tons of cocaine to the USA each day, accounting for about 80% of all cocaine consumed in the USA and valued at some half a billion dollars per day. From humble beginnings, Pablo worked his way up to become one of the richest men in the world, and was eventually gunned down on a Colombian rooftop by a huge team of USA funded and CIA controlled men deployed to track him down.



Pablo was born 1 December 1949, the third of seven children to a farmer and school teacher parents. When asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, Pablo answered that he wanted to be a millionaire. As a teenager he began his criminal career reselling stolen gravestones, stealing cars, smuggling contraband cigarettes and even assisting in the kidnapping of a business executive. At the age of 25 he got into the business of cocaine in earnest. After a rival dealer was murdered, ostensibly by Pablo, all his men were told that they now work for Pablo. The following year Pablo was caught in possession of 18 kgs of cocaine after returning from Ecuador. While his attempts to bribe the judge were unsuccessful, after less than 2 months in prison he was eventually able to bribe the arresting police officers, and the case was dropped. This pattern of corruption and intimidation characterised Pablo´s manner of dealing with problems. As Pablo once said, ¨Everyone has a price, the important thing is to find out what it is.¨ Bribing was the first choice, but Pablo was not afraid to take more dramatic actions if necessary. He once said, ¨Sometimes I am God. If I say a man dies, he dies that same day.¨ This policy became to be known as ¨Plata o plomo¨ meaning ´silver or lead´.


While Pablo Escobar was the most well known member of the Medellin cartel, he was not the boss and held an equal, or perhaps only a somewhat greater, share to about 10 other senior members. However, over 10% of a cartel that at its prime smuggled 80% of the USA cocaine supply made him an exceedingly wealthy man. Indeed, by 1983 his fortune was loosely estimated at US$20 Billion, making him the 7th richest person according to Forbes Magazine rich list. As cash was the primary mode of transaction, stashes of millions of dollars continue to be found hidden in the walls of country villas and warehouses across Colombia.


The cartel was mainly a smuggling operation, with most of the cocaine coming from Peru and Bolivia. After is was further refined, it was transported to the USA via other Caribbean countries, mainly the Bahamas, where the cartel bought an island as a smuggling headquarters. They had a fleet of planes, helicopters, boats and even submarines at their disposal, and Pablo, unlike most of the other cartel leaders, famously piloted some deliveries. There were jetliners that could carry 11 tonnes of cocaine per flight and a record delivery of 23 tonnes in a cargo ship.


But controlling so much money has its costs. In addition to constant fighting with rival cartels involving frequent bombing and counter-bombing of cartel owned properties, they were also at war with the US-backed Colombian Government. In a rare offer of peace, Pablo and the cartel offered to pay off the entire national debt of some US$13 billion in exchange for immunity for cartel leaders.  The government said ´no´ and confiscated nearly 1000 cartel owned properties. They then signed an extradition treaty with the US whereby Colombian drug criminals could be imprisoned in the US. As Pablo famously said, `I would prefer to be in the grave in Colombia than in a jail cell in the United States.` The cartel responded with violence. A presidential candidate was gunned down, banks,  newspapers and a Government building in Bogota were car bombed and a commercial flight on which the President was supposed to be was bombed, leaving 107 dead. It was also alleged that Escobar financed an attack on the Colombian Supreme Court in 1985 by a guerrilla group which left have of the Supreme Court judges dead. With so much conflict, Medellin became the murder capital of the world, with over 25,000 violent deaths within the city in 1991 and over 27,000 in 1992. A portion of this high murder rate was attributable to the cartel´s offer of US$1000 for every police officer killed. Over 600 officers were killed in this way in only a few years.



After a period of relative peace, when a new president rescinded the extradition treaty and Pablo was voluntarily imprisoned in a luxury house he built for himself, the position was changed again under pressure from the USA. The war was back on, and Pablo let himself out from his prison and was on the run again. Throughout all these periods of different levels of violence, the rate of cocaine trafficking never faltered.

It took a US funded and CIA controlled team of 1500 men 499 days to track down the escaped Pablo. Using radio triangulation technology provided by the US, Pablo was tracked down to a middle-class neighbourhood in Medellin while talking to his son on the phone. As forces moved in Pablo and his one remaining bodyguard, who had been by his side since almost the beginning, fled the building rooftop to rooftop before they were eventually gunned down. It was 2 December 1993, the day after Pablo´s birthday. There is some controversy about how he actually died. Some claim it was the CIA, who have photos with the body moments later, while others claim it was a vigilante group called Los Pepes who had been pursuing Pablo for over a decade and had captured and killed his cousin earlier that day. Other´s claimed that Pablo shot himself and assured his wish to end up in a Colombian grave rather than a US prison.



While seen as an enemy of the US and Colombian Governments, Pablo was a hero to many Colombians, especially the poor. He built many hospitals, schools and houses in Colombia, most notably a 500 residence housing project in a poor area of Medellin that he gave to the locals. He was also patron of football, building sports centres, sponsoring children´s football teams and paying for about half of the Colombian national team. He did however, have umpires assassinated on a couple of occasions when he did not agree with a decision. He also built a massive zoo on his private country residence. It was abandoned upon his death and there are now some 300 wild hippos roaming the Colombian mountains.



Since 1995 Pablo´s widow and two children have lived in Buenos Aires Argentina, under different names. Pablo said that his wife was the only person he was ever scared of, and other than  being unfaithful was actually a good husband and father. While the family could only get away with a small fraction of Pablo´s wealthy, they still live a very comfortable life.

Now days, about 90% of cocaine used in the USA still comes from Colombia, usually via an intermediary Mexican cartel. The murder capital on the world is now Juarez, on the Mexican border with the US. In the post Escobar era supply and production of cocaine has not dropped, but now it is a collection of guerrilla and paramilitary groups in power operating from the jungle regions of Colombia. It is though that 50-300 thousand hectares of virgin Amazonian rainforest are cleared each year for the production of cocaine. But the situation in Colombian cities and highways has improved dramatically. Medellin is now a growing city with a perpetual spring-like climate, streets lined by mango trees and more beautiful women with breast and arse implants than you could poke a scalpel at. Once the murder capital of the world, this fun, safe and progressive cosmopolitan is now leaving many Western cities for dead. However, some bombed cartel buildings, including a highrise tower used as the cartel´s headquarters and the house of Pablo himself, remain unrepaired and vacant, serving as a constant reminder for the still too recent pasts.

Sacred Sueños Regenerative Farm Project

I recently came back from volunteering for a couple of weeks at a farm in Southern Equador. On the first morning I met up with Yves (pronounced Eve), the guy who runs the project. He is  Swiss born, Canadian raised fiery red headed ex-psudo-anarchist who completed a Bachelor and Masters in Environmental studies. Eight years ago he bought some land serverely degradaded by years of unsustainable farming where almost nothing grew, and committed at least 15 years of his life to help restore it. Today was his 37th birthday.

Clyde the baby donkey having his weekly bath

After a 15 minute taxi ride out of town I was handed the reigns to a horse loaded with a week´s worth of supplies just purchased in town, and we hiked about 1 1/2 hours up a steap, narrow and sometimes muddy trail. Huge respect to Jocito (the horse). We unloaded the weekly bounty of food. One of 12 eggs were cracked, several avacados and papayas were damaged, a few pears were uterlly destroyed, one bag of rice split open, and the bag of oranges and mandarins was left left in the chaos of the market. ¨All in all not too bad,¨ said Yves, who on other accasions had lost almost everything when the bags slipped off, sometimes bringing the horse with it over the edge of the trail. Then Yves, I and 4 other volunteers sat down to a hearty lunch of stewed vegetables, beans and grains.

The kitchen/dinning room/sitting room/library that we ate in was made by Yves at the begging of the project. After months of clearing flat land on the steep slope, he then dragged timber by horse from a tree plantation further up the mountain, and combined it with hand made adobe/mud bricks. After more than 6 months, there was a single room. The whole area was still covered in ferns and other weeds following the previous mono-cropping of sugar cane.

Now, after 8 years of using what he calls regenerative design (roughly permaculture principles), much progress has been made. With the help of a transient community of volunteers (up to 1000 over the 8 years), the soil quality has improved and now there are a number of productive vegi patches, greenhouses, native trees and fruit and nut trees. There is also running water from a nearby spring, solar panels for some eletricity, a composting toilet (aka the shit bucket), bee hives, 2 chicken coops, a solar shower, a dormitory and several cabins for sleeping. There is also a surpisingly extensive library with such titles as: Home Cheese Making; Butterflies of South America; 1984 (Orwell); Packin´ In on Mules and Horses; The Road; Ishmael and Human Manure. The other residents of the property include 2 milking goats, 1 baby goat (aka  a kid), 2 cats, 1 kitten, 1 dog, 2 puppies, an old horse, a donkey and her baby. Yves now lives on another part of the property intermitantly with his girlfriend, raising the goats and making goats cheese which he sells in town each week.

Mani (or Peanut in Spanish), the baby goat

We were expected to do 6 hours of work each day, and after splitting the chores to maintain the place, we could work on whatever projects we chose. I did such things as: weeding and caring for plants, planting seeds, transplanting seedlings, washing puppies, maintaining trails, fixing water tanks, feeding the animals, watering the garden and harvesting. I loved harvesting. While there is room for improvment in vegetable production, there were certainly enough beans. When I traced a thicket of climbing beans down to their stems, sometimes what I thought was 1 plant turned out to be 5, and other times what I thought was 5 plants turned out to be 1. These self seeded beans from past cropps were everywhere. I also harvested root vegetables, salad greens, some squash-like thing called Sambo, berries, a few types of fruit and eggs from the chickens. You could go pick a bowl of salad in a few minutes for lunch or pick some strawberries, rasberries and blackberries to go with your pancakes in the morning.

Living at a farm that did not import fertiliser or chemicals and that did not take any rubish off the property made you very aware of the consequences of your lifestyle. The rubish was sorted into careful piles. The planstics and other things that could not otherwise be reused were mixed with mud to make bricks, the food scraps were fed to the animals or composted, and the paper was burnt so the ash could be used in the garden bed. Furthermore, carfeully selcted plants were used to help improve the soil. Some brought up nutrients from deap in the soil, others fixed nitrogen, and all, even the weeds, produced organic matter that helped to improve the quality of the soil. As Yves said, even when removing undesired plants from the vegi patches, trim them back with love, and thank them for their contribution to the soil. Everything grown on the property -- and everything brought up in the form of food -- will return to improve the soil. Whether it is directly broken down, composted, eaten by the chickens or other animals and pooped out or eaten by the humans and pooped out (yes, even the human waste was used as fertiliser). At Sacred Sueños you can see the miracle of life in action.

You don´t need to sacrifice your lifestyle to be more sustainable; you just need to adjust it. My time at the farm was not at all unpleasant or unduely difficult. In fact, it was wonderful.

For More information, please checkout http://sacredsuenos.wordpress.com/ 

Kuelap Ruins

Near the city of Chachapoyas in Northern Peru lies some magnificent ruins made by the Chachapoyans. This pre-Incan civilisation reigned over an area of cloud forest in the Amazon Basin about a third the size of modern day Peru from about AD500 to 1470. They were called The Chachapoyas by the Incans (of Machu Pichu fame) who eventually conquered them, meaning Warriors of the Clouds. They were fierce fighters who took the skulls of victims as trophies and were believed to also eat their hearts. They worshipped mainly pumas, eagles and snakes, with a mummified jaguar found in a royal tomb and images of these animals depicted in their art and constructions. Animal and human scarifies were also performed at the temple in the ruins. They even had their own language.


Radiocarbon dating shows that construction of the fortress began sometime in the sixth century AD. The structure is located at an altitude of 3000 on a ridge above a narrow valley some 1.2 kms vertically below. It consists of a huge exterior stone wall as much as 19 m high made without the benefit of cement. Some of these stones have aquatic fossils from before the sea bed was forced up to form the Andes Mountains. The fortress is roughly 600 m in length and 110 m in width. It had two levels, one for the Military, Religious order and Ruling class and one for the common people below, and had over 500 buildings. This is believed to have support a population of up to 4000 people at its zenith. Each house has a huge stone on the floor, usually embedded bedrock, used to grind flour for the household´s needs. They would live amongst their Guinea Pigs (i.e. their dinner) during the day to share body warmth, but would sleep separated on a platform or on the other side of a low stone wall during the night. Most houses had tombs for deceased relatives at the door for the believed protection it provided from evil spirits.

The Chachapoyas were eventually conquered by the significantly more powerful and numerous Incans; but it was not done without difficulty. The citadel itself could never be taken by force. Instead, it was sieged for about 20 years -- cutting off access to outside food and water -- until they eventually surrendered. They survived off huge stockpiles, some farming within the fort, but mainly by their intense hatred of the Incans. Only 60 years later the Spanish invaded. Even with the advantage of arms and other technology, they could not take the citadel by force either. However, due to the highly infectious Small Pox brought over by the Spanish, this siege of the now Incan held fort took a little under a year.

That this citadel was never taken by force is incredible; unless you look at the design. The only entry points through the high walls were two gates, one on either side of the complex. The gap in the wall starts wide then narrows as it ascends the steep stairs, like the shape of a pizza slice. Many attacking soldiers could charge in together but would get jammed as the passage narrowed, and the top was wide enough for only one person to pass at a time. This single soldier would be met by a wall of spears and other weapons, and both sides of this gauntlet would be defended by soldiers slinging down rocks and other instruments of harm. Even to reach the outer wall you needed to charge 1.2 kms vertically up from the river below. At 3000 m altitude, this is no easy feat by itself. Furthermore, there was a guard tower at the top of the complex that had a direct line of sight to the fire or smoke signals of the three nearest villages, providing an advanced warning signal for attack.

For a civilisation that ruled over a large area for almost 1000 years, surprisingly little is known about the Chachapoyas. But from what we do know, they seem pretty bad arse.

Authors Note: Most of these ´facts´ came from my memory of the tour I took through the ruins, and should not be relied upon in more than a general sense.