The Life Story of Pablo Escobar – Part 1
Early Life and Childhood
Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was born on December 1, 1949, in the small town of Rionegro, Antioquia, Colombia. He was the third of seven children in a humble family. His father, Abel de Jesús Escobar Echeverri, was a hardworking farmer who cultivated crops, while his mother, Hermilda Gaviria, was a schoolteacher. The family’s economic conditions were modest, and young Pablo grew up in an environment where opportunities were scarce, but ambition could burn bright.
From an early age, Pablo displayed traits that would define him for life: ambition, boldness, and an unshakable confidence in himself. Unlike some of his siblings, Pablo wasn’t interested in following a traditional path of study and work. While his mother hoped he might become educated and escape poverty through schooling, Pablo had other plans. He was more attracted to the streets, to quick money, and to the thrill of taking risks.
Pablo’s childhood was spent in the working-class neighborhood of Envigado, just outside Medellín, where poverty, crime, and inequality were everyday realities. In that environment, young men often looked up to smugglers, gang leaders, and local criminals as role models—people who had managed to escape poverty and gain respect through force and wealth. Pablo absorbed these influences deeply.
First Steps Into Crime
As a teenager, Pablo was clever but restless. He did not want to live a life of poverty like his father. Stories suggest that by the time he was in high school, Pablo had already started experimenting with petty crimes. He stole tombstones from graveyards, polished them, and resold them on the black market. He also forged diplomas and other documents, charging desperate students for fake certificates.
By the late 1960s, as Colombia was experiencing political instability and the beginning of the global drug boom, Pablo became more deeply involved in crime. He started small: stealing cars, smuggling household appliances, and selling contraband cigarettes. Alongside his cousin Gustavo Gaviria, who would later become his closest partner, Pablo quickly realized that smuggling offered fast money with relatively low risks.
One of his early hustles was to steal cars in Medellín and demand ransom money from the owners. He earned the nickname El Patrón (“The Boss”) even in these early days because of his ability to organize gangs of young men and control territory. This organizational skill, combined with a ruthless willingness to use violence when necessary, made him stand out from ordinary criminals.
Smuggling and the Marijuana Trade
By the early 1970s, Escobar had graduated from petty theft to smuggling larger goods. Colombia, with its vast coastlines and weak law enforcement, was becoming a hub for contraband goods. Pablo took advantage of this opportunity. He became involved in smuggling televisions, clothes, and eventually marijuana, which was increasingly being shipped to the United States where demand was skyrocketing.
This was Pablo’s first taste of the drug trade, though it was not yet cocaine. Marijuana smuggling made him rich compared to ordinary Colombians, but it was only the beginning. Escobar had a knack for logistics: organizing shipments, bribing border officials, and intimidating competitors. By his mid-20s, he was already a millionaire by Colombian standards.
The Birth of the Cocaine Trade
The real turning point came in the mid-1970s when cocaine began to replace marijuana as the drug of choice in the United States. Unlike marijuana, cocaine had a higher profit margin, was easier to smuggle in small packages, and had an exploding market among wealthy Americans.
Escobar, with his natural instinct for opportunity, immediately understood the potential of cocaine. He and Gustavo Gaviria began building networks with coca paste producers in Peru and Bolivia, importing the raw material into Colombia, and refining it into pure cocaine. From there, the product was shipped to the United States.
This was the foundation of what would later become the Medellín Cartel—one of the most powerful and violent criminal organizations in history. Escobar’s operation was not just about smuggling; it was about creating a vertically integrated business: buying coca paste cheap, refining it in laboratories hidden in the Colombian jungles, and exporting it in massive quantities to the U.S., where the profit margins were astronomical.
By the late 1970s, Pablo’s shipments were being moved by plane, often hidden inside the tires of private jets. Pilots were paid enormous sums of money, sometimes as much as $500,000 per flight, to risk carrying cocaine into Miami.
At its peak, Escobar’s operation was smuggling up to 15 tons of cocaine into the United States every day. This was an unimaginable scale, and it made Pablo Escobar one of the richest men in the world.
Violence as a Tool
From the very beginning, Escobar combined business with violence. He believed in the philosophy of “plata o plomo”—silver or lead—meaning people could either take his bribes (plata, silver) or face his bullets (plomo, lead). This principle became the cornerstone of his rise.
Judges, police officers, customs officials, and even politicians were either bribed into cooperation or assassinated. Escobar didn’t hesitate to kill anyone who stood in his way, and he made sure these killings were public and terrifying, so that others would think twice before crossing him.
In Medellín, he began to be seen as both a feared criminal and a kind of Robin Hood figure. While he killed without hesitation, he also spent money building housing, soccer fields, and schools for the poor. This dual image—brutal gangster on one side, generous benefactor on the other—was the paradox that defined Escobar’s life.
The Beginning of the Medellín Cartel
As Escobar’s empire expanded, he realized the need to organize the growing network of smugglers, producers, and distributors. By the late 1970s, he and Gustavo Gaviria teamed up with other powerful traffickers such as Carlos Lehder, José Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha (El Mexicano), and the Ochoa brothers. Together, they formed the Medellín Cartel.
Each member brought something valuable: Lehder specialized in smuggling routes through the Bahamas and the U.S., Rodríguez Gacha had expertise in military-style operations and paramilitary groups, while the Ochoa brothers brought financial resources and connections. But it was Pablo Escobar who emerged as the leader—the man with the vision, charisma, and ruthlessness to dominate them all.
By the early 1980s, the Medellín Cartel controlled 80% of the global cocaine trade, and Escobar’s personal fortune was soaring into the billion.
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