Picked up a fast-paced read the other day, my Valentine’s day present from Barnes and Noble. It is a book called Killing Pablo, about how the US government helped track down and kill Pablo Escobar, the most notorius Colombian drug cartel leader of all time. The story provides a glimpse into the wild lifestyle of the Medellin Cartel, with giant fincas (farms) condos, and fleets of vintage cars that these richer than life men acquired and then lost when they finally went down. The story of Colombia in the early ’90s is horrifying–a complete lawlessness, that went as far as assassinating dozens of judges, bombing an airliner with 100 people on board, and killing five or six presidential candidates.
Pablo comes across as a soft spoken stoner who is elegantly polite, and dreadfully ruthless. He personally did the honor of kicking a hog-tied informant into his pool and watching him drown. He was so feared that the policians changed the constitution so that he could not be extradited to the US. Then they made a deal to put him in a luxury prison that he had built, and where he could run the cartel. He broke out and I’ll let you know how they finally caught and killed him when I read more.
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