KILLING PABLO
Mark Bowden
Mike from Hobart read a book...
Mark Bowden, author of Blackhawk Down, spares no secrets in his tale of the world’s most notorious outlaw, Pablo Escobar. The writing is honest, straightforward, and based on an endless trail of research and interviews conducted with figures from both Colombia and the United States who were instrumental in Escobar’s downfall. The writing is direct and fast paced, filled with shady characters shifting in and out of Colombia’s seedy drug world, forcing the reader to keep up with an ever-changing and escalating climate of violence. Bowden has a talent for bringing the reader face to face with the dark and often vile nature of his characters.
Killing Pablo chronicles Pablo’s life -- from chubby, middle-class suburban car thief, to Colombian Congressman, cocaine kingpin, and Forbes multi-billionaire. Pablo’s life was a product of violence and lawlessness that festered in Colombia long before his birth. Murder was simply the way of life, and that way of life was exacerbated when Pablo muscled his way into the cocaine-trafficking boom of the 1970s. From the very beginning he met his enemies with death, be they rival cartel members or government officials. By 1983, Pablo and his ringleaders controlled 70 to 80 percent of Colombia’s cocaine industry, an industry that earned them billions of dollars annually.
Bowden also takes us into Pablo’s private world of lavish parties, endless supplies of marijuana, throngs of teenage girls, his political and legal battles, and most notably, the cruel and lethal scope of his power. Yet, through the smoke of urban warfare, we are also presented with a different Pablo Escobar--a family man, a gentle and polite man who spent millions of dollars making his hometown a better place to live. He financed road construction, built soccer fields and housing for the poor, even gave money away at personal appearances. We are taken into the mind of a man that genuinely thought of himself as a good man, a benefactor, a sponsor for the poor.
Escobar’s story is an incredible one, almost unbelievable at times. He was a man who rarely left his hometown, but a man whose hand reached into the pockets of government officials across Colombia, and a man whose hand struck people down across the globe. At the height of Escobar’s power, there were few people who crossed him and got away with it. Judges, jurors, reporters, police, and even high ranking government officials who opposed him were tracked down and murdered. He brought the government to its knees through a vicious shooting, bombing, and kidnapping campaign that left thousands of people dead. In 1989, Pablo ordered the murder of the front runner for the Colombian presidency. Shortly after, in an attempt to kill the presidential successor, Pablo’s men planted a bomb on an Avianca airliner, blowing it out of the sky and killing all 110 passengers, including two Americans. It was an act of international terror that would secretly move large numbers of CIA personnel and American Special Forces into Colombia.
Bowden shifts gears several times in the story, going great lengths to expose the clandestine American intervention in the Colombian crisis. We hear of 50-million-dollar spy planes being flown in by the Pentagon, the extensive and covert surveillance equipment, hundreds of botched raids, torture, and even the CIA’s collaboration with local death squads in the hunting down and killing of Medellín cartel members and ultimately, Pablo himself.
In the end, Bowden’s portrayal of Escobar is one that has you reluctantly rooting for the bad guy, knowing that despite Escobar’s crimes against humanity and his deluded self-righteousness, he was a man that loved his family and country more than anything in the world. Above all things, like
Blackhawk Down, it is a book that reveals how the United States has willingly and secretly aided in the assassination of powerful political figures at odds with its foreign policy.
