Pablo Escobar and his Legacy
Pablo Escobar established a drug empire in 1980’s Columbia by taking advantage of a corrupt political system that was in place. By creating a monopoly on cocaine to the US, Escobar accumulated a total of $30 million dollars by the time of his death. But to quote “Narcos”, a Netflix show about Escobar’s life, “The bad guys need to get lucky every time [but] the good guys just need to get lucky once”. Escobar was ultimately shot and killed by the Colombian National police in 1993 from an unlucky incident after years of being on the run.
When questioned on how he created his empire, Escobar replied “[the business is] simple: you bribe someone here, you bribe someone there, and you pay a friendly banker to help you bring the money back.” Because of the corruption going on in Columbia and the rest of Latin America, Escobar was able to get what he needed by using the millions of dollars that he was getting everyday (Escobar’s cartel brought in over $70 million at it’s peak). The show Narcos, although not completely historically accurate and dramatized, shows Escobar bribing many people including people from outside Columbia and government officials. If he needed someone killed, he could have them killed and if he need his drugs smuggled into the US, he had enough people on his side to get it done.
When watching Narcos, one can see a man of great power and strength. As many idolized him in the 80’s, criminals and drug dealers envy him today for the amount of money and control he had. However, Escobar, like most criminals, eventually got caught, and his money, power, and life was taken away from him.
Pablo Escobar
Thank you Pete for your commentary on Pablo Escobar and the representation of him and his legacy in Narcos. I will add that the show also balances the perspective of Escobar as well as the DEA, together they do provide greater depth to corruption and drug trafficking. I think there tends to be a greater focus on the “evil” of drug production and distribution in Latin America. Something that is overlooked is also how this production is so successful due to the high demands present within the U.S., and Latin America is unfortunately stuck –with not only the consequences that comes from the violence, corruption, and economic dynamics of drug trafficking, but also– the reputation. In this case, Colombia, is known almost notoriously for high cocaine production -and Colombians are cast as poor and violent people. While the show does comment on this, I do think this concept is widely overlooked when discussing the morality and actual reality of corruption and drug trafficking.
Peter, I watched Netflix’s “Narcos” and that was my first exposure to the life and legacy of Pablo Escobar. Before that, I did not know much about him. I find the quote you used to be very interesting and strikingly true that the good guys only need to get lucky once. Following my viewing of “Narcos”, I had a professor at Davidson who was Colombian, and she expressed her vehement disdain for Escobar for the pain he caused to her country. It is interesting to note that many did idolize him. I see a similarity in El Chapo. Many people in the United States were quick to idolize him after watching the video of him escape from prison, but did not contextualize all of the heinous things he had done in his lifetime, similar to Escobar.