As Pablo Escobar once said, “Better a grave in Colombia than in a jail cell in the US”.
And so, after escaping his luxury La Catedral prison, the hunt for Escobar began.
A special Colombian police task force, known as the Search Bloc, a vigilante group known as Los Pepes (People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar), the Cali Cartel and right-wing paramilitaries led by their leader Carlos Castaño, joined the man-hunt.
But, after 16 months and 15,000 house searches and a bloody campaign fuelled by Los Pepes in which more than 300 of Escobar’s associates and relatives were slain and large amounts of his cartel’s property destroyed, Escobar was still on the run.
Finally, on his 44th birthday, worried over the safety of his wife and children who had unsuccessfully sought asylum in Germany, Escobar called them via his cellphone.
He did not know that the US Drug Enforcement Administration had supplied the Colombian police with electronic monitoring equipment that was programmed to recognize his voice and to locate the source within two minutes.
And so, the war against Escobar ended on December 2, 1993 when he was discovered hiding in a middle-class barrio in Medellín. As the authorities closed in, Escobar and his bodyguard attempted to escape by running across the roofs of adjoining houses to reach a back street, but both were shot and killed.
While much of Colombia rejoiced at the news, thousands of mourners crowded a muddy hilltop at Cemetario Jardins Montesacro in Itagui to bury the drug lord who once famously said “I’m a decent man who exports flowers”. Earlier, a mariachi band had defiantly played a popular country ballad, But I Keep on Being King.
Pablo Escobar’s Grave
Cemetario Jardins Montesacro, Itagui
