Matar a Pablo Escobar

„Polowanie na Escobara” to interesująca książka o jednym z najbardziej kontrowersyjnych i mitycznych osób XX wieku – Pablo Escobarze, kolumbijskim baronie narkotykowym, który przez lata kształtował nie tylko historię Kolumbii, ale i światowy rynek narkotykowy.

Mark Bowden ukazuje Escobara jako postać pełną sprzeczności – brutalnego, ale charyzmatycznego, bezwzględnego, ale pełnego siły. W tej książce poznajemy nie tylko samego Escobara, ale także system władzy, korupcji i przemocy, które kształtowały życie w Kolumbii lat 80. i 90. XX wieku. Ciekawie przedstawione są również portrety ludzi, którzy stali za „polowaniem” na Escobara – zarówno tych, którzy go ścigali, jak i tych, którzy z nim współpracowali. Autorowi udaje się przenieść czytelnika w mroczny świat narkotykowego biznesu, pokazując jego wpływ na lokalne społeczności, politykę i gospodarkę.

„Polowanie na Escobara” to książka dobrze napisana, pełna rzetelnych informacji, zróżnicowanych źródeł i interesujących perspektyw. Książka łączy dokumentalizm z literacką narracją, trzymając w napięciu i angażując emocjonalnie. Gorąco polecam!

The book has got a nasty streak of annoying repetitiveness within it. It seems like characters are often reintroduced with a line or more after every few pages which can make following the narrative a bit jarring from time to time. However, despite its shortcomings. Killing Pablo can still be an entertaining read. Its fascinating to go through the accounts of political situation in Colombia during Pablo Escobar's heydays and his subsequent fall, with the climax of Pablo's hunt being some of the most nerve biting stuff I've read in a while. Credit must also be given out to the author in making this book feel more like a thriller than a non-fiction book. Overall, its a great book to read if one is willing to set aside its shortcomings.

-¿El enemigo de mi enemigo es mi amigo aunque sea mi enemigo?.-

Género. Novela.

Lo que nos cuenta. Relato breve del ascenso del narcotraficante Pablo Escobar hasta ser el líder del Cartel de Medellín y largo relato de los hechos que desembocaron finalmente en su muerte.

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This is not a full biography of the Colombian drug trafficker Pablo Escobar, although there is some detail on his earlier life, but this focuses more on the end of his reign as the head of the Medellin cartel and how the Colombian and US authorities hunted and killed him.

The atrocities that Escobar and his sicarios brought to Colombia were appalling and particularly hard to believe. Totally shocking.

This is an extremely well researched book and totally involving and engrossing. If you want a book that shows the glamorous life of a drug lord then this is not the book for you.

Belonging to a minority who hasn’t watched Narcos yet on Netflix, there was next to nothing I knew about the exploits of Pablo Escobar. The contents of the book offer a comprehensive view on the Escobar phenomenon in Colombia and across the world and also is an account of the manhunt that eventually brought him down. As it chronicles the rise and fall of a crime lord, the book moves at the speed of a thriller and is quite well researched and comprehensively written. If it was not for the too obvious way in which the author leaned towards the Americans, this would have made for a splendid work of non-fiction.

The rise of Escobar as the undisputed drug boss of Colombia speaks much about the state of affairs in Colombia of old. The degree to which corruption had rusted the machinery of the government needs to be read to be believed. Escobar was also shrewd enough to understand how best to employ fear to achieve the status of a living legend. He lived flamboyantly and rivalled any legitimate business mogul in displays of wealth. When the Forbes magazine itself featured him as one of the richest men alive, the notion grew within Escobar’s criminal enterprise that they were reaching some levels of legitimacy equal to a large business house. The entire government machinery was more or less in his pockets and his influence reached everywhere in society across all stratas. Playing the role of a rich Robin Hood, Escobar even pandered to the whims and fancies of the general populace with the clever manipulation of media. With increasing revenues from the drug business Escobar grew so omnipotent and in the process made two enemies. The United States was one of the biggest markets that Escobar catered to and this brought him eventually to the sights of the US law enforcement. The second was when Escobar overstepped all the lenience that the Colombian government was showing him and unleashed a string of murders through the nation – judges, police men and even their families fell like flies in this carnage. Like the proverbial straw the broke the camel’s back, the Colombian governments finally decided to shake hands with the Americans and the tables turned on Escobar. This is part I of the book and is a roller coaster ride. The research that Bowden has done for these chapters is brilliant and is stocked full of facts and figures of Escobar’s early life.

Part II of the story deals with the manhunt which was only rivalled later in history by the money and effort spent to bring down Bin Laden. The Americans brought in technological support and also manpower in the form of Delta force and the SEAL’s who assisted the Colombians in tracking Escobar down. The job however was not easy for the hunters as Escobar and his men eluded them for years and continued to carry out judgements and executions even when in exile. Pushed beyond their usual limits, there came to the fore Los Pepes who began rivalling Esocbar in brutality and began taking out Escobar’s associates and friends. The theories surrounding this group and their connections to American military/intelligence establishments is yet to be proved but this tactic of an eye for an eye did bring Escobar out of hiding and finally led to him being gunned down.

There is a strong sense of anti-climax here if you consider this : At the start of the chase, Escobar was being touted as the thousand headed demon who controlled everything related to drugs but by the time he lay dead under a hail of bullets the drug empire were controlled by a host of other players. In the words of one of the officers who led the chase, the death of Escobar hardly put a dent in the overall scheme of things. It is also here that the author comes across as staunchly pro-American. While the Colombians mostly are portrayed as incompetent and corrupt (with the exception of Colonel Ramirez maybe), the Americans are knights in shining armour. Bowden is smart enough to avoid such a treatment all through the book and yet it surfaces from time to time in the narrative. This was my only gripe with the writing as such.

Recommended. I should now watch Narcos !

This well told, if a bit over-told, story of Pablo Escobar, the man who held a country of 27 million hostage, raises interesting questions for those of us living in post 9-11 times. On the one-hand, the author makes very clear that this wanna-be Latin Robin Hood, who built apartments and soccer stadiums for the poor with his $5-$10 billion in drug money, was nevertheless a very bad man who killed presidential candidates, the prosecutors who investigated him, the police who accompanied them and the judges who later issued warrants for his arrest relating to such murders. And all that was before lunch. Escobar also engaged in the wholesale murder of his drug-dealing competitors, hired Communist insurgent groups to hold the entire Colombian Supreme Court hostage (which resulted in the death of half the justices), held the rich and famous hostage (and killed many of them) and detonated car bombs throughout Bogota. He was effectively a combination of Al Queda and Al Capone.

On the other hand, the response of the Colombian government is somewhat disturbing. Completely unable to stop him, the Colombian President decided upon a new strategy which abandoned any pretense of constitutionality and instead relied upon an unholy alliance of other drug-dealers, murderers, rogue police units and American Special Forces to kill all of Escobar's family, friends, business associates, attorneys and accountants in an attempt to hurt his ability to finance his private war and thereby flush him out. While the strategy ultimately worked, the question is whether the price of success was too high. The book never really grapples with this issue, but we need to since 9-11 saw Congress and most of the Country ready to cede all power to the President with their blessing to do anything necessary to make sure it never happened again. This makes the story a timely read for all of us.

I remember the Pablo Escobar saga, as it played out at the time. I was a teenager in the 80's, when Miami Vice was the most popular show on TV, and there were about ten different kinds of hysteria in the United States about cocaine. It was described as the cause of most of society's ills, and would be the undoing of our country - it was completely addictive, nearly impossible to quit, and the vast majority of people even tangentially involved with transporting it, selling it, buying it or using it were destined to die a very horrible death, probably taking innocent others with them, and all the while, the market for it continued to grow. The pop culture depiction of it, and those associated with it, undeniably glorified it, in part because the decade of the 80's was an era that embraced excess and everything that went with it, and in part because the people who wrote the books, TV shows and movies that ostensibly spoke out against cocaine tended to themselves be cocaine users.

Escobar fit right into that. I think he understood how the mania fit into the era, and that he could make untold amounts of money from it. And he understood his own country, and knew what he could get away with, which was just about anything. So he became an emblem of the excess of the 80's, and he became famous, at the time, for having so much money that he spent $2,500 per month on rubber bands to wrap up his cash, which he kept hidden in barns and buried in fields, and had to write off approximately 10% of his total cash reserves because it was eaten by rats and other rodents. And part of that excess was the violence and cruelty he and his minions used to maintain their share of the market, and people around the world were afraid of it, but they found the drama inherently compelling and in a weird way, I think they kind of liked it. And I think he knew that, and played upon it.

Bowden's book doesn't focus as much on Escobar's rise to power, but it more a description of the campaign to get him. And it is an inherently interesting story, because even after the United States got involved, and even after the Colombian government became fully committed not only to stopping him, but to actually assassinating him, he still kept on for a surprisingly long time. What's most interesting about it to me, and what I would like to have seen Bowden address in more detail, was the legality behind the involvement of the U.S. The U.S. said the cocaine trade was a threat to national security, and based upon this spurious argument, began conducting military operations inside another sovereign country.

In a sense, Escobar became a sort of a symbol of Colombian nationalism, especially early in the campaign when he was arguing against extradition, because he said it ran counter to the notion that Colombia could and should handle it's own internal affairs. In a weird way, Escobar was like a Colombian Larry Flynt, a nauseating emblem of an interesting and legitimate point of constitutional law. He actually had a point, but it was lost in what an irredeemable dirtbag he was.

Bowden's book is well-researched and covers the details of the hunt for Escobar and its results in great detail. It reads a lot like "Blackhawk Down," which was also meticulously researched and an incredibly clear accounting of a specific series of related events. It's clear that Bowden is a journalist, and a very good one, because the book reads more like a long magazine article, rather than a book. At times, it became a little difficult to stay with, I think because it read like an article, because that's how he's used to writing. It was full of really interesting detail, and it was put together in a logical and comprehensive way, but it just doesn't flow like a book.

I watched Narcos first and then read the book. Still, an exciting read that provides more details on some of the stories. It definitely gives the American perspective. It would be interesting to get a bit more of the Colombian perspective: how Colombians viewed Pablo, the manhunt and the Americans getting involved.