I would say this book is very fun to read all the interesting events that occurred during the 70's and 80's I would recommend this to my friends.

-¿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.

¿Quiere saber más del libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...

This book was a historical account of the incredible efforts taken by the Colombian and American governments to eliminate Pablo Escobar, who was not only a cocaine kingpin, but also a violent criminal responsible for the death of hundreds of people who were either innocent or members of a rival cartel. The book starts by explaining how Escobar got his Empire started and then tells how it slowly started to crumble. There is no one set main character; although in the beginning one might say that Pablo is one and near the end a member of the Centra Spike organization was another. The pacing was not fast or slow but it was kind of difficult to pick up where I left off after not reading the book for a day or two. The ending is very cool as it is told through the different viewpoints of the members who participated in the final raid. As a military person, the reason that I chose this book is that the author, Mark Bowden, is the author of Black Hawk Down which is a very action packed book. This being said, I would think that mostly military people would like this book although there is not a whole lot of action like in Black Hawk Down. The most interesting aspect of this book is the how the different embassies and government agencies would have to compete in this manhunt. This is why in my opinon the book receives a 4/5 stars.

True crime is an incredibly popular genre these days and "Killing Pablo" is a high-end true crime read. The difference here is that the book does not revolve around a particular crime or crimes, or an infamous serial killer, its much wider scope focuses on a man who brought the world of the narco "industry" to the fore of world news. Simultaneously, we get the biography of a notorious and ruthless drug baron while also gaining insight into the workings of the massive cocaine trafficking business. Author Mark Bowden also renders dramatic flair, applying a fine writing style to a smorgasbord of mouthwatering content. There's no need to fictionalize anything here. The life and world of Pablo Escobar were, as the cliche goes, stranger than fiction. For anyone with an interest in the shadowy world of the international drug trade, or the rise to power of one of its pioneers, this book is a must.

Qualche mese fa riuscì a recuperare la serie Netflix Narcos e ne rimasi totalmente ammaliata e quando seppi che era tratta da questo libro di Bowden andai subito nella mia libreria di fiducia a ordinarlo!
È noto a tutti il nome di Pablo Escobar, noto in Colombia con il soprannome de El Patron o El Doctor (ancora così tanto amato e venerato dalla sua gente di Medellin), ma conoscere veramente la sua storia, beh quello è un altro paio di maniche!
Ed è proprio questo l'obbiettivo del libro: analizzare in profondità Pablo, le persone a lui intorno e le vicende storiche che portarono alla sua uccisione!
Il libro, come dice lo stesso autore, si basa su documenti, nastri, articoli e interviste realmente esistenti e ho apprezzato molto le note dell'autore e il nominare le fonti a cui attinge.
Come avviene ed è avvenuto nella storia contemporanea gli USA hanno giocato un ruolo estremamente rilevante nella ricerca e nella cattura/morte di Pablo, impensabile per loro che così tanti dollari finissero in mano a narcos sudamericani! Ma Pablo è stato solo la punta dell'iceberg del mercato della cocaina, che dopo la sua morte ha continuato e continua a entrare negli USA! È una guerra che non avrà mai fine e che è costata un monte di vite umane!
L'inizio della fine di Pablo è stata la sua vanità: il suo orgoglio di ritenersi un eroe nazionale, un nuovo Sancho Villa, e di entrare in politica per diventare presidente della Colombia!
Leggendo il libro da una parte sei quasi mossa a "compassione" verso la sua figura, perché mossa dagli stessi nostri istinti umani, dall'altra è agghiacciante la sua serenità nel commettere omicidi e questo non lo rende diverso dai nostri (ahimè) mafiosi!
Sconcertante l'impiego massiccio di mezzi, soldi e uomini da parte degli Stati Uniti e dell'enorme corruzione vigente in Colombia!
Sconvolgente anche il modo in cui una persona che aveva beffato 2 Stati per così tanto tempo sia morta così miseramente e il pubblico ludibrio a cui fu sottoposto il corpo di Pablo (con gente che tiene ancora la foto ricordo appesa nel proprio ufficio!!)
Insomma un libro che va letto per conoscere a pieno la nostra storia contemporanea e che si legge bene (a parte quando partono con le tremila sigle degli enti che parteciparono alla cattura

tons of fun, very light and breezy read. not as good as Kings of Cocaine, but an excellent supplement thereof.

Pablo Escobar was the uncrowned king of the notorious Medellin cartel which dealt with cocaine in the 1980s. Escobar had become a scourge for the Americans since he was the primary source, at least initially, of all the deadly cocaine that flowed into the United States from Colombia. The 80s was the period of excesses in America and the Colombians found themselves running a lucrative trade involving the processing and illegal transportation of the narcotics into that country. There was no limit to the money that could be earned and it was just a matter of time before thugs, criminals, politicians and even the security agencies in Colombia began to vie for a part of the spoils. It was into this quagmire that Pablo Escobar was drawn in.

tMark Bowden traces the evolution of Escobar from being a small-time thug into a dreaded criminal. Escobar managed to catch the attention of the United States, so much so that the Americans were forced to commit their military intelligence gathering resources and Special Forces in trying to eliminate him. Escobar employed ruthless tactics like murder, kidnapping and extortions to maintain a stranglehold over the narcotic business that was based around the city of Medellin. It was but a matter of time before other players too came on to the scene. The most notable amongst Pablo's rivals was the dreaded Cali cartel, who later on became his nemesis.

tSensing the lucrative nature of the narcotics trade in the United States, Pablo left no stone unturned to illegally smuggle in cocaine into that country in ever-increasing quantities. He was doing it on such a large scale that at one point in time he had a fleet of Boeing passenger jets, which he modified as cargo planes to transport the contraband into the States. He was also reputed to have manufactured submarines with which he smuggled cocaine into the southern United States. Escobar had connections in the right places in the Government, the judiciary and the security apparatus in Colombia, all of whom facilitated the illegal narcotic trade for hefty financial considerations. But this cosy arrangement was not destined to last long, since the Americans began to feel the heat of the narcotic trade that was creating havoc amongst the American society. President Ronald Regan decided to tighten the screw on Colombia. The American government found a willing ally in President Gaviria of Colombia and the crackdown on the drug cartels in Colombia was initiated with active American assistance.

tWith the proceeds from the illegal drug trade, Pablo created for himself a life steeped in luxury and decadence. He was married to Maria Victoria and had two children, a boy named Juan Pablo and a girl, Manuela. He was reputed to be a devoted and caring family man. However, as with all criminals he indulged in proclivities like being addicted to sex with underage girls and being doped on marijuana most of the time. Pablo, however, made it a point to endear himself to the common people of Medellin. He has been credited with helping the needy with financial assistance as well as involving himself in improving the civic amenities like the building of football stadia in the city. Colombia was a violent society, where the government found it impossible to ensure the rule of law especially on account of the corrupt judiciary and security forces. Escobar and the other criminals of his hue used this situation to their advantage and involved in summary executions of rivals and those government officials who refused to toe their line. It was perhaps a miscalculation on Escobar's part that he began using large scale bombings at public places to get back at the government. This invariably led to the loss of many innocent civilian lives and ensured that whatever support he had amongst the common people in Colombia was eroded.

tThe Americans fully well realized that the Colombians would prove incapable of dealing with Pablo on their own. The American ambassador to Colombia, Morris Busby was a proponent of active American intervention in that country to tackle the drug menace and Pablo Escobar was the man who was on the crosshairs. Busby was able to influence President Bush and later President Clinton into committing American Military Intelligence Units, Special Forces and the DEA for assisting the Colombian Government in their hunt for Escobar. President Gaviria realized that it was foolish to depend on the regular Colombian Army and Police units to deal with Escobar since most of the Colombian security apparatus was on the payroll of the drug dealer. Colonel Hugo Martinez, an upright police officer was brought in to head the Search Bloc, which was given the onerous task of tracking down Escobar. The Americans, with the help of their advanced electronic tracking equipment, was able to provide precise locations of the drug dealer to Colonel Martinez, but Escobar was able to avoid the dragnet on multiple occasions with the help of insiders in the government and the security apparatus.

tThe American security establishment was drawn into controversy while the hunt for Escobar was drawing to its final stages. A vigilante group was formed in Colombia which consisted of the members of the Cali cartel (a rival to Escobar in the cocaine trade) and the relatives of victims of Escobar's murderous cruelty. It was rumoured that this group which called itself Los Pepos, had the tacit support of the Colombian Government too. The Los Pepos went about murdering the members of Escobar's drug empire with clinical precision. The Americans were in a dilemma because whatever intelligence that they passed onto Colombian security forces about Escobar's whereabouts seemed to end up with the vigilante group and it made the American State look complicit to the orgy of violence that was unfolding in Colombia.

tEscobar repeatedly made allegations that the Government was targeting him alone in their fight against drugs and that the rival gangs were being given a free run. There seemed to be a lot of truth in those allegations and the Americans found themselves in a delicate situation. The American intelligence community had correctly assessed that the mere elimination of Escobar alone was not going to make any appreciable difference in the influx of narcotics into the United States as long as the other cartels were still active. However, it seemed that both the Americans and the Colombians had an interest in eliminating Escobar for nothing more than scoring a moral and symbolic victory against the drug trade.

tBy late 1992, Pablo found himself at his wit's end on account of the unrelenting pressure exerted by Colonel Hugo Martinez's Search Bloc and the constant surveillance mounted by the American Intelligence Units and the Special Forces. Pablo tried his best to negotiate a safe passage for his wife and children to any other country, but it became impossible due to the pressure exerted by the Americans on all of the prospective safe havens around the world. This made Pablo all the more embittered and desperate. His empire was unable to withstand the onslaught unleashed by Los Pepos, which resulted in extrajudicial killings of scores of his deputies and his lawyers. Pablo's empire was systematically being taken down. Towards the end, Pablo could only be in radio contact with his son, Juan Pablo who was merely 20 years old. It was during one of those calls, on the third of December 1993, that the surveillance units picked up the signals and pinpointed Pablo's location to a two-story building block in Medellin. There was no attempt on part of the security forces to take Pablo alive. The fugitive came on to the tiled roof in an attempt to flee and he was gunned down. There was a talk that the killing headshot on Pablo came from an American's sniper rifle, which understandably the Americans vehemently denied.

tThere was much jubilation on the killing of Pablo. The Colombian society saw it as a closure of the country's dalliance with the reign of terror and lawlessness in their country. However, as the Americans had correctly surmised, Pablo's death was at best symbolic in the fight against narco terror, since it failed to stymie the flow of dreaded drugs into the United States.

tIt is to the credit of the author that he makes a gripping narrative of a non-fictional subject. The book is well researched. One drawback of the book is that Bowden is prejudiced and he considers the Colombians untrustworthy and incapable of managing their affairs. There might be some truth in that assumption though. The Americans, for all their assistance accorded to the Colombian Government, was not always above board, as it is amply clear that that they acted in their interests. There has been a flurry of allegations that at least a part of the American dispensation was somehow assisting other narcotic dealers in Colombia who were rivals of Escobar. All such details, unfortunately, will forever remain hidden in the murky world of international geopolitics.

Mark Bowden brought to light a sordid path of destruction and unimaginable terror and death brought about by the hands of one ruthless individual - Pablo Escobar. A mass murderer well on his way to becoming one of the world's "Most Wanted". Shattered lives laid in his wake. His ruthlessness knew no bounds. Negotiated with bullets and blood. His character was well-drawn as the most unscrupulous drug lord of all time. A dubious Crown to behold. This well-written narrative slammed me into the gates of hell as I stood witness to the murder and mayhem - Pure Evil.

Pablo Escobar was raised within a middle-class family. For him, It wasn't enough. In need of garnering attention he wasn't getting at school or home, he sought his vocation on the streets of Colombia. Early on, it consisted of robbing banks and stealing cars. He soon graduated up to the protection racket. People paid him not to have their cars stolen. He was just warming up. Big change was on the way. A gangster was born.

As Pablo graduated further into a life of crime, he discovered an inexhaustible source of wealth that laid at his feet - cocaine. Savagely, he dove in and built an empire of white powder that catapulted him up in standing to one of the most feared and richest men in the world. Though, It came at a high price. For all his concerted effort, much blood was spilled. Blinded by his own ambition, he thought nothing of ordering the death of countless judges, politicians and policemen. In the end, it would all come back to haunt him. That which goes around...

Exiled, Pablo could have taken refuge in a number of countries that had no extradition with the United States. He might have lived out the remainder of his days a wealthy man - anywhere, but not Columbia. No, not Pablo. He chose to return to his homeland. Thought he was indestructible - untouchable. He'd never leave his homeland again.

Public sentiment eventually turned against Pablo. No longer a friend but foe to his countrymen, his stage had disappeared. Vigilantism had emerged with a group known as Los Pepes. Death squads responded quickly and viciously. Revenge had been swiftly taken by killing known associates of the drug kingpin. Anyone with ties to him such as friends, family, cartel members, policemen, lawyers, money launderers and bankers were mercilessly slaughtered. For every vengeful act of violence committed by him, they responded immediately in kind. Eye for an eye. For days on end, the streets of Columbia ran red.

Pablo was no longer being sought for his arrest. Those days were over. Although not officially acknowledged, a death warrant had been issued for him. By this time, America had joined the hunt. The day of reckoning was finally served by the Colombian national police with a hail of bullets that had the name Pablo Escobar personally engraved upon them. Final words could be heard shouted from a rooftop, "Vivá Colombia! We have just killed Pablo Escobar!" His reign of terror had finally come to a crushing end.

Though over two decades has passed since his death, Colombia carries a large scar across its nation. For some, the nightmare is over, For others, it will last a lifetime.

No rating. This book was very thought-provoking and I enjoyed comparing and contrasting to Narcos documentary.

This book explains first how Pablo Escobar scrambled his way up to the top of the cocaine distribution network known as the Medellin cartel, and then goes into much detail about the last years of his life, especially the period that he was on the run from the Colombian police, the CIA, the DEA and US military advisers.

It's a story of violence that is unbelievably casual. Pablo Escobar and his henchmen had a simple way of keeping control of their empire, and of their public relations : kill everyone who disagrees. It helped that Pablo Escobar played the bountiful benefactor in his home town of Medellin, so that many of the locals revered, respected and helped him during his months-long life underground.

The author does a good job of describing the various efforts that were made to curb Escobar's activities, both in Colombia and in the USA. It was hard to keep up with the description of the political situation in Colombia, partially because so many presidential candidates or prominent politicians, judges and law enforcement experts were killed. Finally, a Major Martinez was assigned the job of finding the fugitive Escobar, not once, but twice. Indeed, Escobar had negotiated a type of voluntary surrender that allowed him to run his drug empire from a comfortable country-club type prison where he controlled every guard! After a much-publicized escape from that prison, he went on the run for about 16 months, moving from safe house to safe house within the city of Medellin, while various technical experts tried to figure out where he was based on the radio signals coming from his cell phones. Ultimately, what put the most pressure on Escobar was not the legitimate police hunt, but the appearance of Los Pepes, a vigilante group that undertook a systematic elimination of Escobar's business associates and extended family. The Americans involved in the search for Escobar noticed with dismay that these executions dovetailed very nicely with the information they had provided to the Colombian police. The suspicion that the Colombian police forces, embittered by years of seeing their brother officers being assassinated in the drug wars, had somehow become involved in this vigilante justice, was never proven or disproven - but weighs heavily on the mind of many of the Americans who were in Medellin at the time Escobar was found. Even the death of Escobar in a reported shoot-out raised more suspicions. Was his head wound a lucky shot, or a cold-blooded execution of a man who'd been brought down by a leg wound? Or even worse, was an American sniper involved?

These questions will likely never be answered. The book also doesn't answer the question of how the death of Pablo Escobar affected drug trafficking overall - because it is clear that at some point, the hunt for Pablo Escobar was not so much about fighting drugs, as about punishing and neutralizing someone who had kept an entire country terrorized for a decade.

Mark Bowden - Image from Grove Atlantic

This is great stuff! Bowden’s 1999 best-seller, Blackhawk Down, was a masterpiece of the genre. Killing Pablo, published in 2001, keeps that momentum going. It tells the tale of the rise and fall of, arguably, the greatest gangster (outside of government) of the 20th century. It is fast-paced, gripping, and gives one a feel for Colombia during the period when narco-terror ruled. (It’s all better now, right?) There is a large cast of characters portrayed here; Steve Jacoby, and American signals intelligence expert, Colonel Hugo Martinez, an incorruptible leader of Colombian police, and his son who was determined to contribute to the battle with Escobar, Mossir Busby, an American diplomat who was instrumental in gaining US involvement in tracking Escobar down. What makes Pablo Escobar significant for more than his mere criminality is that his level of influence and terror led to a change in American policy. It changed from seeing Escobar as a gangster to defining him as a threat to American security and ultimately waged war against him. This is a book you will not want to put down, even knowing that the bad guy gets it in the end.

=============================EXTRA STUFF

Bowden on Twitter

July 2017 – National Geographic and ProPublica joined forces for this alarming report of a drug cartel outrage in the town of Allende, near the US border in Mexico - How the U.S. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico - By Ginger Thompson

Another good effort by M Bowden

Interesting look at the hunt for Pablo E...more context than one would see in Narcos, at the least more detail. Intriguing when one considers the complexity of the larger drug war.