Who was Pablo Escobar, and how did he affect the Colombian economy and people. It is my intention to investigate the relationship with Pablo Escobar and the development of Colombia as this is a very controversial and wide topic that covers many aspects regarding the economic growth of Columbia. The topic "changing communities" can be interpreted many ways for this topic, changing communities shall be measured in economic development, change in culture and geographic development. In this research paper I am going to discover Pablo Escobar's relationship with the development of Colombia as in the early stages of Escobar's reign over Columbia and the drug world he was coined the nickname "the robin hood of Colombia" for his millions of US dollars …show more content…
As the Medellín Cartel was the largest drug cartel in Colombia at the time, they had controlled 80% of all the cocaine supply that was entering the United States. Despite the fact that Escobar donated millions of dollars to the local people of Medellin and funded the construction of schools and sports centers to help create a good reputation for himself. But even if he did donate millions of dollars to the poor, it was still just a chip into the Medellín Cartel’s wealth. By looking at the statistics of the number of people who were affected by Escobar’s acts of terror it has become evident to me that the negative effects of the Medellín Cartel had heavily outweighed the benefits of how Escobar tried to give back to the local people of Colombia. CITATIONS: Wallace, Arturo. "Drug Boss Pablo Escobar Still Divides Colombia." BBC News. BBC, 02 Dec. 2013. Web. 28 May 2017. Tikkanen, Amy. "Pablo Escobar." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., n.d. Web. 30 May 2017. "Pablo Escobar." Biography.com. A&E Networks Television, 08 July 2016. Web. 28 May 2017. Love, Kimberly. "15 Despicable Acts Committed By Pablo Escobar." TheRichest. N.p., 04 Oct. 2016. Web. 30 May 2017. Colombia, Off2. "Pablo Escobar - Life and Influence of Pablo Escobar on Colombia." Off2Colombia. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 May
Tarm, Michael. “Who is ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, Public Enemy Number One?” The Christian Science Monitor. 15 Feb. 2013. Web. 28 November 2013.
The republic of Colombia has been fighting an internal war for over 50 years. On April 9th 1948, 1:00P.M. The leader of the Liberal Party Jorger Eliecer Gaitan walked out of his office in the downtown area, got shot 3 times and died once he got to the hospital. This day went down in Colombian history as the Bogotazo. Gaitan was a moderate socialist congressman that gave a voice to the middle and lower classes in Colombia. He gave hope to those that had nothing under the right wing elitist government. In 1948 after his death, the era of the Violencia started. A civil war between the Colombian communist party and the farmers against the right wing military conservative government due to the high inflation and unfair assistance to those that
He was born on December 1, 1949, in Columbia. As a young boy, he told friends and family that he wanted to be the president of Columbia, and take over. Yet as he saw it, his path to wealth and legitimacy lay in crime. He started young as a petty street thief, stealing cars before moving into the drug business. He used to smuggle cigarettes. Escobar moved fast to take control of the cocaine trade. Escobar was deep into the cocaine trade, if someone that was working for Escobar wasn’t doing their job right, he would have orders to kill that person. Well his fame grew Escobar didn’t follow his dream to be seen as a leader. If you messed with Pablo Escobar he was going to kill you, or your family. Then he would blow up your house. Escobar tried to convince the Colombian politics to have a no extradition, so he could run for president. Pablo Escobar wished to be president of Columbia to have even greater influence and power. People called Escobar a Narco, In Spanish, the term "narco" is an abbreviation of the word "narcotraficante" (drug trafficker). Before this usage, in the United States, the term "narc" (or "narco") referred to a specialist officer of a narcotics police force, such as a DEA agent
It was a time of civil war between the Columbian Conservative Party and the Columbian Liberal Party. However, vast numbers of people were killed on his command. His particular way of handling any authorities questioning his actions was to bribe them or to kill them, or ‘plata o plomo’, Colombian slang for ‘money or bullets’. Escobar was believed to have had Medellin drug lord Fabio Restrepo murdered in 1975, in order to take over full leadership of the Medellin Cartel.
The cartels are now in control of most of the drug trades and are successful. The Mexican border gives them the power to go everywhere they desire, making them a relentless force. “To date operation Xcellrator has led the arrest of 755 individuals and the seizure of approximately 5 U.S. Currency more than 12,000 kilograms of cocaine, more than 16,000 pounds of marijuana, more than 11,000 of methamphetamine, more than 8 kilograms of heroin, approximately 1.3 million pills of ecstasy”(Doj 2). Mexican cartels extend to central and southern America. Columbia is the supply of much of the cocaine exported to the U.S. Colombia is under control of South American gangs, they do business with the Mexican cartels to transport drugs the north. The Northern Mexican gangs hold the most control because the territory is very important (Wagner1). They are many different types of cartel in Mexico it also signifies that there are killing each other so their cartel can expand an...
Since it was first discovered by European explorers, Latin America has supplied raw materials and labor to Europe and other locations around the world. Eduardo Galeano writes about the exploitation of native Latin Americans in his 1973 book Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. Galeano takes a historical approach and examines colonial and post-colonial interactions between Europeans and Latin Americans. He asserts that the native Latin Americans were essentially powerless to fight this exploitation because of the dominance of the European powers. In his 2008 book Andean Cocaine: The Making of a Global Drug, Paul Gootenberg writes about the discovery of cocaine and its transition from a regional good to a global commodity. Gootenberg combines history and economics in his view of the relationships between the two powers. Unlike Galeano, he shows a side of Latin American history in which the native people of Latin America had power, however limited, to control their positions in the economic system imposed by the Europeans. Gootenberg accepts Galeano’s theory of dominance as a starting point but complicates it by including the agency of the local people of Latin America, especially Peru. Gootenberg shifts the focus of his book from the national and European players to the local Latin American actors involved in the cocaine commodity chain—from growers and harvesters to refiners and distributors. This theory involves more of the disparate components present in the economies of Latin America; therefore, it is a better way to describe historical relationships between Latin America and Europe.
Before entering the drugs world in the 70′s, Escobar was involved in lesser various other criminal activities. He would go from stealing cars and selling contraband cigarettes to kidnapping. It didn’t take long for him to discover that the real money and power was in trafficking cocaine. The process was simple: He would import the paste of coca leaves in Bolivia and Peru, the reasoning being coca in Colombia was of inferior quality at the time. He would then refined it in Colombia on one of his properties and afterwards export it to the US. First this was done in small quantities, human trafficking for hidden in old plane tires. But under the influence of professional smugglers like Carlos Lehder and George Jung, Escobar's empire would grow.
Beith, Malcolm. “The Current State of Mexico’s Many Drug Cartels.” Insight Crimes. n.p., 25 Sep.
... In addition to being powerful, his ruthless murders made him a dangerous man too. This specific case in Latin American history comes to show how economic “stability” does not always mean happiness and wealth. The Dominican Republic’s economy was stable, but all the wealth belonged to one man, Trujillo. A Nation’s wealth in the hands of one man only means that the Nation’s safety and life-force also rest in his hands.
This paper attempts to examine the characteristics of the Sinaloa Cartel, which is revered as one of the most well established criminal organizations in Latin America having been quoted by Columbian newspaper El Tiempo, as controlling 35% of the cocaine exported from Columbia. Columbia itself is regarded as the largest producer of cocaine in the world. They have long been known to exploit transnational commerce and communications to protect and guide their illicit, profit driven activities. The organization’s characteristics, methods of operation, organizational structure, activities, and threats to the region and country of its various operations will all be explored extensively in addition to the impact of local and foreign law enforcement
Specific Purpose: I want to give a general overview of Joaquin Guzman’s criminal career, including his multiple escapes from federal prison.
Again performed by Jennifer S. Holmes and Sheila Amin Gutierrez de Pineres, quantitative analysis shows that political violence lies at the heart of Colombian economic struggles, not coca production (Holmes and Gutierrez, 2006, 115). In their paper, “The Illegal Drug Industry, Violence and the Colombian Economy: A Department Level Analysis,” the researchers focus on the impact of coca production on Colombia’s economy in terms of both exports and GDP, while controlling for violence. By analyzing at a department-level, it is again emphasized that focusing on Colombia at a national level is a mistake, and emphasis needs to be made on individual players as opposed to groups. For example, when analyzing paramilitary groups and the FARC (Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia) as two separate actors, the researchers discovered that “Paramilitary violence is positively related to exports and negatively to gross domestic product. FARC violence appears to harm exports but, surprisingly, not gross domestic product,” (Holmes and Gutierrez, 2006, 113). The motivations of each group explain this trend. FARC guerilla fighters cause conflict in order to extort resources from the government to support their own cause, while privately funded paramilitary organizations are in many ways a representation of the private sector in Colombia (Holmes and Gutierrez, 2006, 113). Suggesting that political violence is the root cause of economic instability
Pablo Escobar was one of the most notorious and richest criminals of the last century; his humble upbringing provided him with all of the necessary resources to create a massive and lasting empire. His cocaine empire started small, but quickly spread, making him famous worldwide. Escobar worked hard to carefully plan and outsmart his opponents and authorities to escape extradition to the United States.
He was ranked as the 7th richest man to be alive seven years in a row. He was so rich that he paid pilots 500k to smuggle cocaine in the tires of their airplanes into the united states. In attempt to change the law of extradition, Escobar paid off all of Colombia’s debt of 10,000,000,000 dollars. He always said extradition was his biggest fear because he didn’t want to spend his last days in an American jail cell. Escobar ran out of places to locate his money so he started putting it in barns and places where it could eventually spoil. That’s exactly what it did, 10% of Escobar’s earnings were lost to spoilage from humidity and rats. This fact I am about to share is one thing Pablo Escobar was famous for. While running from the police, Escobar’s daughter, Manuela, grew ill. To keep her warm instead of shivering, Escobar burned approximately $2,000,000 dollars to keep her warm. He had a special love for his family, even though he was involved in many affairs, he loved his wife and two children (4,Picone,Kiri). Pablo made a deal with the Colombian government that he would do jail time as long as he built and manufactured his own prison. They agreed and soon enough the La Catedral was built. This prison shouldn’t even be considered a prison because it held a casino, a nightclub, and even a spa. It was known to be a luxurious prison. This man had more money than he knew what to do with. He
On December 1st, 1949, one of the most dangerous, frightening, wealthiest drug lords was born in Colombia; his name, Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria. This drug lord wasn’t just any regular drug dealer. He killed anyone who interfered with his business. He was the head mastermind behind the Medellin Cartel, where he made tons of cocaine daily. This man seems like he would be a terrible person, however he did somethings to benefit the poor(1,Macias,Amanda). At his home in Puerto Triunfu, Escobar built a zoo filled with different animals such as hippos, giraffes, elephants, zebras, and even cheetahs! It is said that hippos still roam the grounds of his home today (4, Picone,Kiri). Pablo Escobar was one