Escobar Gaviria, who became one of the richest men in the world, was born into modest circumstances in the village of Rionegro, seventeen miles outside Medellin. In 1976, police arrested him for possession of thirty-nine pounds of cocaine, but the arresting officer was soon killed, and nine judges refused to hear the case after receiving death threats. The official records disappeared from the courthouse, and Escobar Gaviria was never tried. With his worth estimated at $2 billion, he bought vast tracts of land in Colombia, including a lavish estate near the Magdalena River that included a private zoo. But Escobar Gaviria also built low-cost housing and a hospital, earning him favorable press and the devotion of the poor of Medellin. In 1982, he was elected to the Colombian Congress as an alternate representative from Antioquia, giving him immunity from arrest.
By 1982, Fabio Ochoa Restrepo had formed a cartel to squeeze out independents and contain losses from drug seizures by the Colombian or U.S. governments. Escobar Gaviria's people controlled U.S. distribution, laboratories, transportation, and aircraft; Ochoa Vasquez provided "muscle" and bribes to officials. By 1984, the Medellin cartel controlled roughly 80 percent of the cocaine in the country. The Medellin cartel brought coca paste from Bolivia and Peru to secret laboratories in Colombia, Nicaragua, and Panama, then shipped the final product to warehouses in the Bahamas, Mexico, the Caicos, and Turks Islands.
Under pressure from the U.S.---and following the assassination of Colombian minister of justice Rodrigo Lara Bonilla on Apr. 30, 1984, possibly at the instigation of Escobar Gaviria---President Belisario Betancur Cuartas of Colombia agreed to extradite all drug traffickers to the U.S. for trial. In 1984, he authorized aerial spraying of marijuana fields with the support of the Colombian judicial system and a number of newspapers. The cartel fought back. Between 1985 and 1987, drug gangsters assassinated fifteen judges, including Supreme Court Justice Hernando Baquero Borda, killed on July 31, 1986, after negotiating an extradition treaty with the U.S. On Aug. 13, Ochoa Vasquez was released from prison.
On Nov. 18, 1986, indictments against Escobar Gaviria and nine other men were announced in Miami on charges including racketeering and smuggling at least sixty tons of cocaine into the U.S. Several counts in the indictment stemmed from information provided by Barry Seal, a cartel pilot who turned DEA informant in 1984 and was found out and killed in 1986. On Feb. 18, 1987, the Supreme Court of Colombia, fearful for their lives, declared they would not rule on the extradition of citizens to the U.S. The warrant for Escobar Gaviria's arrest was canceled and the charges dismissed.
On December 2, 1993, one day after his 44th birthday, Escobar Gaviria's bloody reign came to an end. An elite force of national police and military commandos trapped the drug lord on a rooftop in Medellin. After killing Escobar Gaviria in a hail of bullets, the troops celebrated by firing their weapons in the air and shouting, "We won!" See: Lehder Rivas, Carlos; Ochoa Vasquez, Jorge Luis.