- 9 hours ago
At his peak Pablo Escobar was making $420 million dollars every single week. He was the seventh richest man on earth. He had a private zoo, a personal airport, and enough money to offer to pay off Colombia's entire national debt just to stay out of prison. Then on December 2, 1993 — the most powerful criminal in history was found hiding alone in a small ordinary house in Medellín wearing a dirty t-shirt. He was killed on the rooftop trying to escape through a window. He was 44 years old. This is the full story of how he got there — and what it cost everyone around him.
In this video we explore:
• How Pablo Escobar rose from a poor farming family to control 80% of the world's cocaine supply
• The plata o plomo strategy that bought entire governments and police forces
• The extraordinary moment he became a legitimate Colombian politician
• The total war he declared on Colombia — bombings, assassinations, 4,000 deaths
• The luxury prison he designed himself — and how he simply walked out of it
• The final 16 months as a hunted fugitive and how a 37 second phone call ended everything
________________________________________
Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was born on December 1 1949 in Rionegro Colombia to a farming family. By his early twenties he was involved in cocaine trafficking and by the late 1970s his Medellín Cartel controlled an estimated 80% of the cocaine entering the United States. At peak operation the cartel was smuggling 15 tons of cocaine into America daily generating revenues estimated at $420 million per week. Escobar's personal net worth was estimated at $30 billion by 1989 when Forbes listed him as the seventh wealthiest person on earth. He was responsible for the assassinations of a Justice Minister, three presidential candidates, Supreme Court justices, and an estimated 4,000 deaths during his campaign of narco-terrorism against the Colombian government. He surrendered in 1991 to a luxury prison of his own design called La Catedral before escaping in 1992. He was killed by Colombian security forces on December 2 1993 in Medellín, Colombia, one day after his 44th birthday.
________________________________________
He spent his entire life trying to escape the poverty he was born into.
He died in a house not much better than the one he grew up in.
Power without conscience is not power. It is a timer. Counting down.
If this story showed you something about power, ambition and consequence — share it tonight. Subscribe to HISTORVA for more of history's most extraordinary true stories.
________________________________________
🔔 Subscribe for weekly history videos 👍 Like if this story left you thinking 💬 Comment below — did you know Escobar's hippos are still alive in Colombia today?
In this video we explore:
• How Pablo Escobar rose from a poor farming family to control 80% of the world's cocaine supply
• The plata o plomo strategy that bought entire governments and police forces
• The extraordinary moment he became a legitimate Colombian politician
• The total war he declared on Colombia — bombings, assassinations, 4,000 deaths
• The luxury prison he designed himself — and how he simply walked out of it
• The final 16 months as a hunted fugitive and how a 37 second phone call ended everything
________________________________________
Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was born on December 1 1949 in Rionegro Colombia to a farming family. By his early twenties he was involved in cocaine trafficking and by the late 1970s his Medellín Cartel controlled an estimated 80% of the cocaine entering the United States. At peak operation the cartel was smuggling 15 tons of cocaine into America daily generating revenues estimated at $420 million per week. Escobar's personal net worth was estimated at $30 billion by 1989 when Forbes listed him as the seventh wealthiest person on earth. He was responsible for the assassinations of a Justice Minister, three presidential candidates, Supreme Court justices, and an estimated 4,000 deaths during his campaign of narco-terrorism against the Colombian government. He surrendered in 1991 to a luxury prison of his own design called La Catedral before escaping in 1992. He was killed by Colombian security forces on December 2 1993 in Medellín, Colombia, one day after his 44th birthday.
________________________________________
He spent his entire life trying to escape the poverty he was born into.
He died in a house not much better than the one he grew up in.
Power without conscience is not power. It is a timer. Counting down.
If this story showed you something about power, ambition and consequence — share it tonight. Subscribe to HISTORVA for more of history's most extraordinary true stories.
________________________________________
🔔 Subscribe for weekly history videos 👍 Like if this story left you thinking 💬 Comment below — did you know Escobar's hippos are still alive in Colombia today?
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00December 2nd, 1993. A small house. Middle-class neighborhood. Medellin, Colombia. Inside,
00:09one man. Unshaven. Dirty t-shirt. Hiding. Outside, 300 armed officers. Closing in.
00:17The man inside that house was worth $30 billion. He owned private jets. A personal zoo with
00:24elephants and hippos. A fleet of exotic cars. An entire private city he built from scratch inside
00:31the Colombian jungle. At his peak, he was making $420 million every single week. Forbes magazine
00:40called him the seventh richest man on earth. He was so powerful. He once offered to personally
00:46pay off Colombia's entire national debt. $10 billion. Just to be left alone. They said no.
00:54And on this cold December morning, the most feared criminal in the history of the world
01:00was cornered like an animal in a house he had been hiding in for less than 24 hours.
01:06What happened in the next hour ended an empire. But the story of how he got here is one of
01:12the
01:12most extraordinary and terrifying things you will ever hear. Picture a small Colombian town.
01:18Red dirt roads. Chickens in the yard. A farming family scraping together every peso. A boy watches
01:26his mother leave before sunrise every morning. Return after dark every night. For almost nothing.
01:33He is eight years old. And he has already made a decision. This will never be his life.
01:39His name is Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria. The third of seven children. Born January 1st, 1949.
01:48In a town so small, most people in Colombia had never heard of it. Here is what made Pablo different
01:55from every other poor boy in that town. He was not angry about being poor. He was insulted by it.
02:02There is a difference. Angry people complain. Insulted people act. By the time he was 15,
02:10Pablo was already running small scams. Stealing gravestones. Reselling them. Forging lottery tickets.
02:17Moving contraband cigarettes. Not for survival. He always made that clear to people who asked.
02:24For the feeling. The feeling of taking something the world said he could not have. Of beating a system
02:31that had given his family nothing. By 22, he was moving stolen cars and small cocaine shipments
02:38across the Colombian border. He was not the biggest player. Not yet. But he was watching. Learning.
02:45Mapping the entire operation in his mind. Waiting for his moment. And in the late 1970s,
02:53his moment arrived. Here is something most people do not know about Pablo Escobar.
02:59He was not a drug manufacturer. He was not a chemist. He did not cook cocaine. He did not grow
03:06coca.
03:06What Pablo Escobar was, was the greatest logistics mind of the 20th century. In the late 1970s,
03:14cocaine was exploding in America. Demand was skyrocketing. But the supply chain was primitive.
03:21Disorganized. Dangerous. Leaking money at every point. Pablo looked at the cocaine trade the way
03:28a general looks at a battlefield. He did not see a drug operation. He saw a broken supply chain waiting
03:35for someone to fix it. He built distribution networks with military precision. He recruited pilots.
03:41Bribed customs officials. Compromised police officers. Purchased politicians. His method was simple.
03:49Elegant. Brutal. He called it Plata o Plomo. Silver or Lead. Take the bribe. Or take the bullet.
03:57It was not a threat. It was a business policy. And it worked. By the early 1980s, Pablo Ismedelin cartel
04:06controlled 80% of all cocaine entering the United States. 80%. 15 tons. Every single day.
04:16The money was so incomprehensible. So physically overwhelming. That his accountants wrote off
04:22$2.1 billion per year. Not lost to theft. Not lost to bad investments. Lost because the cash got wet.
04:30Was eaten by rats. Or simply could not be stored fast enough. $2 billion. Written off. Because they had
04:39too much money to keep track of. Let that sit for a moment. There is a place in Colombia. 7
04:46,000 acres of
04:47land. That Pablo Escobar built from nothing. He called it Hacienda Naples. It had a private airport.
04:54A bullfighting ring. A motocross track. A personal museum of antique cars. And a zoo. A private zoo with
05:02elephants. Giraffes. Exotic birds. Rare reptiles. And hippos. Pablo imported hippos from Africa.
05:11Four of them. Today, those hippos are still in Colombia. Their descendants have multiplied.
05:18There are now over 80 wild hippos roaming Colombian rivers. Decades after Pablo's death. They call them
05:27the cocaine hippos. The most surreal legacy any criminal has ever left behind. But Pablo was not
05:34satisfied with being rich. He wanted to be loved. He built entire neighborhoods for the poor of meddling.
05:41Meddling. Houses. Football fields. Schools. A church. He handed out money in the streets.
05:49Showed up at children's football matches. Paid for local kids' education. The poor of meddling called
05:55him Robin Hood Paisa. They genuinely loved him. And Pablo understood something that most criminals never
06:02do. That love is more powerful than fear. Fear makes people obey. Love makes people protect you.
06:10So he bought love. Systematically. Deliberately. And then, he decided love was not enough. He wanted
06:19power. Real power. Political power. And in 1982, he ran for Congress. And won. For a brief extraordinary
06:28moment. Pablo Escobar was a legitimate Colombian politician. A man responsible for hundreds of
06:36murders sat in the Colombian legislature. Then one man stood up. His name was Rodrigo Lara Bonilla,
06:44Colombia's Minister of Justice. He stood in front of the Colombian Congress, looked directly at Pablo
06:50Escobar, and exposed everything. The criminal record. The drug connections. The murders. All of it.
06:57Publicly. On the record. Pablo was removed from Congress. Six months later. Rodrigo Lara Bonilla was
07:06shot dead on a Bogota street. On Pablo's orders. That assassination was the moment everything
07:12changed. Because killing a farmer or a rival trafficker or a police officer was business. Killing a government
07:20minister was war. What followed was one of the darkest chapters in the history of any country not
07:27officially at war. Pablo bombed a commercial airliner. Avianca flight 203. 107 passengers. All dead. He was
07:37trying to kill one specific government witness who might have been on board. The witness was not on the
07:43flight. 107 innocent people died anyway. He placed a bomb outside the DAS intelligence headquarters in
07:51Bogota. The explosion killed 52 people. Wounded over a thousand. He put a bounty on police officers.
08:00Three thousand dollars for every officer killed. Young men from the slums of Medellin became assassins for
08:06pocket money. One police officer was being killed in Medellin every single day. Pablo ordered
08:13the assassination of three presidential candidates. A Supreme Court justice. Newspaper editors.
08:21Prosecutors. He was at war with an entire country. And for a while he was winning. In 1991 something
08:30happened that sounds impossible. The Colombian government negotiated with Pablo Escobar.
08:35He agreed to surrender. In exchange for one condition he would not be extradited to the United States.
08:43The Colombian government agreed. And Pablo Escobar, the man who had bombed air liars and declared war on an
08:50entire nation, went to prison. But here's the thing nobody tells you about that prison. Pablo designed it
08:57himself. La Catedral. His prison. On a hilltop outside Medellin. It had a football field. A bar.
09:06A jacuzzi. A jacuzzi. A waterfall. Guest rooms for visitors. A disco. He continued running his cartel
09:14from inside. He held meetings with his men. Ordered executions. Managed shipments. Made deals.
09:22From a luxury prison he had personally designed and the Colombian government had personally built for him.
09:28When the government finally tried to move him to a real facility, Pablo simply walked out through the
09:35front gate. And disappeared. Into the mountains. Into the city. Into the shadows. And the hunt began.
09:43After escaping, Pablo still had billions. Still had loyal men. Still had weapons. What he no longer had
09:52was anywhere safe to sleep. The Colombian government, now with full American support,
09:58formed an elite unit called the Search Block. One mission. One target. Find Pablo Escobar.
10:05They were joined by a group of vigilantes called Los Pepes. People persecuted by Pablo Escobar.
10:12Former rivals. People whose families he had destroyed. Ex-cartel members who had been betrayed by him.
10:21They began systematically burning everything Pablo owned. Every safe house. Every asset. Every business
10:28connection. Every lawyer who worked for him. Pablo's empire was being dismantled piece by piece.
10:35While the Search Block tracked him from above. He moved every night. Never the same house twice.
10:42Always moving. Always hiding. The man who once offered to pay Colombias as national debt,
10:49was now sleeping in strangers' beds and eating whatever his last loyal man could bring him.
10:55His family tried to flee the country. Germany refused them. Mozambique refused them. Peru refused them.
11:03Nobody wanted Pablo Escobar's family. Then, on December 2, 1993, Pablo made one phone call.
11:11To his son. The call was traced by the search block. He stayed on the line 37 seconds too long.
11:1937 seconds. That was all they needed. The search block surrounded a modest two-story house in the Los Olivos
11:26neighborhood of Medellin.
11:27Inside, Pablo Escobar. One bodyguard. And nothing else. No army. No cartel. No protection.
11:37The most powerful criminal in the history of the world. Alone, in a small house, in a neighborhood he would
11:44have considered beneath him ten years earlier.
11:46The Dunn battle lasted less than an hour. The bodyguard died first. Pablo ran through the house.
11:53Fired back through windows. Tried to escape across the rooftop. He was hit three times. Once in the leg. Once
12:01in the torso. Once behind the right ear. Close range.
12:06Pablo Escobar. Pablo Escobar. The seventh richest man on earth. Died on a rooftop in a dirty t-shirt. He
12:13was 44 years old. The search block officers who photographed his body were smiling. After years of watching their colleagues
12:21die for $3,000 bounties. They had won. His family was left with almost nothing. His wife and children eventually
12:30settled in Argentina under assumed names.
12:33Hacienda Naples. Hacienda Naples. Seized by the government. Was turned into a theme park. The exotic animals were redistributed. Except
12:42the hippos. The hippos. As they had always done. Refused to follow anyone's orders.
12:49Pablo Escobar spent his entire life running from one thing. The house he grew up in. The poverty. The smallness.
12:57The feeling of being nothing and nobody in a world that did not notice him.
13:01He ran so far. So fast. So violently. That he became the most noticed man on earth. And he died.
13:09In a house not much better than the one he was running from. The thing he was trying to escape.
13:15Was the last thing he saw. That is not a coincidence.
13:19That is the oldest story in human history. Told again. In blood. On a rooftop. In Medellin. Subscribe to Historva.
13:29Because history does not repeat. But the people in it always do.
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