The Legacy of Paablo Escobar

The legacy of Pablo Escobar in Colombia begins with the country's problematic social and political status through much of the 20th century. In his book on Escobar, Bowden says that the modern history of Colombia starts with the 1948 murder of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, a progressive socialist of indigenous Colombian origin whose populist appeal and social-reform agenda ameliorated the sharp political divisions between the country's capitalist and Marxist elites. Gaitán, says Bowden, "seemed poised to lead Colombia to a lawful, just, peaceful future. He tapped the deepest yearnings of his countrymen." In the wake of Gaitán's death--he was shot dead on a busy Bogota street by a "frustrated mystic with grandiose delusions"--massive protest ensued that evolved into rioting so massive that it developed a life of its own, well beyond the control of the Colombian leftists on whom the government blamed it. Fidel Castro, then a student and budding revolutionary, was in Bogotá and had been scheduled to meet with Gaitán the day of the murder; in part because Colombian leftists were unable to exploit the riots for revolutionary momentum, Castro left town.

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varria, that Escobar achieved a national reputation, even though definitive proof of Escobar's culpability was never proved. The reason is that Echavarria was much despised by the poor people who worked for him and/or those he had put out of jobs and/or homes to expand his landed estates. Thus anyone who could accomplish the fact of humbling and/or killing Echavarria could be seen as a hero; thus did Escobar become known among the poor as El Doctor. The killing had all the hallmarks of the young crime boss's emerging style: cruel, deadly, smart, and with an eye toward public relations. . . . It also advertised his ruthlessness and ambition, which didn't hurt either. In coming years, he would become even more of a hero to many in Medellín's slums with well-publicized acts of charity. Escobar's strand of flamboyant populism evolved side by side with the enlargement of the scope of his criminal activities and the increasing discipline of his criminal organization. In that regard, the DEA characterizes the organizational structure of Colombian drug-trafficking groups as identical to that of political terrorist groups, which are distinguished by a rigid command-and-control structure, which rely on "cells" to function in a rarely
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Approximate Word count = 3745
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page)