ESCOBAR BY ROBERTO ESCOBAR

In the museum of organised crime, Pablo Escobar deserves a room of his
own. He was the first gangster billionaire, listed by Forbes magazine
in 1989 as the world's seventh richest man; in the late 1980s he
offered to pay Colombia's national debt as a way of fending off the
ever-present threat of extradition to America. The rise of his
cocaine-trafficking organisation, the Medellin cartel, triggered a
period of mayhem unprecedented even by the standards of Colombia's
modern history.

There are passages in this biography written by Pablo's brother and
chief accountant, Roberto, that are jaw-dropping, especially when
detailing the sheer ingenuity required in smuggling hundreds of tons
annually into America and Europe. At first, simply packing the drug in
aircraft tyres was effective. But as the cocaine craze began to grip
the nightclubs of New York, Miami and LA, the inventiveness of the
Medellin cartel reached new heights.

One of the most successful tricks early on involved stuffing cocaine
into the vaginas of mares being transported to America for racing. But
before long, the chemists of Medellin had perfected the technique of
dissolving cocaine that allowed them to mix it with any liquid - wine,
cooking oil, paint. If it sloshes around and originates in South
America, it may well contain coke. Roberto explains how the chemists
then blended it "into plastic, forming it into many different items,
including PVC pipe, religious statues, and when we started shipping it
to Europe, the fibreglass shells of small boats". Consumers may wish
to remember that during a night on the razzle they could well be
snorting paint or fibreglass.

There are two schools of thought on Pablo, who was killed by a joint
American/Colombian operation in 1993. The conventional assessment is
of a murderous, power-crazed narco-boss who opened the sluicegates to
a river of Colombian blood. Unsurprisingly, Roberto Escobar subscribes
to the second, minority view. This sees Pablo as driven by the plight
of Colombia's poor. Once his coke business started attracting billions
of dollars to Medellin, the munificent Escobar used these funds to
provide for Colombia's dispossessed, the campesinos and the urban poor
in the barrios. Roberto occasionally drops in phrases like "of course,
Pablo was no saint", or "like all people, he had his bad side", but
this hardly does justice to the Armageddon unleashed by Escobar's wars
with the Colombian state and rival cartels. Not content with taking
out opponents in stomach-churning fashion, Escobar was responsible
for, inter alia, blowing up a passenger airliner mid-flight,
assassinating a presidential candidate, and razing the HQ of
Colombia's version of MI5.

In the museum of organised crime, Pablo Escobar deserves a room of his
own. He was the first gangster billionaire, listed by Forbes magazine
in 1989 as the world's seventh richest man; in the late 1980s he
offered to pay Colombia's national debt as a way of fending off the
ever-present threat of extradition to America. The rise of his
cocaine-trafficking organisation, the Medellin cartel, triggered a
period of mayhem unprecedented even by the standards of Colombia's
modern history.

There are passages in this biography written by Pablo's brother and
chief accountant, Roberto, that are jaw-dropping, especially when
detailing the sheer ingenuity required in smuggling hundreds of tons
annually into America and Europe. At first, simply packing the drug in
aircraft tyres was effective. But as the cocaine craze began to grip
the nightclubs of New York, Miami and LA, the inventiveness of the
Medellin cartel reached new heights.

One of the most successful tricks early on involved stuffing cocaine
into the vaginas of mares being transported to America for racing. But
before long, the chemists of Medellin had perfected the technique of
dissolving cocaine that allowed them to mix it with any liquid - wine,
cooking oil, paint. If it sloshes around and originates in South
America, it may well contain coke. Roberto explains how the chemists
then blended it "into plastic, forming it into many different items,
including PVC pipe, religious statues, and when we started shipping it
to Europe, the fibreglass shells of small boats". Consumers may wish
to remember that during a night on the razzle they could well be
snorting paint or fibreglass.

There are two schools of thought on Pablo, who was killed by a joint
American/Colombian operation in 1993. The conventional assessment is
of a murderous, power-crazed narco-boss who opened the sluicegates to
a river of Colombian blood. Unsurprisingly, Roberto Escobar subscribes
to the second, minority view. This sees Pablo as driven by the plight
of Colombia's poor. Once his coke business started attracting billions
of dollars to Medellin, the munificent Escobar used these funds to
provide for Colombia's dispossessed, the campesinos and the urban poor
in the barrios. Roberto occasionally drops in phrases like "of course,
Pablo was no saint", or "like all people, he had his bad side", but
this hardly does justice to the Armageddon unleashed by Escobar's wars
with the Colombian state and rival cartels. Not content with taking
out opponents in stomach-churning fashion, Escobar was responsible
for, inter alia, blowing up a passenger airliner mid-flight,
assassinating a presidential candidate, and razing the HQ of
Colombia's version of MI5.