Bester News

Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria (December 1, 1949 - December 2, 1993) was a Colombian drug lord. Escobar gained world infamy from the drug trade and in 1989 Forbes magazine listed him as the seventh richest man in the world. Escobar was born to a poor farmer and a school teacher, Hemilda Gaviria. He and his brother, Roberto Escobar, were so poor that once Pablo was sent home from school because he had no shoes. Roberto said: "Our poverty made an impression on our lives that neither my brother nor I ever forgot. In those early days, it was impossible to believe that one day Pablo would rule the city and make it known throughout the world as the home of the Medellin drug cartel." Escobar studied political science at the Universidad de Antioquia, but he was forced to drop out when he couldn't afford to pay the necessary fees. This was when he began his criminal career stealing gravestones and sanding them down for resale. Pablo was very well educated, but his vocation lay in crime (a vocation that would ultimately claim his life later on with a premature and violent death), and his first step on the ladder was to work for the multi-millionaire contraband smuggler Alvaro Prieto.