Killing Pablo

This is a thorough and well researched book. First we follow the life of Pablo Escobar - the man synonymous with cocaine trafficking - his upbringing, his family, his involvement in the drug trade and his role in the Medellin cartel, his short career in politics. Then we learn about the Colombian police and then military tasked with capturing Escobar, and then the involvement of the USA.

While we get a thorough background of Escobar, we see it from a strictly criminal and political perspective. We hear about his lavish lifestyle, his predilection for teenage girls, the fact he is a marijuana smoker, but doesn't meddle in the cocaine that makes him his millions of dollars. What we don't get is a wider picture of Escobar - the private zoo with the exotic animals, his car collections (other than when the authorities destroy them to taunt him), so not such a human picture. It does talk about the ebb and flow of public support for Pablo - as he poured his ill gotten money into housing, sports fields and the like he was seen as a Robin Hood figure, but violent bombings and public executions turned many against him.

The second part of the book outlines the authorities actions to take Pablo down. People who act against Escobar have a strange habit of winding up dead. Particularly judges. Policemen fare poorly too. Between targetted assassinations and bribe money, Escobar remains relatively free to carry out his business. As the Colombian police prove ineffective, the more they open up politically to the option of assistance from the USA. George Bush has ramped up his war on drugs and has decided that stopping cocaine at the border, or going after people distributing within the States was not yielding results - he wanted to target the source. To me this seems like America blaming Colombia for the American's who are buying drugs...

So Bush signed off on a heap on ambiguous requests for the US Embassy, DEA, CIA, NSA, Delta Force and an outfit called Centra Spike, who were a specialist digital surveillance team with high tech planes to use cellphone detection to trace the location of targets. I say ambiguous because typically the agreed scope it to either provide training or to provide expertise in surveillance, but clearly not to be taking part in missions / raids / executions (!). I am happy to admit I cant write a simple explanation of each of the above American parties, how they interacted with the Colombian authorities, and who did what. It was a complex web of people and politics. What is obvious is that the US was far more involved than legitimately authorised, they were morally well across lines (for example knowing about the kill squad called Los Pepes who claimed to operate as an independent vigilante organisation, when it was obvious the Colombian Police were feeding them information, and the US operatives were aware of this, and almost certainly knew that the leaders of that origination and financing was from the Cali cartel).

I probably need to leave my description of the details of the book there, as i will only get it tangled. I will say that the above sort of covers the middle part of the book, and that the last part is the demise of Pablo Escobar, and then these is a chapter of the aftermath. Lastly are pages and pages of the source material, and a thorough index.

So overall I enjoyed the book. It was quite fast paced, but also shared the drudgery of constant surveillance and lack of results etc, so contained some flat parts. It mixed it up enough following events from both sides of the story - we hear plenty about what Escobar, his cartel and his family are doing, and plenty about those pursing him.

I was certainly entertained while reading; I enjoyed the detail about the pursuit and ultimately elimination of Pablo Escobar. The politics and complexities added to the intrigue, and the source information gave reassurance of the legitimacy. As other have mentioned the tv series Narcos is a fictionalisation of events, and not intended to be a documentary, so people shouldn't assume it is accurate.

Finally, a couple of quotes I liked:
P30He was violent and unprincipled, and a determined climber. He wasn't an entrepreneur, and he wasn't even an especially talented businessman. He was just ruthless. When he heard about a thriving cocaine-processing lab on his turf, he shouldered his way in. If someone developed a lucrative delivery route north, Pablo demanded a majority of the profits - for protection. No one dared refuse him.
P33

Pablo was establishing a pattern of dealing with the authorities which would become his trademark. It soon became simply Plata o plomo. One either accepted Pablo's Plata (silver), or his Plomo (lead).