Word: escobar
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...Quinn and me -- "the first and only interview I've given in my 52 years" -- in order to clarify what he insists are lies about his involvement in cocaine trafficking. Along the way he tried to raise doubts about the motivations of two enemies -- Medellin cartel boss Pablo Escobar Gaviria and the U.S. government, which wants him extradited to face numerous counts of drug peddling...
Rodriguez contended that he lived in mortal fear of Escobar. "Mr. Escobar is sick, a psycho, a lunatic," he said. "He knows he's lost the war against the state. He lives now only to destroy." Their enmity, Rodriguez said, began in 1987 when he refused to help Escobar kidnap Bogota mayoral candidate Andres Pastrana. When Rodriguez declined, Escobar shouted, "Whoever is not with me is against me." Rodriguez blamed Escobar for the August 1989 assassination of presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan Sarmiento, which ignited the campaign to push the cocaine princes from Colombia. Rodriguez claimed he had warned Galan...
...credit for tipping off the police last June, when a truck packed with 800 kg of dynamite was disarmed before it could be parked outside the offices of the daily El Tiempo. He knew about it, Rodriguez said, because his people had intercepted a radio-phone call in which Escobar promised a "big, big surprise" for the newspaper...
Colombia. An eerie truce has enveloped the Great Colombian Drug War. To fend off the government's relentless assault on his empire, Medellin cartel boss Pablo Escobar Gaviria seems to have forsaken bombs and gun battles in the streets, which have killed more than 1,000 people in the past 15 months, and opted instead for high-profile kidnappings and negotiations. Since August, Escobar's mob has been holding seven journalists -- including Hoy X Hoy magazine editor Diana Turbay, the daughter of a former President -- and threatening to kill them unless a peace deal can be worked...
...willing to kill, or die, for it. Says a U.S. narcotics expert: "Colombia is winning the war, but I wonder whether its economic and political structure can withstand the long-term commitment." The signs are discouraging. In Medellin a small boy kicking a ball around a field built by Escobar called him a hero: "To me he's more important than God." The crop of tomorrow's would-be drug lords is as abundant as the marketplace of users who make such profane comparisons possible...