Word: gaviria
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Pablo Escobar Gaviria, generally acknowledged to be head of the Mafia, as the cartel is known locally, became something of a local philanthropist, building a zoo, soccer fields and an entire suburb of low-cost houses that is still called Barrio Escobar. In the manner of feudal serfs, residents in Barrio Escobar refer to their benefactor with cap-doffing deference and slip the Spanish honorific Don in front of his name...
Peasants tell an entirely different story. To them, the drug lords are Robin Hoods, providing housing, roads and money. Pablo Escobar-Gaviria, the acknowledged head of the Medellin cartel, has built soccer fields, a zoo and an entire suburb of low-cost housing. The cartel even fields political candidates. A case in point: Cartel Member Carlos Lehder-Rivas is running for a state legislative seat in this month's elections. Never mind that Lehder is in a Jacksonville jail while on trial for drug trafficking...
Also charged in the 12-count indictment were 15 others, including cartel leader Pablo Escobar Gaviria and a top Noriega aide, Capt. Luis del Cid. Cartel leader Jorge Ochoa Vasquez is mentioned in the document, but was not indicted...
...mountainside overlooking Medellin, Colombia, some of South America's poorest families have been uprooted from the garbage dumps where they once foraged and deposited in 4,000 neat, red-tiled homes. At the entrance to the housing development, a large billboard proclaims the author of this generosity: PABLO ESCOBAR GAVIRIA, a local billionaire who has been called one of the world's richest men. Escobar is also one of the world's richest fugitives. Last week a federal grand jury in Miami announced that Escobar and four other Medellin tycoons had been indicted because of the source of their immense...
...cocaine trade in Colombia took off in the late 1970s when crime bosses entered the business. Until then, their profits had largely come from smuggling cars, liquor and electronic appliances into the country and sneaking cattle, emeralds and coffee out. Then, it seems, Pablo Escobar Gaviria, an entrepreneur whom Colombian bankers describe as "a self-taught administrator with a genius for organization," convinced Smuggler Fabio Ochoa of the profits to be earned from cocaine. The two took over the domestic industry and sent murderous local toughs, now known as cocaine cowboys, to seize control of the U.S. wholesale market...