From poor families to the biggest drug lords that have ever existed on earth. Today, we put Pablo Escobar (aka ‘el patron’) head-to-head with Joaquín Guzmán Loera (aka ‘el chapo’).
The TV series 'Narcos' and 'El Chapo' created by Netflix are very popular right now, so let's take a closer look to these 2 impressive drug kingpins.
The story behind ‘El Chapo’
Mexican drug lord Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán Loera was born in the rural Mexican town of Badiraguato. The date of his birth is believed to be April 4, 1957, according to Time magazine, although other outlets list December 25, 1954, as his birthday. Guzmán’s childhood was shaped by his family’s poverty and his abusive father, a violent man who was in the drug trade.
By his teens, Guzmán had been kicked out of the family home and was forced to make his own way. With little schooling in his background, he eventually found himself following his father's path, growing marijuana for small amounts of cash.
By the late 1970s, Guzmán had proven his value in the narcotics business and begun working with another rising young dealer named Héctor Luis Palma Salazar. Guzmán oversaw the movement of drugs from his home district of Sinaloa, a crucial drug trafficking area on the western end of Mexico where narcotics flowed north to coastal cities and into the United States.
By his late 20s, the quiet but savvy Guzmán, whose 5'6" frame had earned him the nickname, “El Chapo” ("Shorty"), was supervising logistics for another drug kingpin, Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, founder of the Guadalajara cartel. Guzmán kept a low profile, but when his boss was eventually arrested for the 1985 murder of an American Drug Enforcement Agency agent, he quickly emerged as one of the new faces of the Mexican drug world.
Inheriting some of his former boss’s territory, Guzmán founded his own cartel, known as Sinaloa, in 1989. By the early 1990s, Guzmán was on the radar of the DEA and FBI and considered one of Mexico's most powerful and dangerous drug traffickers.
The end of ‘El Chapo’
"I know one day I will die. I hope it's of natural causes."
On January 19, 2017, the Mexican government extradited Guzmán to the United States to face drug trafficking and other charges. The following day Guzmán appeared in U.S. Federal Court in Brooklyn, New York, and pleaded not guilty to over a dozen charges. A hearing was scheduled for February 3.
The story behind ‘El Patron’
Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was born on December 1, 1949 in the Colombian city of Rionegro, Antioquia, with his family later moving to the suburb of Envigado. He came from modest means; his father worked as a peasant farmer while his mother was a schoolteacher. From an early age, Escobar packed a unique drive and ambition to raise himself up from his humble beginnings.
As a young man, he told friends and family that he wanted to become president of Colombia. Yet as he saw it, his path to wealth and legitimacy lay in crime. He got his start as a petty street thief, stealing cars before moving into the smuggling business. Escobar’s early prominence came during the “Marlboro Wars,” in which he played a high-profile role in the control of Colombia’s smuggled cigarette market. This episode proved to be a valuable training ground for the future narcotics kingpin.
It wasn’t by chance that Colombia came to dominate the cocaine trade. Beginning in the early 1970s, the country became a prime smuggling ground for marijuana. But as the cocaine market flourished, Colombia’s geographical location proved to be its biggest asset. Situated at the northern tip of South America between the thriving coca cultivation epicenters of Peru and Bolivia, the country came to dominate the global cocaine trade with the United States, the biggest market for the drug, just a short trip to the north.
Escobar moved quickly to grab control of the cocaine trade. In 1975, Medellin drug trafficker Fabio Restrepo was murdered. His killing, it’s believed, came at the orders of Escobar, who immediately seized power and expanded Restrepo’s operation into something the world had never seen.
Under Escobar’s leadership, large amounts of coca paste were purchased in Bolivia and Peru, processed, and brought to America. Escobar worked with a small group to form the infamous Medellin Cartel. By the mid-1980s, Escobar controlled more than 80 percent of the cocaine smuggled into the United States. More than 15 tons of cocaine were reportedly smuggled each day, netting the Cartel as much as $420 million a week.
The end of ‘El Patron’
"Better a grave in Colombia than a cell in the US."
After so many near misses, Colombian law enforcement finally caught up to Escobar on December 2, 1993, the day after his birthday, in a middle-class neighborhood in Medellin. A firefight ensued and, as Escobar tried to escape across a series of rooftops, he and his bodyguard were shot and killed.
