Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was born on December 1, 1949, in Rionegro in the Antioquia Department of Colombia. He was a Colombian drug trafficker who was in charge of more than 80% of the cocaine shipped to the United States. Brought up in the neighboring city of Medellin, he was believed to have started his criminal profession during his youth, supposedly robbing gravestones and smoothing them down for resale to nearby smugglers. Escobar ventured into the cocaine trade during the 1970s, forming partnerships with other criminal elements to create the Medellin Cartel. Escobar gained fame through funding various charity projects and football clubs in his home town and around Colombia. He earned popularity by sponsoring charity projects and soccer clubs. Escobar was born in a modest family, his dad being a peasant farmer whereas his mom was a schoolteacher. During his teenage years, he developed a great urge and desire to achieve great things and unchain himself from poverty that entangled his family (Strong, 1995).
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He formed a partnership with cartel leader Carlos Lehder whom together they created new trans-shipment locations in the Bahamas. Later, Pablo and Robert Vesco bought most of the land on the island that comprised 1km airstrip, hotel, apartments, harbor, aircraft, and boats and established a refrigerated store building for keeping the cocaine. Between 1978 and 82, this was used as the major smuggling path for the Medellin cartel. With huge profits earned, he later bought 7.7 square miles of land in Antioquia for a huge sum of money that he later built the Hacienda Napoles. It was once approximated that 70-80 tons of cocaine were being smuggled from Colombia to US monthly. In the 1980s, Escobar smuggled 11 tons of cocaine per flight in jetliners to the US (Strong,