![]() Two unarmed officials - a deputy justice minister and the chief of the national prison system - came to inform the cartel boss of the changes. It was then that the government decided things had gone too far and decided to move Escobar to a military installation. ![]() Authorities allowed him to run the place - until, that is, he ordered four of his lieutenants tortured and killed at the compound in a dispute over money. He hosted drug and booze-fueled parties with regularity. While Escobar was living at La Catedral, his family made the trip up from Envigado to visit him three or four times a week, as did friends, professional soccer players and prostitutes when he wished. It had cellular phones, radio transmitters and a fax machine to allow him to continue with business, which at its peak brought his cartel $60 million dollars a day and oversaw control of up to 80 percent of the cocaine shipped to the United States. The compound included a soccer field, a discotheque, a doll house for his daughter and its own bar. Unofficially it was called “Club Medellin” or “Hotel Escobar,” and “resort” would be a more apt description of it than “prison.” Escobar’s designs featured a bathroom with a jacuzzi and a bedroom that had a circular, rotating bed. The reference wasn’t religious but a nod towards its grandeur. The compound was called “La Catedral,” or The Cathedral. So on June 19, 1991, Escobar arrived at the prison in a helicopter to serve his time. The arrangement also brought an end to the costs and time invested in the endless pursuit of the cartel boss. Escobar’s bombings and bribes had pushed the state to the point of collapse in the 1980s his imprisonment would be a landmark. In return, Colombia would have Escobar in prison for five years and rid themselves of a national headache and embarrassment, even if only temporarily. ![]() One of his mottoes was "Better a grave in Colombia than a cell in the U.S." He feared a system in which prison guards and judges could not be easily bribed. Always very close with his family, the location allowed him a direct sightline to his family’s home and it is said that he mounted a telescope to be able to see his daughter while he talked with her on the phone.Įntering prison not only gave Escobar protection from possible assassins, but also from what he was most afraid of: extradition to the United States. As part of the arrangement, he would also have the right to choose his guards. Escobar would go to jail - the prison, however, would be built to his specifications on three hectares of land that he had bought in preparation of a possible agreement with the state. Six months of secret negotiations brought a deal with the Colombian government. He was a man succumbing to the constant pressure of being hunted. His daughter Manuela had been injured in a bombing of his home. ![]() He had seen fellow drug lords like Carlos Lehder extradited to the United States, others like the Ochoa brothers turn themselves in to serve time in Colombian prisons and still others like Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, alias “El Mexicano,” die in gun battles with the police. A vigilante group named Los Pepes (short for “People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar”) was pursuing him and would eventually assassinate more than 300 of his associates and family. By ’91, a decade of building an empire of enemies was causing the collapse of Escobar’s life around him. Medellin Cartel boss Pablo Escobar chose an area high above this valley in the cool mountains for his self-designed prison in 1991 as part of an agreement he worked out with Colombian authorities. In the forests, you find armadillos, sloths and large, iridescent butterflies. Tracts of native forest still cover large sections of the area, although new home construction has felled much during the past few years. The Honey Valley rests southeast of Medellin in the mountainous outskirts of the neighboring town, Envigado.
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