The year was 2006, and somewhere in Mexico’s
Sinaloa mountains the drug boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman had been delivered a gift-
two rival Los Zetas cartel members. With a stick in his hands, El Chapo beat these
men so badly he fractured many of their bones. As one witness later put it, the men were
so broken they looked like ragdolls. The men were then slung over ATV’s and taken
to a raging bonfire, where El Chapo pulled out his gun, made some derogatory comments
about the guys’ moms, before shooting them, and ordering their bodies to be burned. He said to one of his workers, “I don’t
want any bones to remain.” That was El Chapo to a tee - heartless, relentless,
and a ruthless protector of his monopoly. Roughly thirty years prior in the 1980s, the
mother of one of Pablo Escobar’s friends was riding a bus in Colombia. That driver didn’t see that the woman hadn’t
quite fully stepped off the bus when he drove off, leading to her falling and dying. The “King of Coke” was upset by what had
happened, and ordered one of his hitmen, Jairo Velasquez, aka “Popeye”, to kill the bus
driver. Speaking about the incident later Popeye said,
“I found the driver and killed him. I didn’t feel anything.” We’re guessing the man who ordered the hit
didn’t feel any remorse either. So, there you go, just two examples of how
these famous drug kingpins were quite similar. They both ran zero tolerance campaigns when
it came to anyone that bothered them. They were cruel and unusual people, and while
they shared a lot of similarities, you will also see that they were quite different. Let’s start with Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán
Loera…that’s a bit of a mouthful, so we’ll stick with his nickname, El Chapo...that translates
as “shorty”. El Chapo was born on April 4, 1957, in a rural
part of Mexico in the state of Sinaloa. He was poor, dirt poor, and there were many
mouths to feed in his large family. His father made his income as a cattle rancher,
but it wasn’t the most lucrative business to be in, so El Chapo used to sell oranges
to get some extra cash. He dropped out of school at a young age and
began working with his father full time. At 15 he started another side business, this
time with marijuana instead of oranges as a means to help out with family finances,
and by age 20 he was already working with Mexican cartels. It’s what you might call a rags to riches
story. Working in the fields earning two dollars
a day wasn’t for El Chapo, the illegal substances industry was way more lucrative. Escobar has some surprising similarities in
his early life. Born Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria on December
1str 1949, he grew up in a small town called Rionegro, which is about 45 minutes from Medellin
in Colombia. His mother, Hermilda, was a school teacher
and his father, Abel, was a cattle farmer just like El Chapo’s. Though Escobar’s early life wasn’t quite
as humble as El Chapo’s. He was also part of a big family and was one
of seven kids, though his family didn’t struggle as much financially. But young Pablo was always around narcotics,
specifically marijuana and cocaine, and it didn’t take him long to realize the financial
opportunity they represented, especially when it was sold to Americans, who were quickly
embracing cocaine with a passion. Back to El Chapo and his rise to power. First, he worked for a cartel when a number
of Mexican drug cartels were part of an alliance formed by one Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo,
aka, El Padrino. The Godfather really got things organized
and moved enough coke in the U.S. to keep Wall Street bankers partying for the next
millennia. Guzman became a major player in the Sinaloa
cartel under one Héctor "El Güero" Palma. Palma liked El Chapo... he was trustworthy,
and he also wasn’t scared to use violence. Cross him or mess up his shipment, and bang
bang, that was it. When the Godfather was eventually arrested
a power vacuum was created in the Mexican drug trade. Various cartels, including the Sinaloa cartel,
wanted the best routes to get their Colombian coke into the booming US market. Even the DEA knows that when you take out
a boss all that happens is lots and lots of violence and basically no interruption to
the flow of drugs. So with the Godfather put away, what naturally
happened is bodies started piling up. The violence was incredibly brutal. People were getting sawn in half with chainsaws
- heads literally rolled in the streets. In 1995, when El Chapo’s associate was arrested,
he was finally able to take control of the Sinaloa cartel. He was just 38 years old. It was a meteoric rise from cattle farmer
to drug lord. Soon his cartel would become the most powerful
in all of Mexico. He had cops in his front pocket, local politicians
in his back, and he even managed to bribe his way out of prison. Escobar on the other hand, was involved in
all sorts of petty crimes as a child, but it was in his early twenties that he got into
more serious violent crime and kidnapping while working with a local mobster. He had a reputation for being a very violent
and unpredictable young man. He made a bigger name for himself when he
kidnapped a local businessman who had recently laid off many poor workers. His family paid the ransom, but Pablo and
his gang killed the man anyway. Pablo soon had his eyes set on bigger profits
and in Colombia that meant one thing - cocaine. He knew you could buy stacks of coca leaves
for pennies, turn them into paste, and sell the product to U.S. dealers who were seeing
a huge demand for the drug. It was the 1970s…the time of the hippies
had ended, and Americans were turning towards disco music. LSD and mary jane said their goodbyes and
Mr. Cocaine made his entrance to the party. There were no drug cartels back then, and
Escobar realized in his early twenties that he could make a fortune and make it fast. Cocaine was like the Louis Vuitton of drugs. You could take a cheap product and sell it
for outrageous prices. At 26, Escobar had already banked $3 million
which today would be about $15 million, and unlike El Chapo he did it without having to
chop off any heads. He could have bought a big house with a swimming
pool and retired, but of course for these guys it’s never enough. In the late 1990s, El Chapo was also moving
methamphetamine into the United States. He could produce the stuff without much hassle
from the authorities and it proved to be very popular with Americans who liked to do a lot
of house cleaning or play video games for three days straight without sleeping. It was also very cheap, compared to coke. Another benefit for the cartel was the fact
that he didn’t have to buy it from the Colombians. He could have his people make it in meth labs,
and move it straight into the US. He soon became the boss of bosses, and had
control of the cartels in many states in Mexico. He became the new Godfather and wielded great
power. He was arrested and imprisoned, but broke
out of prison in 2001. That breakout apparently cost him $2.5 million,
or virtually nothing to Mexico’s new boss of bosses. But soon the peace pact the cartels had made
was broken and before you could say chainsaw, thousands upon thousands of people were caught
up in the violence that followed and killed. This included civilians, women and children,
as well as those directly involved with the cartels. El Chapo somehow stayed on top, and it’s
thought he was protected at least in part by the DEA since he gave up a lot of other
cartel members. He was wanted in the U.S., but because he
helped the DEA that indictment was dropped for a time. The violence didn’t stop, and what happened
was one of the bloodiest and most vile turf wars the world has ever seen, with people
killed in the most horrific ways. Men were tortured, cut to pieces, beheaded,
and in one especially gruesome case, a man’s face was stitched onto a soccer ball and sent
back to his cartel. As for Escobar, his people were also extreme,
and it’s thought his gang killed as many as 4,000 people during their cocaine dealing
days. They took out leading politicians, lawyers,
and even blew up an airplane carrying a presidential candidate killing 107 people. Escobar’s power was greater than anything
El Chapo would ever have. He really was the King of Coke, whereas El
Chapo was more like a very big flash in the pan. Escobar created the business of trafficking
cocaine, while the Mexican gangs were merely buying their cocaine or being paid to move
it for them. Escobar was also seen as a kind of Robin Hood
figure, since he gave a significant amount of cash to poor communities and built up infrastructure
like schools and hospitals. While the murder rate in Medellín was out
of control, Escobar out of El Chapo and the Mexican cartel’s league when it came to
killing. Sure, he blew up buildings and made Medellin
the murder capital of the world. He killed lawyers, and took out around 600
cops, but his level of violence was not close to what would later happen in Mexico. He had so much control he simply didn’t
have the need to fight off a large number of competing cartels. He was also a master at public relations,
and he ran things more like a business than an unruly, bloodthirsty mob. It was simple with him. You take the money or you take a bullet. The deal he gave to officials was an offer
they couldn’t refuse -‘plato o plomo’ – silver or lead, and it was a very real
offer. And the Colombian authorities had every right
to be fearful of this powerful man. He could bribe, or take out anyone, no matter
high they were in their particular office. At one point Escobar was getting around 15
tons of cocaine into the U.S. every... single... day. This worked out at something like $26 billion
dollars a year for the cartel. Forbes even put Escobar down as one of the
richest men in the world with a net worth of $30 billion. He truly was the king. El Chapo may have been successful but he was
never the king, or if he was, his kingdom paled in comparison to Escobar’s. Escobar was killed in 1993 at 44 years old. At the time of his death he had more money
stashed away than you can imagine. He owned properties all over the world. 25,000 Colombians mourned for their real life
Robin Hood at his funeral. But did the drugs stop moving after Escobar’s
death? Of course not, they just started getting trafficked
by different people, namely the Cali Cartel. This cartel also had power in politics and
could easily buy off certain law enforcement agencies. One thing that did change is the crime rate
and murder rate in Medellin did go down by a lot, but mostly because cocaine now comes
out of other South American countries. The stuff is cheap and easy to grow, although
the farmers don’t make much from it. That’s one reason the traffickers don’t
mind getting their shipments stopped. It doesn’t cost much to buy from the producers
so if you lose a shipment it’s no big deal. It’s as simple as that. The risks are great, since you might get killed
or tortured or imprisoned, but the profits are too good not to do business. El Chapo wasn’t killed like Escobar, but
was arrested for the last time in 2014 when he was 56 years old. How much cash he had is up for debate. The U.S. has been looking for his money for
years and has come up with next to nothing. Meanwhile, reports suggest it cost the U.S.
taxpayer billions of dollars to capture this cartel leader who was simply replaced in a
heartbeat. The Sinaloa cartel is still as big as it ever
was, with its biggest competitor arguably being the Jalisco New Generation. The DEA is now spending more billions trying
to capture the leaders of these gangs, who will only be replaced by a never-ending queue
of men ready to take their place. Cocaine use in the U.S. and in many parts
of Europe, especially the U.K. is on the rise as we speak so it’s likely these men will
just continue to get more and more powerful. Since El Chapo’s arrest and the power vacuum
opened in its wake, Mexico’s murder rate had steadily increased and it hit an all time
high in 2019. A report released by the Secretariat of Public
Security stated that there were 34,582 murders in Mexico that year and in March 2020, the
highest number ever of homicides was reported - 2,585. Why compare these two world famous drug lords? One reason is so you can see that the war
on drugs will never end and can’t be won, and another reason is to show you that El
Chapo was just one guy in the game. He was replaced, and some other guy will probably
get some media attention soon. He’ll become the number one outlaw, the
scapegoat for something that’s much bigger than him. As for Escobar, well, sure he’s been replaced,
but let’s remember one thing…He started the game. He was no flash in the pan…he was the very
fire that ignited decades of cocaine use and abuse in the USA and across the world. Now go watch this, “Hotel Escobar - The
Luxury Prison Pablo Escobar Built for Himself.’ Or try this video, “How Insane is El Chapo's
Prison Cell Security?”
