Killing Pablo Sparknotes

Killing Pablo is an excellent account on the real live events of Colombia’s largest and infamous drug cartel called the Medellin Cartel led by Pablo Escobar. This book, written by Mark Bowden, tells the story of how Escobar was killed in the eyes of the Colombian Military, DEA and even the Central Intelligence Agency. Even though the book starts off as repetitive with names and organization being repeated over and over again we learn about the vast network that Pablo Escobar truly had and the relentless pursuit of Colombia and the United States in stopping the drug trade and murder of hundreds of innocent people. The appearance of Pablo Escobar truly shows how as an empire becomes too big and reaches too far its grip begins to loosen and its

presence noticed.
Mark Bowden the author of Killing Pablo was born on July 17th, 1951 in St.Louis Missouri. He is the author of many books including Black Hawk Down which was on New York Time’s best seller and a finalist for the National Book Award. Two of his books, Black Hawk Down and Killing Pablo had film adaptations to them due to their popularity.

Bowden is also and English professor at Loyola College in Maryland who teaches creative writing and journalism. He also has a bachelor's degree in Literature and writes for the Atlantic Monthly group.

The book is split up into two parts being the escape of Pablo and his death.The first part starts off with Morris Busby, U.S. ambassador to Colombia, receiving a phone call from President Gaviria of Colombia telling him that Pablo Escobar had escaped his prison at La Catedral. Somehow, Pablo had managed to escape his prison after several Colombian Military platoons had been sent in order to capture him and send him to another prison where he would not be able to live so leisurely. At La Catedral he would enjoy hookers, drugs, and even the most expensive technology money could buy. It was a prison run by guards who he payed and the inmates were Pablo and his most trusted assassins or Sicarios. If Pablo could pay off his prison guards and was at one point on Forbes Top 10 richest men in the world then he could bribe even the army. Pablo was able to escape after one of the military platoons had let him slip away deliberately. He had been able to get his way either through bribing the captain in charge or threatening to kill

the siblings of the soldiers who lived in Medellin. After his escape he had begun to move from safehouse to safehouse after Centra Spike was employed in the skies of Colombia.

Centra Spike was a top secret group of Delta Force members who flew in a plane full of top secret equipment patrolling the skies. They used equipment that would pick up the signals emitted from telephones and would tap into them. After tapping into them, Centra Spike would then be able to pinpoint the location after flying in a triangular path to narrow down the location to an area of just 100 meters. The reason why Centra Spike was employed was because Pablo liked to communicate using telephones in order to operate his drug business. This would mean that Pablo had to restrict his call times and even use code words in order to communicate. Eventually Pablo would become more and more paranoid as the raids continued and he was being pushed into a corner. Pablo had become desperate and had to do something or he would never be able to stay in Medellin. At first he planned to negotiate with the President of Columbia saying that he would get back into Prison with the conditions being that it was in Medellin and that his men would not be extradited to the U.S. where they would be sentenced fairly without Pablo bailing them out. Fortunately, President Gaviria sternly refused his requests, Pablo had done his

damage and he had to pay up. Pablo did not take this so kindly and devised a plan to assassinate the President as he was going to fly to Cali via Avianca airplanes. Pablo ordered his men to create a bomb and place it on the same flight that Gaviria was going to take. At the last second, President Gaviria could not board the plane due to security issues and the plane blew up killing all 107 passengers on board. This act of terrorism turned Pablo from a drug dealer to a terrorist who would do anything to achieve his goal. This sparked an all out war where Pablos forces were growing weaker and the Colombian military even stronger. This event had prompted the people to act forming Los Pepes which was a group led by vigilantes in Colombia who wanted to stop Pablo in his tracks. This group was no better than Pablo Escobar as they killed any of Pablo’s associates including his family members. They would kill any lawyers or politicians that he bribed and even killing their families as well. Eventually Pablo would bomb once more after his family members were targeted by Los Pepes. He killed even more people when he blew a bomb just outside a store where children were buying school supplies. At this point, Colombia was enraged and we begin to see a coalition behind the Colombian Military and Los Pepes. Information that was fed from Centra Spike to the Colombian Military was being fed to Los Pepes. Pablo had made a big mistake and would soon regret it as the Colombian Police find him at one of his safe houses. A gunfight ensues and Pablo was shot in the head. The would be no prison or rights for a man who had killed hundreds of innocent people. The only way to resolve this drug-torn Colombia was the death of Colombia’s most infamous drug kingpin, Pablo Escobar,
Killing Pablo by Mark is an in-depth book on how Pablo was able to evade the Colombian government and U.S. efforts in order to imprison him. Pablo who was able to make around half a billion dollars year through smuggling drugs was able to evade the authorities for over three years before being killed. This nonfiction book like many of Bowden’s books describes every single detail which helps to establish the tone of the book as serious even though being monotone. Bowden’s goes into heavy description of the different types of organizations involved with the take down of Pable including the CIA, Delta Force, DEA and the Search Bloc. The books descriptiveness maybe even used to show how intricate and sophisticated Pablo’s organization really was. Although this book is monotonous and repetitive throughout its entirety the author wants to portray how dangerous and ruthless Pablo Escobar was back in the 1990’s. This makes the reader wonder how people in Colombia were able to live their lives normally with the thought of death looming over their heads if they talked to the wrong people. Overall, Kill Pablo by Mark Bowden is an excellent documentary on the pursuit of the world's most dangerous drug dealer in history, Pablo Escobar.