"Legends are built in many ways, but part of such legends consists of accusations made by enemies, and often for their own benefit."
The life and story of Pablo Escobar as told by his brother Roberto, who handled the accounting, the money--and the laundering of that money. Understandably, the book is near-hagiographical, but it gives a fascinating perspective on the life of Pablo Escobar, and this perspective helps explain why he remains a popular figure today in the Antiochia/Medellin region of Colombia.
Unexpectedly, there are some very interesting business insights here, as well as an interesting recent history of both the country of Colombia and its (often twisted) relations with the United States.
The structure of the book would benefit from an in medias res introduction, and the translation is a bit too literal at times (I read this book in English and haven't seen any of the original text).
Also a complex story with complex ethics. For example there are many poor people in Colombia who were helped directly and indirectly by capital sent from the USA in return for drugs (marijuana at first but later mostly cocaine). The cocaine coming out of Columbia was almost never consumed domestically, it was shipped to fulfill demand--chiefly among the very wealthy--in the USA and Europe. One way to think about cocaine was it was a highly desired, high-ticket "export" that provided jobs, capital and food for millions in Colombia. And of course unimaginable wealth to the top leaders of the various loosely organized "drug cartels" in Medellin, Cali and elsewhere.
Notable also were the degree of prosecutorial and police overreaches, where officials in both the USA and Colombia clearly exceeded the law in order to harass and capture these outlaws.
Also interesting to read about the incredibly fluid politics of Colombia, which was home to many splinter factions of (mostly leftist) guerrillas who allied themselves with and against the (putative) national government or for or against the different cartel organizations, depending on the situation.
Notes:
1) What united the different Medellín drug families was a kidnapping by M-19 of one of their members. Ironic.
2) Business insights applicable to modern legit business: regulatory fees, shrinkage, transport, scales costs, etc. Cost structure through every step of transport... Everyone got a cut.
3) On the difficulty of managing large volumes of physical cash: 10% of their cash consistently lost to rats or water/dampness (!) And worst of all 50 to 60% of the cost structure was absorbed in laundering the cash that came back from selling cocaine. The cash laundering itself was a tremendous business for many, many people at banks and financial institutions worldwide, not just the people selling the drugs.
4) Unbelievable creativity involved in transport. You wouldn't believe it. Tubes magnetically attached to ships that were dropped before anchoring at port, to be retrieved by scuba divers in the ocean. Coke chemically blended with plastic, then chemically blended back out by sophisticated chemistry in the arrival country. Coke blended and then distilled out of wine, soaked into jeans, etc. Treaties with the Sandinistas to use an island in Nicaragua for transport and logistics. Deals with generals in Panama and Haiti. Hiring a Russian engineer to design and build a submarine. (!!)
5) Drugs transported and sold on a scale never conceived before, much less done.
6) Also, business insights from the marketing of cocaine. In Spain for example it was marketed to the elites first, but then via the elites to regular people. In other words, cocaine was a created aspirational product for regular people who wanted to be like the rich and famous.
7) "We also put coffee in each caleta [cache] because after a long time cash starts to smell, especially when it's in a damp place, and we learned that coffee kills the smell of the bills."
8) Manuel Noriega, the Panamanian general/dictator, protected Pablo Escobar in Panama. Now I see why the US government really wanted to nail him too. Noriega ultimately double-crossed Escobar, and the USA DEA eventually double crossed Noriega. There ain't any good guys in this story, and the level of bribery--and the ease with which officials were bribed at every level both in the USA and in Colombia--really staggers the reader.
9) The government of Columbia secretly tried to negotiate with Pablo Escobar, and Escobar even offered to pay off the total national debt of Colombia (some 9 billion dollars USD!) in return for Colombia not allowing extradition to the USA.
10) Refined cocaine was kind of like Bitcoin, lightweight, valuable, relatively easily transportable, and could be exchanged easily for cash.
11) After Pablo was killed, there was an effort to kill Roberto while he was serving a 14 year prison term, possibly from the Colombian government, or from the Cali cartel, or both. He was nearly assassinating him various times while in prison: badly maimed, blinded and nearly killed by a letter bomb, many instances where he was nearly killed by medical staffers bribed to give him the wrong medicines, etc.
12) The death of Pablo Escobar did absolutely nothing to change the drug trade. The business was mostly absorbed by the other cartels.