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The Enemy Within: Los Pepes, the Shadow War, and Escobar's Last Stand
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
By 1993, the Colombian state hadn't broken Pablo Escobar — but a paramilitary death squad backed by cartel rivals was about to. This chapter exposes the shadow alliance of Los Pepes, the Search Bloc, and the CIA that finally cornered the world's most wanted man.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Before Los Pepes, most people assumed Pablo Escobar could only be taken down by the state. By law enforcement.
The full name was Perseguidos por Pablo Escobar. Persecuted by Pablo Escobar.
Los Pepes didn't file charges. They didn't seek extradition or present evidence to prosecutors.
The Search Bloc had been Colombia's primary institutional instrument against Escobar since the late nineteen eighties. It was an elite unit backed by American intelligence, DEA advisors, CIA support, and the technical expertise of a U.S. signals intelligence team operating in Bogotá.
From his escape from La Catedral in July nineteen ninety-two, Escobar had been living as a fugitive in his own city. This was a different existence from his earlier years of power.
On December second, nineteen ninety-three, radio triangulation units working with the Search Bloc tracked a signal to a residential neighborhood in Medellín called Los Olivos. A middle-class area.
The Colombian government declared the manhunt a success. And in the narrowest sense, it was.
Medellín's relationship with Escobar's memory has never been simple. In the neighborhoods where he funded housing and food programs, where he built soccer fields and gave poor families a connection to someone powerful, the reaction to his death was grief for some, relief for others.
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