Twenty-four years ago today, Pablo Escobar walked out of prison, setting off a massive 18-month manhunt. In season two of Narcos, the hunt is on. Watch the new trailer, and don’t miss new episodes of Narcos, streaming on Netflix September 2.
It was humiliating. He practically walked out of jail and disappeared into thin air. Colombia’s most wanted criminal was nowhere to be found. So on a Friday in the summer of 1992 — 24 years ago today — then president César Gaviria had no choice but to lower his head to the microphone and admit that the country’s most wanted criminal had slipped right through the fingers of a special forces raid. According to one theory, the escape artist dressed up in a stolen military uniform, pulled a gas mask over his head and melted into the crowd of soldiers as they lit up La Catedral, his prison-mansion compound on the outskirts of Medellín.
Netflix viewers will find it hard to forget the original narco, the ultraviolent, extravagant bad guy who set the standard — Pablo Escobar, played by Brazilian actor Wagner Moura inNarcos. Before he was gunned down atop the Spanish-tiled rooftops of a Medellín neighborhood in 1993, Escobar had tightened his ruthless grip on drug trafficking across the Americas. At the same time, he cultivated a reputation as a Robin Hood who tossed goodies to the poor even as he built a grandiose palace for himself on 5,500 acres, complete with a private zoo and an orchard. Al Pacino’s character in the 1983 coke-and-violence-fueled Scarface was reportedly based in part on Escobar’s bloody tale.
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