At the time Pablo Escobar had reached the pinnacle of the cocaine business he was a loved philanthropist by some but a feared narcotic by most. Many people still doubt whether all his wrong-doings should have been accepted by the society just because of his generous donations to the city of Medellin, but there is no need to doubt. Pablo Escobar was a menace to the world and to the lives of many consumers of cocaine, especially in the United States which was the largest cocaine consumer at the time. The brutal manhunt issued by the United States, Columbia and the Cali Cartel was justified by Escobar's cruelty and lack of sentiment towards the civilians of Columbia. He was the head of the most infamous cartel of the world, but his infamy caused him his life. Mark Bowden, the author of Killing Pablo: the hunt for the world's greatest outlaw, describes the life and death, and the rise and fall of Pablo Escobar. .
Columbia was being haunted by El Bogotazo, the struggle between the army and the guerrillas and between the leftist and rightist who wanted to take control of the Columbian government. As El Bogotazo cooled down in Bogotá, the capital of Columbia, it started "metamorphosing into a nightmarish period of bloodletting so empty of meaning it came to be know as La Violencia- (Bowden, 11). The heroes at the time, also known as bandidos, were brutal outlaws who killed hundreds of people but still gained fame over it. "It was here, in the second year of La Violencia, that the greatest outlaw in history, Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria, was born, on December 1, 1949- (Bowden, 14). It was not an appropriate country to live, for many, but even less to raise a child.
As a child Pablo attended the school where his mother taught but was never a good student. He dropped out of high school and started to pursue a criminal career. He first started doing small jobs like stealing bikes and selling them, when he got enough money he bought a high school diploma, after dropping out of high school for the second time.