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. Books > Reviews

 

Killing Pablo


by Mark Bowden
Columbia is frightening


I’d heard how life is cheap in countries outside the first world, but I can’t say that I emotionally understood what that meant until I read this book. It makes you sad for humanity that there are people such as Pablo Escobar who care nothing for life or anyone outside their immediate family.

Pablo Escobar, inventor of the Colombian necktie, was perhaps the most socio-pathological human being since Stalin. Here was a person who could take first-hand joy in torturing and killing an innocent person and then step up to a microphone and decry the tragedy of that person’s death. Here was a terrorist that freely killed his own people and even blew up a plane (with a 170-odd people) to target one man (who didn’t happen to take that flight). Here was a man that would kill women and children if it would strike at one of his enemies -- real or imagined.

The book strikes all the right chords. The pacing is excellent and it also sets up the historical stage on which the hunt for Pablo occurs. The author brings home the frustration of trying to get things done in a corrupt and incompetent country. He also helps the reader understand the frustration of the poor in Columbia as a rich country attempts to dictate and implement its desires without having to deal with the day-to-day consequences.

There is definitely one thing this book makes clear -- the world is better off without Pablo Escobar in it.

I haven’t read Black Hawk Down, but now it will go to the top of my reading list.