Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, December 5, 1993 TAG: 9312050046
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MEDELLIN, COLOMBIA LENGTH: Medium
"We will use the reward money to ease the anguish of the families of those who fell in the fight," Gaviria said in the city where Escobar was killed Thursday.
The 44-year-old head of the Medellin cartel was accused of ordering the assassinations of presidential candidates, judges, journalists and police. Hundreds of ordinary Colombians died in bombings of shopping centers, neighborhoods and a passenger airplane.
In Medellin, base of his operations, Escobar and his gang were blamed for the deaths of at least 500 police officers since 1989.
Despite his cartel's violence, Escobar had many fans among the poor, who Saturday continued to mourn his death. Escobar had financed urban renewal projects for impoverished neighborhoods.
After Escobar died, "there were a lot of tears, a lot of desperation, because for us it was like losing a father," said Marcela Jaramillo, a 26-year-old housewife who lives in a neighborhood the drug trafficker built for the poor.
While Escobar won support in Medellin by sharing a small portion of the billions of drug dollars he made, he also recruited the city's slum boys as his hired assassins.
"He took our young people without hope and turned them into killers," said a Medellin resident who identified himself only as Leon.
"Escobar was not a hero," Gaviria said during his speech honoring the police and soldiers who hunted the drug trafficker for 16 months before killing him Thursday. "He was a delinquent who received the punishment that criminals deserve.
"No one should remember Medellin as the city of the cartel," the president continued. "There is no more Medellin Cartel. That name died with Escobar."
Gaviria said most of the $6.2 million the government had offered for Escobar's dead-or-alive capture would go the families of his victims.
Some money will be used to build housing for the security forces who hunted down and killed him, he said.
Escobar's death was not expected to make a serious dent in the flow of cocaine from Colombia to the United States and other countries, but many Colombians hope his demise will help ease the drug-related violence that has plagued this South American nation.
by CNB