Book Review: Readings

By Terri Lord

Killing Pablo

Atlantic Monthly Press, 296 pp., $25

Killing Pablo is the perfect showcase for veteran investigative reporter Mark Bowden (Bringing the Heat, Black Hawk Down) to resuscitate a story often dulled-down by the U.S. media to a case of good vs. evil. This fascinating account of former Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar's assassination traces the rise and fall of the cocaine kingpin with enough attitude and insight to provide a fresh perspective on the drug trade, one that renders a previously one-sided battle (read: U.S.=good, Colombia=bad) into what it actually is: a war that hasn't yet been resolved. The result is a narrative almost encyclopedic in nature, and Bowden's dense presentation of facts surrounding the events are offset by his ability to summarize them with resonant observations ("In Colombia, murder rarely has a shortage of plausible motives").

Killing Pablo begins with Escobar's birth, highlighting his middle-class farming family, his first foray into crime as a car thief, his eventual segue into marijuana sales, and his ultimate position as leader of the Colombian drug trade. What makes the proceedings interesting is Bowden's ability to mine the positive aspects of Escobar's life rarely covered by the media (some of his earnings were used to build safer and more sanitary living conditions in Colombia and to create charities and sponsor art exhibits for the poor, all while Escobar rarely used drugs or alcohol himself). And though altruistic acts are discussed, Bowden never loses sight of his subject, having understood Escobar's goals and motives as those of a true outlaw ("He was a vicious thug, but he had a social conscience").

Bowden then pulls from government documents, personal accounts, and transcripts of monitored phone conversations to forge a chain of events that plays out as if it were the latest Tom Clancy thriller. Like Steven Soderbergh's Traffic, Killing Pablo admirably presents its case; it leaves nothing sacred. Bowden's research uncovers information on the CIA, the FBI, the first Bush administration, and numerous other government operations whose actions range from the clandestine (the employment of a top-secret surveillance team known as Centra Spike) to the overlooked (a 1989 executive order by President Bush that changed the nature of what constitutes "assassination"). And while many of these revelations stand on their own as instances of the United States scrambling to act within the Constitution, it is Bowden's storytelling prowess that pulls the factual elements together with his own understanding of the cultural climate and personal motives of the book's key players:

Killing Pablo was one very specific goal, by now only indirectly related to cocaine. Justice demanded it. ... If a bomb went off or a beloved cousin was kidnapped or one of Pablo's key associates were found dead, the list of potential suspects was dizzying. Had Pablo ordered it himself, after a falling out with the victim? Was it a rogue squad of army or police? Might it be a hit by one of the parliamentary squads who specialized in terror and murder? The DEA? The CIA?

Bowden's perspective comes across not as speculative, but as a view reinforced by history itself ("Violence stalks Colombia like a biblical plague"). Pablo Escobar was merely a "creature of his time and place." That certainly doesn't excuse his actions, but it adds a new dimension to the tale of a man who wasn't "the first street-smart kid to discover that it was easier and more exciting to take money from others rather than earn it."