In the famous interview conducted by the American actor Sean Penn with Mexican trafficker Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera, better known as the ‘Chapo’ Guzmán, the two-time Academy Award winner for Best Actor asks to the most wanted man in the world if he ever met Colombian businessman Pablo Escobar. “Yes, I met him once at his house. It was a very big house,” Chapo said with a big smile.

However, Chapo’s affirmation of the meeting between the two narcos was denied by Colombian Jhon Jairo Velásquez, a.k.a ‘Popeye’, Escobar’s trusted lieutenant and deadliest hitman. Velásquez, who spent 23 years in a Colombian prison and has recently been released, told RCN Channel that “between Pablo Emilio and ‘Chapo’ Guzmán there has never been a meeting or anything similar as he has said.”

Versions of the historical encounter between Guzmán and Escobar say that the Colombian capo actually met with another great Mexican narco and leader of the Juarez Cartel, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, better known as ‘El Señor de los Cielos’ (The Lord of Heaven), who died in 1997 in a hospital in Mexico City after undergoing extensive surgeries to change his face.

In one way or another, whether they knew each other or not, Pablo Escobar is joined by more things than those that separate him from Joaquín Guzmán. Let’s have a look at some of the poignant moments from Escobar’s life.

15.  A two-million-dollar campfire

Escobar was born in a poor family in the town of Rionegro, Medellín. He had six brothers, his father was a farmer, his mother a teacher and his grandfather a whiskey smuggler. ‘El patrón’ (the boss) was married once, and had two children. His relationship with his mother, doña Hermilda, and his daughter, Manuela, was very close. Escobar’s unwavering respect for his mother and his love for his little daughter, for whom he burned two million dollars in a fireplace to keep her warm, were two of his weak points. After all, family goes first.

14. Sightseeing in Washington D. C.

‘Pecados de mi Padre’ (‘Sins of my Father’) was a documentary produced by HBO in 2010 that tells the life story of kingpin Pablo Escobar through the perspective of his only son, Juan Pablo Escobar, who, growing up, changed his name to Sebastián Marroquín. That was the first time the famous photo of the capo with his son visiting the White House was revealed, which was taken in 1981 by Escobar’s wife, Maria Victoria Henao. Clearly he seemed to be a very devoted father and family-man.

13. A seat as a House Representative in the National Congress

Escobar’s illicit activities began to become a national issue in the early 1980s. As a way of changing his image, Escobar carried out hundreds of charitable work (even giving money in the middle of the street) in Medellín, which gave him a positive reputation among the people. Taking advantage of this, Escobar launched himself into the world of politics, occupying a seat as House Representative in the Congress of the Republic of Colombia in 1982. However, a year later, due to accusations from the liberal daily El Espectador and Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, Minister of Justice, he loses his place in the House and is publicly denounced.

12. Revenge is a dish served cold

Escobar felt humiliated for losing his seat in the House of Representatives. All his anger and vengeance had their own names: Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, Minister of Defence, and Guillermo Cano, director of the El Espectador.

On April 30,1984, under Escobar’s orders, hitmen from the “Los Priscos” group murdered Lara Bonilla in cold blood while he was traveling in his armored truck on one of Bogotá’s main avenues; and in 1986, the same group of hitmen machine-gunned Guillermo Cano in front of the head office of the newspaper he chaired.

11. War on all fronts

The assassinations of Rodrigo Lara Bonilla and Guillermo Cano resulted in the government of Colombian President Belisario Betancur declaring war on drug trafficking and the Medellín Cartel by approving the Extradition Law.

This also angered the other “businessmen” in the country, particularly the Cali Cartel, the second most prolific group in the nation. The other drug lords lashed out at Escobar for his extreme and boisterous methods of operation, blaming him directly for the government’s passing the Extradition Law.

10. Never “behind bars”

Yes, it is correct and valid to say that the ‘Chapo’ Guzmán has twice escaped from the prisons in which he has been imprisoned, each more surprising than the other. But it must also be said that in order to escape, one must first has to be captured. And Escobar was never captured, nor locked behind bars. Although Escobar was “imprisoned” in a Colombian jail as part of a 1991 negotiation with the government of President César Gaviria, in which the capo would surrender to Colombian justice in exchange for eventually being extradited if he were to be captured. But as the popular saying goes in Colombia: that’s a different bag of flour.

9. Build your own prison

The Colombian mafia bosses were so afraid of being extradited to the United States, where their power, money and influence would have no effect, that Pablo Escobar decided to negotiate with President César Gaviria to surrender himself to justice peacefully, but in exchange for overthrowing the Extradition Law. Both parties determined that the detention site would be a prison in the Envigado mountains, north of Medellín. With the passing of the weeks, Escobar’s imprisonment in La Catedral, as the prison was known, was a laughing matter and a perfect example of the inefficiency of the Gaviria government, since it was known that the cathedral was a palace built by Escobar himself, full of luxuries, where he was almost free and was able to direct his Cartel without major problems.

8. The legend of his death

On December 2, 1993, one day after his 44th birthday, Pablo Escobar was cornered by the National Police, the Bloque de Búsqueda, an elite military squadron created to capture ‘the boss’, and the CIA.

Countless hypotheses of what really happened that day in Medellín have created dozens of urban legends around the death of the capo. Many say that Escobar, on the verge of being captured, committed suicide; others say that he was shot by an officer of the Search Block; or that he was a sniper of the U. S. Delta Force; and finally that the one who died was a double and that the real Pablo Emilio has been hiding ever since. Officially, Escobar was shot to death by the Bloque de Búsqueda as he tried to escape through the rooftops of a humble neighborhood in his hometown.

7. “We prefer a grave in Colombia to a prison in the United States”

“We prefer a grave in Colombia to a prison in the United States” was the motto of the ‘Los Extraditables’ (‘The Extraditables’) a illegal trafficking group appended to the Medellín Cartel, whose chief of course was Pablo Escobar. For ‘el patron’, being captured and taken to an american prison was intolerable. Death was preferable to being captured and deported, where it was more than clear that he would die of old age, far from his influence, power, money and family. And what a way to go indeed! Escobar was not going to leave this life without a fight, and he resisted any form of incarceration by making sure he left this world on his terms.

6. The saint for an entire country

For many, Pablo Emilio Escobar was and is considered a saint. Beyond having been for the poor a kind of modern Robin Hood, his image after his death has reached insane levels in many people, as they seemed to forget that he was a murderer who succumbed to an entire country in a wave of indiscriminate violence. In some places he is still venerated as a god, his face replaces religious images of saints, virgins or even Jesus himself; and in his tomb offerings are deposited, which is visited by national and international celebrities who do not miss the opportunity to send a message by taking a picture next to the tomb of the Colombian drug lord.

5. The regime of terror

A punctual figure of the number of people killed per capo is an impossible task. However, the more conservative accounts attribute 4,000 direct deaths to the Colombian one. But there are others who believe he even made it to the 10,000. His atrocities in the war that the government declared to illegal traffickers brought out Escobar’s monster: kidnappings, murders, extortion and torture. He used car bombs, learning from the Spanish terrorists ETA, and even once blew up a plane full of passengers, in a failed attempt to assassinate the president of Colombia, César Gaviria; in addition, the extermination of police officers in Medellín had a price that did not exceed a few dollars, making it almost a sport.

4. Eyes everywhere

Escobar didn’t need the latest technology to keep an eye on not only a whole city, but the entire illegal operation of a country. Escobar controlled companies and fleets of taxis, airports and passenger lists, as well as a vast following of people (among children and young people) who followed him by the legend he represented, despite many of them had never even saw him. Escobar had in his pocket policemen, judges, magistrates, politicians, journalists, among others. He knew everything and know everyone who worked with him; his network was so large that it was almost impossible to locate him or his cargo.

3. Taking the Palace of Justice

On November 6, 1985, a guerrilla command of the Movimiento 19 de abril (M-19) took over the Palace of Justice in Bogotá, Colombia. The group took more than 300 hostages, so the reaction of the Colombian Army and the National Police was stained by many innocent deaths: after 27 hours of confrontation, 98 people died and six disappeared. The aggressive incursion of war tanks will always remain in the Colombian mindset, demolishing the walls of the Palace as a response to the terrorist act, as well as the excess of public forces, which led to countless lawsuits against the State and violations of human rights. The seizure of the Palace of Justice was financed by Pablo Escobar, who intended to use it as an alibi to steal valuable State archives.

2. International fame and glory

Pablo Escobar appeared seven years, from 1987 to 1993, on the Forbes list and was considered the seventh richest man in the world. On his best days, the Medellín Cartel managed to smuggle 15 tons of cocaine to the United States daily; of every 5 lines consumed, 4 had been exported by Escobar. It is hard to put into words almost how much of an impact this man had on his country and on the world as a whole. He had basically reached a mythical level that made him almost untouchable and incomparable. And that is why Escobar still has such a powerful hold on people’s imaginations. He was the man that “the man” could not bring down, until, you know, they did.

1. It’s all a matter of mathematics

Escobar controlled 80% of the world’s illegal trade and his Medellín Cartel earned $22 billion dollars a year. His personal fortune reached up to $30 billion. He had so much money, that it is said he spent $2,500 a month just on rubber tapes to organize and store the money. Whatever your opinion of him, it is hard to ignore that he knew how to run his business, and he did so with a level of success that would be hard to replicate in the illegal trade today.