Netflix was created in 1997, just four years after the death of Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria, and since its inception, Netflix has had its fair share of fame, hits, and controversies. While the same can be said of Escobar, who sometimes in a single act, attracted fame hits, and controversy all at once. It’s no surprise, then that when the two collided, with the release of Narcos in 2015, fame hits and controversy followed.
Naturally, Netflix has been praised for the thorough attitude in which it carried out research and the artistic writing and directing of Brazilian filmmaker Jose Padilla, which lent rich dramatic effect to the story. However, in a story as political as this, there can be no such thing as perfect, and sometimes the devil might be in the details. Messing with it now, hiding might be a strong word, but this article seeks to expose other aspects of the story that you didn’t know: aspects like the behind-the-scenes, the over-dramatized truths, the cartels, and the surviving Escobar’s side of the story and more. If you haven’t seen the show, this article is full of spoilers beyond the spoilers. These are 10 things Netflix is hiding about Don Pablo Escobar, Medellin Cartel leader, the first narco-terrorist, and the richest criminal of all time.
1. Narco's original plan
The story goes that Netflix had originally planned for this story to be a full-length feature: film, not a tv show. However, when they began digging up evidence and research on the king of coke, they were certain that a single movie wouldn’t cut it. They uncovered several stories about the origins of his wealth, starting from the man named Cockroach and his life before smuggling, which involved stealing gravestones.
All these, coupled with the information of personal experiences that DEA agents, Steve Murphy and Javier Pena brought to the table, showed the producers that they knew nothing about Escobar. Thus, Narcos was born. Writing for vox Bernardo Aparicio Garcia, who grew up in Escobar around Colombia, appreciates the thoroughness of the show extensively. Among others, he cited the correct depiction of ethnic diversity and tinier details like miniature facades of colonial village houses hanging on the walls of Pablo’s mother’s home.
2. Escobar’s recordings
One reason why the show was so detailed was because of these recordings, Pablo Escobar was a big believer in keeping records of events, and this included videoing events in his haciendas as they occurred. With this, they were able to create a pretty fair construct of the type of conversations, fashion, and activities in the daily life of Escobar and the people around him. In the movie, however, Escobar is mostly sitting around brooding and looking into space, while thinking of how to make the next big move in his wars with his government, the truth is a bit different as Escobar contributed significantly to the production of the show. The Medellin cartel was a fan of media, as some of his recordings are inserted in the show displaying the activities within his haciendas. On top of that, he was someone willing to buy or kidnap news reporters to tell his story, one thing’s for sure Pablo would have loved Twitter.
3. Family Opinion
Of course, you had to know this was coming, and it’s quite important too because you have to wonder how much of the story and how much of Pablo’s interaction with his family was accurate and how the Escobars felt about it, to answer your question, Pablo’s brother was infuriated with the show and if you watch the show, you’re probably now wondering where was Escobar’s brother, all the while in the show? Roberto Escobar was not only Pablo’s brother. He was also the cartel’s accountant up until he was arrested when Pablo died.
So believe me, when I tell you, Roberto, was not happy when the show depicted another accountant, called Blackbeard being arrested and then snitching against the cartel to officials. In response, he requested compensation of one billion dollars from the streaming giant for depicting his and his brother’s image, without any consultation from him or other family members. This was just the first season, so he also offered to look through the second season for inaccuracies before it aired we’re not sure that went his way. Meanwhile, other family members have also contested the portrayal of Pablo in the palace of justice siege, as well as the manner of his death, but we’ll get to that soon.
4. Pablo Escobar’s gruesomeness
Watching the show you already kind of get the idea that Pablo Escobar was one of the most terrifying men to walk the earth. Speaking in Lithuania for login conferences, agent Steve Murphy, explains how before Escobar law enforcement was not familiar with narco-terrorism. Narco-Terrorism involves the use of violence to influence government policies against narcotic laws. According to Murphy, Pablo Escobar was the first narco-terrorist, and to be fair, his terrorist activities are well documented in the show. What’s also depicted is the fact that Escobar found it quite easy to order. The killing of others, however, his dealings with people seem to be a bit benign, never resulting in anything deadly well, except the undeniable instances like the killings of Moncada and Galliano other than that in his personal space, Pablo is mostly shown as a troubled man with a romantic relationship with his wife and kids.
In reality, don Pablo was a drug lord, through and through based on first-hand accounts from informants Pablo would drill into his enemy’s kneecaps if he felt like it. Another unspoken fact is his treatment of mules in the movie Pablo used human mules and he always paid them in reality, Pablo sowed cocaine into pets that were going to Miami also mules were sometimes killed to avoid spending cash. This from the seventh richest man in the world at the time one time an informant for agents, Murphy and Pena was a waiter at one of Pablo’s parties. The informant recounts that another waiter was caught, pilfering silverware Pablo, was told of this and he decided to duct tape the person’s hands and throw them into the pool created by the paisa robin hood and ended up drowning as entertainment for the guests present at the party.
Another instance that we know of is the fact that Escobar killed every single architect who built any of his hundreds of houses. These architects, all Italian, were killed because Escobar didn’t want anyone to know the secrets of each estate, even with the killings of childhood friends, Moncada, and Galiano, it was said that Escobar sent the fingers of the men to their family members. All these makes, you wonder about the true extent of his cruelty not portrayed in Narcos according to Bernardo Aparicio, Garcia, the show largely glosses over his gratuitous cruelty.
5. M19s True Nature
This is the aspect of Narcos that most experts will have disagreements with M19 was one of the largest guerrilla groups in Colombia. Their ideologies included left-wing nationalism, Bolivarianism, revolutionary socialism, and co-theory inspired by Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara. In the show, M19 is portrayed as a bunch of naive idealists who didn’t know the first thing about guerrilla warfare and was led by an ex-college professor, who also didn’t know anything about guerrilla warfare. That my friends are a dramatic misrepresentation of the facts. M19 had one of the most feared presences in Colombia, Leonardo Aparicio Garcia detail, how his aunt had barely escaped the palace of justice attack. He sums up the story by saying it was not only my family in Cali who came close to dying at their hands.
They were truly powerful and they knew how to strike fear, also Ivan Marino Ospina, or Ivan the terrible, was an experienced guerrilla leader as opposed to his depiction as Ivan Torres in the show before becoming leader of M19, Ivan Marina Ospina had already fought in Venezuela, gotten arrested and tortured to the point of almost committing suicide only to escape six months later, while disguising as an army major, he was called Ivan El Terrible because he always did things the less diplomatic way, and so he was grossly depicted in the show. It is thought unlikely that Ivan was killed by Pablo and some even say that he may not have gifted Escobar the famous sword of Bolivar.
6. Pablo’s relationship with his family
Seeing as the family of the man was not consulted despite being an integral part of The movie, it’s only natural that their interactions with Pablo were imaginative and that’s a dangerous way to tell a story, especially if you already have preconceived notions. Perhaps no other relationship was more misconstrued than Pablo Escobar’s relationship with his son, Juan Pablo now known as Sebastian Marroquin. Sebastian is now free from the drug trade business and he often talks about his experiences as the son of the biggest drug trafficker in several interviews, in these interviews he explains that his father loved him very much, while also balancing the picture with the effects of his violent activities. He once said, “well, I learned so much about violence that I became a man of peace you know”. Sebastian says that his father taught him about all the drugs saying that marijuana was Pablo’s favorite. He should consult him if he ever decided to try any drug.
Perhaps this education helped – or it was the memory of a relative who had suffered from the effects of drug abuse, but Sebastian has never felt the pressure to take drugs. One crucial component of Sebastian's interview is the fact that he recounts he and his mom begging don Pablo to stop his incursions on Colombia, most notably after the bombing that left his sister Manuela forever deaf in one ear. Their pleas, of course, fell on deaf ears and Juan Pablo says that this was also a part of his father’s nature of being a bad loser. He cited examples where he would cheat even his kids when they played games like monopoly, simply because he wanted to win. Juan Pablo is portrayed as being very young and naive in the show, even when Pablo calls him minutes before his death, but in real life, Juan Pablo was already 16 by the time his father died, and he has a radically different account of don Pablo’s Death than what is in the show and will get there soon.
7. Secrets of La Catedral
In the show, Escobar’s five-star prison is revealed as being luxurious with a lot of the drug lord’s items, but it doesn’t reveal everything, remember the recordings we talked about earlier. Well, there was, even more, Escobar content hidden in la Catedral. In the movie, Escobar leaves behind a large book with pictures in it. However, in agent Murphy and Pena's book man hunters how we took down Pablo Escobar, they explain in his adjoining office, we found a film canister in the trash. When we had the film developed. We found pictures of Escobar, which we turned into wanted posters. Pena adds that he had every wanted poster that had ever been issued against him in Colombia and just about every article that had appeared about him in his files.
He also kept threatening notes from his enemies. Carefully arranged Escobar was very neat, and this was evident in the bathrooms of la Catedral, which Pena describes as curiously sparkling with three-inch walls, but perhaps the most shocking discoveries were the letters from mothers offering their daughters to Pablo for sex, the lace, negligees and several vibrators, and sex toys are neatly arranged in a closet. One interesting detail of their book, however, is the fact that Pena slept in Escobar’s bed. He recounts that he couldn’t find sleep in the bed tossing and turning all through the night.
8. Carlos Lehder’s influence
Carlos Lehder was the son of Klaus Wilhelm Lehder, a german who had left his country for Colombia changed his name to Guillermo Lehder, and married a Colombian called Helena Rivas. Carlos would later go to America with his mom after his parents divorced, and eventually, Carlos landed in Prison it was in prison that Carlos met a fellow inmate called George Jung.
They would both scheme on how they would revolutionize the cocaine trade and begin transporting drugs to the United States using small aircraft therefore Lehder had already begun the business even before he met Pablo Escobar and was even integral to Escobar becoming as wealthy as he became. Lehder himself, would become a billionaire and even offered to pay Colombia’s external debt twice, one of which was his plan to escape extradition. Unlike on the show where Lehder was just a knucklehead who was told to shut up in meetings and outed himself regularly on national radio, well, the depiction of his story and fall from grace was far from comprehensive.
9. Escobar’s Suicide
If you know anything about Pablo Escobar’s story, suicide must be a very strange word to be associated with his Death, but pay close attention and we’ll see where this takes us, Pablo Escobar killing himself is a claim made by close family members like his brothers and, most importantly, his son, Juan Pablo. You see Juan Pablo was the last person that al patron spoke to before he died, and he gives a very convincing argument as to why he believes his dad’s death was a suicide. Let’s consider his points. The first point, Juan Pablo, says that his dad had always told him that the telephone was Death. This was because don Pablo knew full well that the DEA, CIA, Center Spike, and the police officers were monitoring airwaves to triangulate the locations of cartel members. Pablo Escobar always spent very little time on the phone and ordered his son to always stay away from using it. The second point is that Escobar’s family had just been rejected from Germany and were then forced to lodge in a Colombian hotel owned by the armed forces.
This indicates that Escobar’s family was never going to be safe wherever they went and that the hotel phone lines were surely tapped. Pablo must have known these facts. The third point is the fact that Pablo had taught his son how to commit suicide in case they got captured Juan Pablo says, his father told him that the best way to avoid torture and die quickly was to shoot into the right ear rather than into the mouth. Pablo’s brothers confirmed that Pablo had said he would rather kill himself than be killed by the people pursuing him since it wasn’t going to be a pleasant Death. Now, let’s replay the last moments of Pablo with these facts in mind, a certain colonel Martinez, and his son, lieutenant Martinez are using the directional finding gear to try and get any phone signal.
At the same time, Pablo Escobar is talking to his son, Juan Pablo, discussing an interview that Juan Pablo already knows about on the phone. According to Juan Pablo, his dad called him seven times. While he tried to cut the call each time he recounts complaining to his dad that this was dangerous as their phone was likely tapped, and he already knew about the topic being discussed.
Juan Pablo understands that his dad is trying to save them from being interrogated by giving up himself while on the phone Lieutenant Martinez is holding an antenna from the vehicle and suddenly sights the king of coke. Looking back at him after the police had gathered enough forces, they stormed the house, and only then does Pablo drop the call and said something strange is happening here. I’ll call you back, the shooting ensues, his bodyguard Limon is killed and Pablo is shot on the roof. Multiple times before his body goes limp on inspection, a bullet wound is found on Pablo’s head guess where that’s right the right ear. I find it curious that he was found and killed exactly a day after his birthday. Almost like someone wanted to have the last supper. A last proper laugh.
10. Wagner Mura’s Pro-Drug Stance
Wagner played the role of Pablo Escobar in Narcos to perfection. The Brazilian actor was applauded for the role and is so synonymous with Escobar that his pictures show up on a google search with the drug lord’s name. However, they have even more in common Mura believes that drugs like cocaine should be legalized and, following the experience of living out Escobar, he takes that even more seriously. This is because, in a world where cocaine was legal, Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria would have mostly been recognized as a shrewd businessman, who became wealthy from nothing and gave back to the poor, most of his ordered killings began with shutting up officials who wanted to have him locked up or extradited. But what do you think should cocaine be legalized?