Describe what the son of Pablo Escobar think of him?

My father, Pablo Escobar, the most notorious drug lord in history
The only son of Pablo Escobar is finally coming to terms with his father’s violent legacy
Brian Byrnes
Sebastián Marroquín finally feels free. As the only son of the most famous drug lord in history, he has spent the past 17 years hiding his identity — until now.

After his father died in a hail of bullets in Medellín in 1993, the boy christened Juan Pablo fled Colombia with his mother and sister, changed his name to Sebastián Marroquín and eventually settled in Argentina, where he now makes an honest living as an architect. These days, he is a man troubled by the anguish his father caused to millions but one who is working hard to right the past. It has only been in recent months that he has started speaking publicly about the Escobar family’s violent, cocaine clouded legacy.

“I feel as if I’ve been unleashed and now I can begin to enjoy life,” Marroquín says over decaffeinated coffee and croissants at a café near his apartment in Buenos Aires.

The catalyst for his catharsis is My Father, Pablo Escobar, the gripping documentary that traces Marroquín’s journey of reconciliation with the sons of two of Escobar’s most famous victims. The film is already one of the most successful Spanish-language documentaries of all time and has enjoyed sold-out screenings at movie festivals such as Sundance and Amsterdam. It make its premiere on UK screens on More4’s True Stories at 10pm tonight.

“The gift that the film has given me and my family is that the world now sees us with different eyes. Some of the prejudices against the Escobar family have finally disappeared,” says the 33-year-old, whose resemblance to his late father is striking: a beefy frame topped by a curly-haired head offset by puffy cheeks, a double chin and deep-set black eyes. All that is missing is the moustache.

“To be a relative is not the same as being an accomplice. You can’t choose your relatives,” he says.

Pablo Escobar gained notoriety in the 1980s as the planet’s most successful coke peddler, building a billion-dollar global cartel responsible for up to 80 per cent of the world’s cocaine market. As his power and net worth grew — Forbes ranked him as the world’s 7th richest man in 1989 — Escobar applied increasing deadly pressure on those who tried to topple his empire, namely government officials, journalists and rival dealers. Thousands died on his orders: torture, drive-by shootings and car bombs were his favourite methods of doling out death. Despite the gruesome tactics he employed in eliminating his enemies, Escobar remains a hero to many Colombians, a modern-day Robin Hood who showered millions on Medellín’s poor.

All 90 minutes of the documentary are riveting. The film mixes never-seen-before home videos of the Escobar family with old TV news clips and fresh footage of Marroquín and his mother, now known as Maria Isabel Santos Caballero. Together they provide a chilling narrative of Colombia’s violence in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as a poignant account of a conflicted man whose entire existence was dictated by his father’s murderous ways.

Since the premiere of the documentary in Argentina in November last year, Marroquín has been on a hectic promotional tour in Latin America and Europe. Naturally, he says, the most important stop so far has been Colombia, where the film was viewed as a watershed cultural event, and a homecoming of sorts for one of its most notorious sons. Thirty prints of the film were ordered, unprecedented for a documentary in Colombia, and although he was widely praised for his decision to ask the country’s forgiveness in the film, harsh criticism abounded when he visited in December. Marroquín says he was quickly reminded that his father’s vicious actions still provoke raw emotions in Colombians from all walks of life.

“I hope all Colombian people understand the film and we can help to stop the violence once and for all. My only conviction is for this film to be a message of peace. Nothing more, nothing less,” he says.

Escobar was a ruthless, some say, psychotic, killer. For Marroquín, he was a loving father who doted on his children. Marroquín recalls sharing many tender moments with him, especially at the family’s sprawling Hacienda Nápoles estate, where Escobar created a world-class zoo stocked with exotic animals. There were also dozens of speedboats, jet-skis and motorcycles, which Marroquín learnt how to handle at an early age.

“I knew how to drive by the time I was 5 and how to shoot a gun at the age of 7. I took self-defence classes too, to be prepared for any situation,” he says.

Before Escobar’s outlaw status prevented him from leaving Colombia, the family travelled abroad often, staying at posh hotels in Venice and glitzy high rises on Miami Beach. Disney World was a favourite, too, although Escobar was terrified of rollercoasters. One of Marroquín’s fondest memories was a visit to Washington DC where father and son posed for a photo in front of the White House, and where Escobar used a fake ID to get inside the FBI Museum. “I remember my father got a big chuckle out of being able to sneak inside there,” he says.

Marroquín and his mother came to London in 1988 and saw all the local sights, none of which particularly impressed him at the time. “I was only 11, so I wasn’t that interested in seeing Big Ben,” he says. “I remember thinking that London was too cold for anyone to live in. But I hope to visit again.”

Marroquín was a well-travelled child, with every toy in the world, but his luxurious lifestyle was also unbearably lonely at times. Most Colombians were terrified of Escobar, which made it tough for young Marroquín to make friends. His closest confidants were his bodyguards. “I had 30 motorbikes, but I couldn’t go outside to ride them. How’s that for irony,” he says. “Now that I don’t have any of those luxuries, I feel like a millionaire, because I have my freedom.”

In the film we see images of the Escobars temporarily retreating to Panama and Nicaragua, and unsuccessfully seeking asylum in the US and Germany in 1993. Later, we hear the chilling intercepted phone conversation between father and son that tipped off US and Colombian intelligence officers to Escobar’s whereabouts. Rather than surrender, he stormed from his safehouse with guns blazing and was killed by a barrage of police bullets.

When he heard of his father’s death, 16-year-old Marroquín lashed out on local radio, vowing to avenge it. He quickly recanted his remarks and asked that his family finally be allowed to live in peace. The family then spent two difficult and dangerous years trying to avoid prison and death, travelling throughout South America and Africa looking for a home before finally being accepted in Argentina.

“I didn’t think I would live to be 17,” he says. “Now, reflecting on it, I feel that since the day my father died until today, every hour that I live is a bonus.”

Dozens of film-makers had approached Marroquín about telling his life story. He declined, thinking they would only glorify and exploit his father’s image, something that he was loath to do. Although he loved his father, Marroquín has repeatedly denounced him and the drug trade. He has spent the past 15 years trying to live a quiet life in Argentina. In 1999, his past caught up with him, when he and his mother were jailed in Buenos Aires on money-laundering allegations brought by a spurned former lover of Maria Isabel’s. The charges were eventually dropped, but not before Marroquín had spent 45 days in prison, and his mother 20 months. It’s an experience that still annoys him. “We were kept in jail for small and false charges because we were Colombians. And because we were family members of Pablo Escobar. It was a disgrace,” he says.

It wasn’t until he met Nicolas Entel, the film-maker, in 2005 that he first considered breaking his silence. The young Argentinian director suggested a novel approach: bringing Marroquín together with the sons of the former Colombian Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla and the former Colombian presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán, both killed on orders from Escobar after confronting him.

“I was proposing to tell the story from the point of view of the sons, and Sebastián liked that,” Entel, 34, says. “What motivated me was that Marroquín, me and the sons of Lara and Galán are all around the same age. I felt we would find a way to connect because of our similar cultures, values and experiences,” he says.

The film slowly builds to its theme, juxtaposing interviews with Marroquín and Lara speaking stoically about their dead fathers. The two most riveting scenes occur when Marroquín meets Lara and then Galán’s three sons, all four of whom have chosen to carry on their fathers’ legacies and enter politics. Meeting secretly on an island in the Río de la Plata in Argentina, Marroquín and Lara sit on a bench and have a frank but cordial talk. Marroquín notes that they are “both orphans.” Lara thanks him for his “heartfelt” letter of apology. “We are both good and peaceful men. Let’s move forward,” Lara says as they embrace.

The meeting with Galán’s three sons is raw. Returning to Colombia for the first time in 15 years, Marroquín nervously asks for their forgiveness. The Galán brothers express their gratitude, but ultimately say they cannot forgive him for sins he did not commit. Marroquín recalls thinking they would sit down and have a coffee and chat before recording.

“Nicolas wouldn’t allow it. He insisted that we show from the very first moments of our meeting exactly as it happened. And I think that is one of the best aspects of this film: nothing was manipulated. It is all real,” he says.

In the coming months, Marroquín will make appearances at film festivals in Poland, Ecuador, Canada and Germany. One place he will not be visiting, though, is the US. During Pablo Escobar’s reign of terror, the US Government spent millions of dollars trying to stem the flow of cocaine from Colombian jungles to American alleyways. It’s a fight that Washington continues to wage. Consequently, Marroquín says, his US visa application has so far been denied.

“It has been wonderful to travel the world again, but it is a big paradox too, because before nobody would welcome us anywhere, and now we are getting invited everywhere. Well, almost everywhere,” he says with a smile.

In June, Marroquín will visit the Munich Film Festival. It will be the first time he has been to Germany since 1993, when he, his mother, sister and future-wife applied for asylum there, while Escobar was still on the lam in Colombia. The Escobars spent a long and tense day at Frankfurt airport, before ultimately being sent back to Bogotá. Escobar died just days later.

“I feel that this invitation from Germany is a way to clean the slate and reconcile for the way we were treated in the past. I think it is a great gesture,” Marroquín says.

Argentina is now his family’s home. Marroquín and his wife live in the fashionable Palermo neighborhood and his mother and sister live near by. His architecture studio is busy designing and building upper-class homes in suburban Buenos Aires and a downtown office building. He rules out any chance of ever returning to live in Colombia. “I feel that I can make more of a difference from outside Colombia than from inside,” he says. At the recent Buenos Aires premiere, Marroquín did interviews with a dozen local television stations, patiently answering the same questions over and over. Later, as Entel welcomed the standing-room only crowd, Marroquín retreated behind a concrete column shielding himself from the audience’s glare.

Despite the relief he has experienced telling his life story on screen, he still does not like the attention. “I don’t feel comfortable with the spotlight on me. But it is part of the process.”

Marroquín is now planning to publish his memoirs, which he says will allow him to reveal even more important family secrets, and expand his message of peace.

“I want to form my own identity. The film has allowed me to start doing that. I don’t want just to be known as ‘The Son of Pablo Escobar’,” he says. “I want to be known as my own man.”

Is NAFTA a good thing? Why or Why not?

NAFTA's Winners And Losers

by Dan Barufaldi (Contact Author | Biography)

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Filed Under: Economics

The 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) eased restrictions on commerce between the United States, Canada and Mexico by providing duty-free trade on multiple classes of goods and introducing new regulations to encourage cross-border corporateinvestment. Effects on the economies, companies and populations of all three NAFTA partners are significant. In this article, we'll outline both the positive and negative effects each NAFTA nation experiences.

MexicoChapter 11 investment guarantees, which giveinvesting companies certain guarantees of profitability and immunity from regulatory change, encouraged huge U.S. investments inMexico and Canada after 1994. According to one study, foreign direct investment induced by NAFTA increased 70% in Mexico in 1994 and was up by 435% a decade later.

While the impact of U.S. investment in Mexicohas been substantial, it is less than some had anticipated. Much of the trade between the two countries involved exporting U.S. parts tomaquiladoras, the Mexican factories that sprang up near the border to take advantage of cheap labor. Workers would assemble the parts into goods, such as appliances, television sets and auto assemblies, then re-export the assembled products to the U.S.

Corporate investment in maquiladoras was expected to produce a Mexican middle class that would become a large market for U.S. goods. But the plan failed to live up to expectations, as skills and productivity lagged behind labor costs and jobs moved to China. U.S./Mexico truck-transport problems also raised costs for Mexican products coming to the U.S. (The middle class may be on the decline in the U.S. as well. Read Losing The Middle Class to learn more.)

To compound the problem, the migration of workers from Mexico City and further south in numbers not easily accommodated in small border towns produced overpopulated slums with high living costs for the Mexican workers. Nonetheless, some argue that the competition between Asia and the U.S. could have become worse without the temporary low-cost labor available to U.S. companies in Mexico.

Because of all these issues, the effects of NAFTA were largely negative for Mexico. The increase in the middle class was insignificant and many of the original NAFTA jobs went toAsia. The concentration of workers at the U.S. border had deleterious effects on the close-knit Mexican family structure because the living conditions in the border towns did not support more than single-worker residence. While some jobs remain in Mexico, the county has yet to realize the full benefits of the agreement.

CanadaCanada has so far experienced significant benefit from:

• U.S. investment in automotive production,
• Increases in oil exports to the U.S. and the rest of the world,
• Increases in shipment of beef, agricultural, wood and paper products to the U.S.
• Export of mineral and mining products, which have fared well in U.S. markets.

Canada has, however, experienced some losses in narrow sectors such as specialty steel production and processed foods due to U.S. imports.

Cities such as Windsor, Ontario, profited from being close to Detroit, where automotive partsand assembly facilities developed on both sides of the border. The eastern and western parts of Canada benefited from NAFTA re-export, as well as from increased traffic through their ports.

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U.S. investment provided higher-paying jobs in the automotive, agri-business, energy, aerospace and transportation sectors, among others. This added to the ranks of the Canadian middle class and increased the level of secondary education in the population. It also provided jobs for the wave of immigrants from India and Pakistan who are currently residing in Canada.

United StatesU.S. economic winners and losers under NAFTA vary with company size, type of industry orsector, and geographical location. Sectors affected positively include planes, trains andautomobiles, large agri-businesses, appliance makers and energy corporations. Clearly, large multi-national companies with investment capacities, world-market savvy and capitalresources have benefited from protected investment and cheap labor. These companies enhanced management performance-based compensation while putting downward pressure on production-worker wages and benefits, collective bargaining clout and available jobs, especially in manufacturing. Many view their actions as a major contributor to compensation inequality. (To read more about how income inequality is determined, and its importance, read The Gini Index: Measuring Income Distribution.)

With their lack of internal resources, small regional businesses are not offered the same opportunities by NAFTA, and in fact, the agreement makes them more vulnerable to the concentrated local effect of a multi-national competitor. U.S. manufacturing, often in concentrated geographical areas, suffered large business and job losses as NAFTA cast a shadow over any labor-intensive process that is not highly automated.

While much of the economy experienced gains, the concentration of losses in regional geographical pockets impacted by inexpensive Mexican labor sharpened the blow for many people. The availability of Mexican labor suppressed real wages, reduced benefits and limited collective bargaining power for production workers in the U.S. According to one estimate, workers in Canada and Mexico have displaced 829,280 U.S. jobs, mostly high-wage positions in manufacturing. The heaviest U.S. manufacturing-job losses were in states such as Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, North Carolina, Texas, Connecticut, New Jersey, California, Indiana and Florida. NAFTA proponents, however, argue that increased sales to Canada and Mexico made possible by the agreement have created new jobs and raised incomes in the U.S. overall.

Overall Impact The long-time growth in the U.S. trade deficit accelerated dramatically after NAFTA became effective in 1994. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the $30 billion U.S. trade deficit in 1993 increased 281% to an inflation-adjusted $85 billion in 2002.

Despite a growing trade deficit, a report from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative categorizes the trade effects as positive:  

• Between 1993 and 2006, trade among NAFTA partners climbed 197%, from $297 billion to $883 billion.
• U.S. exports to NAFTA partners grew 157%, versus 108% to the rest of the world in the same period.
• Daily NAFTA trade in 2006 reached $2.4 billion.
• U.S. manufacturing output rose 63% from 1993-2006, compared to an increase of 37% from 1980-1993.

ConclusionWhile NAFTA's overall financial impact has been generally positive, it has not lived up to the high expectations of its proponents. It has made many U.S. companies and investors rich - and their managements richer. But it has also cost many U.S. manufacturing workers their livelihoods while failing to raise living standards for most Mexicans. Any major market changes not dictated by market forces usually lead to both opportunity and loss, and this has happened with NAFTA. 

Please Read

Send all research papers via email at  rsaavedra31@gmail.com before sunday  12:00

Mr. Saavedra

Final Research Paper

“Che Guevara, a revolutionary in Cuba, has become an internationally recognized figure. While many people are familiar with his achievements of helping to overthrow and rebuild the Cuban government, his image has expanded well beyond his political success. Che’s picture has been seen all over the world, in every imaginable context. Many people associate Che Guevara with the very word “revolution,” while others remember Che as a brutal and ruthless guerilla”.

Task: Write a 3-5 page paper describing whether Che should be considered a hero or a villain.  You must use quotes, facts, and excerpts from at least 1 book source and 1 Internet source.  If you wish you may use the film as an additional source.  Due date: Thursday, January 27, 2011.

This will count as your final exam. 

Reading Assignment on "Che"

1. Using the link El Cubano Libre  write a summary about the three articles.

2. Define Guerilla Fighting? Do you believe that these methods are fair when fighting against the United States?

Research Paper-due date December 20, 2010

Using the links posted on the right side of the Blog Site, write a two page typed paper on one of the below essay topics.  Please make sure your paper is double spaced and that you use Times New Roman font.  You must site two additional sources in your paper and use MLA standards.

Due date: December 20, 2010

Essay Topics:

a. Discuss the effect the Mexican-American War had on the U.S. and on Mexico.

 b. Discuss military life, camps, and transportation during the Mexican-American War.

 c. Discuss why the treaty was called the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. Who were the presidents of Mexico and the United States when this treaty was signed? Is this treaty still in effect?

 d. Discuss how the ability to speak Spanish (or not speak Spanish) has affected your life. Are there things you can or cannot do because you speak (or do not speak) Spanish? Is Spanish a useful language to know in the U.S.? What are the advantages of having a common language within a nation?

 e. Discuss the effects the superior weaponry of the U.S. had on the Mexican Army. Extend this discussion to other examples, both in history and in the present, in which superior technology affected the outcomes of military conflicts.

Compare and Contrast Benito Juarez and Abraham Lincoln

Compare and Contrast Benito Juarez and Abraham Lincoln