of the university because he could not pay the necessary fees. When you’ve grown up poor, as we did, the need to make money is always uppermost in your mind. Maybe it was ordained that eventually Pablo would work outside the law. It was an important part of our family history.

Colombia is a beautiful country and rich in the gifts of nature, but it is a place where corruption has always been an accepted part of our lives. Our country has always been ruled by a class of wealthy families that did very little to help the poor. There were very few social programs that assisted people in making their lives better. We have a system of laws in Colombia, but we lived by a different set of rules. From the time we were growing up the government was run by corrupt people who made themselves richer while claiming they were starting programs to help the less fortunate live a better life. From the highest offices of the political rulers to the leaders of the military, from the civil servants who controlled the government offices to the policeman on the street, people with even a little power have used it whenever possible for personal gain. The police, for example, were poorly trained, very badly paid, and were not at all respected, so just to survive, many of them accepted bribes to look away from illegal activities. If you wanted to get something done in Colombia and you had the money it was not difficult to get it done. Pablo and I grew up knowing that all the rules were for sale. It was not considered good nor bad, it’s just the way it has always been.

In fact, the Colombian journalist Virginia Vallejo, a woman who became a loving part of my brother’s life, once said she fell in love with him because “he was the only rich man in Colombia who was generous with the people, in this country where the rich have never given a sandwich to the poor.”

I was named after my maternal grandfather, Roberto Gavíria, but it was Pablo more than me who inherited his history. Every family has its story, and the story of the Escobar-Gavíria family began the morning Roberto Gavíria decided to plant bananas in his backyard in the town of Frontino. So the story goes, he discovered a guaca, a treasure buried in the ground consisting of several clay pots filled with jewelry and precious stones. No one ever learned the source of these riches. At least, that’s the way the story has been passed down to the family.

Rather than revealing his fortune, which would have been dangerous, Roberto slowly and quietly sold the jewelry. Some of the proceeds he used to make loans to other farmers—but he lost that money when they couldn’t repay him. Then he bought wild animal furs from the Indians in Chocó and resold them in town. And finally he discovered his true calling: smuggling tobacco and liquor.

Like Al Capone in the United States, Roberto Gavíria was a bootlegger. He bought tapetusa, a favorite alcoholic drink of Colombians, directly from the Indians who distilled it and bottled it before it was sold to legal distributors. To bring it directly to his customers without paying the government fees that made it expensive, he would hide the bottles in a sealed coffin, and then hired men to carry it through a town and young women to walk alongside crying. The people of the town would quickly—and very happily, learn what was actually in those wooden boxes. In his hometown of Frontino he sold the tapetusa from the living room of his mother’s home, hiding it from authorities by draining egg shells with a needle, then refilling them with his liquor. It was a very successful business—until a neighbor informed on him and he was arrested. And that was when the most important lesson was learned: A few days later my grandfather was released without punishment. Although truthfully we don’t know all the facts of that situation, I think it is proper to assume that he shared his profits with those in power. In Colombia, that’s the way business has always been done.

It was while Pablo was in college that he started earning money. As with all aspects of his life, many stories have been written that are based in truth but are not completely accurate. It has been accepted, for example, that Pablo began his career in crime by stealing