The Colombian Hit Man Who Became a YouTube Star | Hacker News Reader

The Colombian Hit Man Who Became a YouTube Star

nytimes.com

63 pointsSonicSoul31 comments

Medellin is my hometown (I'm actually spending a few weeks here), all of my family's previous generations are from Medellin and we are one of the innocent families that were affected by the Medellin Cartel in the 80s and 90s. Therefore, I feel the need to expand a little bit on this -btw, great- article.

First clarification: Average people don't admire Pablo Escobar and his disciples. What's true about Escobar is that he made philanthropic efforts with the aim of socially developing Medellin's suburbs and that's where the admiration towards him comes from, but this is not 'Pablo Escobar's kingdom' or something like that. Normal people know that he caused more damage than progress. BTW, safety is an order of magnitude higher two decades later.

Second clarification: Popeye is actually a smart guy. Since he was released on parole he started this Youtube channel where he has shown he is a great content creator and promoter, he is also running his own company (on a legal industry) among other things. People are liking his videos more than disliking them because the channel is actually really good as a channel, but we all know he was an assassin.

Third clarification: Colombia is in a huge social transformation process again. Colombia has had drug cartels, three extreme-left guerillas and one extreme-right paramilitary group. The negotiation processes with one of those guerillas (M-19) and with the paramilitary (AUC) were successful. Druglords were shot down. Right now the government is in a new negotiation process with the biggest of the 2 remaining guerillas (FARC). In order for a long-term peace to take place, normal people will have to accept the fact that these people will be reinserted into society and they will be our neighboords, coworkers, etc. In some way it's good that people are accepting to forgive (to some extent) Popeye, just the same way they have forgived and will have to forgive groups outside the law.

In conclusion we could become a role-model for failed states, and this is an example that shows why that is true.

Very interesting post, thanks for sharing. I'm fairly interested in Columbia ever since I bought and played the excellent board game "Andean Abyss" which simulates the conflict between government, cartels, AUC and FARC. Truely a marvelous game with lots of flavour and historic context that got me interested in the topic (I knew very little about it before and bought the game due to the excellent gameplay, content was more of a side effect)

I'm in the middle of all of this. Feel free to ask me anything!

s/Columbia/Colombia

Thanks, I make that mistake a lot. It's rather fascinating that I keep mistyping this despite knowing I'm likely to mistype it. The German spelling is Kolumbien so I know where the mistaken u comes from. It's really fascinating that my brain seems to be resistant to updating that English spelling.

Ha! Actually, Adidas recently did that on a major campaign for the Colombian team.

> BTW, safety is an order of magnitude higher two decades later.

How is the current situation, safety-wise?

(Edited to make it one question, instead of two)

My wife and I are nomads and we've have lived all over the world. Medellin is one of our favorites. We lived in El Poblado last year for about a month and found it as safe as any big city and the people are lovely. It's true that El Poblado is the very nice part of Medellin, but we wandered all over the city and had no problems.

Nice to hear that. It reflects my stay in the city, also for a month, several years ago.

Was in Medellin last October. Perfectly safe. Certain areas you don't really want to go wandering around alone at night, but that's true of every city.

> [...] but that's true of every city.

Of a lot of city. There are exceptions, like Singapore.

Pretty sure Singapore have bad neighbourhoods too. By their standards. Their worse neighbourhood is probably better than most good areas in many cities.

>> Specific areas – Geylang and lower-cost government housing – suffer from more serious crimes (muggings, loan sharking, and illicit drug use) although not on the scale of a similar sized U.S. city.

https://www.osac.gov/pages/ContentReportDetails.aspx?cid=171...

Oh, they are better and worse area. But by the standards of "Would I go there at night?" they are all good enough.

(Also lots of cities in Switzerland are probably also all completely safe by that standard.)

I did end up lost in Comuna 13 for about an hour, but it was during the afternoon. I kept walking up sets of stairs that ended at different people's homes. It seems what was once one of the most dangerous places in the city, it now has walking tours in English.

I travelled and worked remotly in Colombia during 11 months in 2014, thereof 7 in Medellin alone and I now live in Bogota.

I always felt safe, even when stroling or going out in poorer neighborhoods at night. I'm actually more cautious about pickpocketing and mugging in the more touristic and richer ones. There are of course places I wouldn't go alone in the dark, but I don't really have any reason to be there anyway.

I'm from Somalia and I can assure you the Colombian experiment is being watched with a keen eye.

We too have murderous killers reformed to some sort of tribal elders.

Our violence, much like yours, has been mostly profit/power-driven. Except ours got tremendously worse with the introduction of Jihadi ideology.

I pray to FSM for the safety of both our nations. Stay safe, and may Colombia and Somalia stay safe. Con todos mi amor, hermano/a!

Interesting. Could you say something about why the jihadi ideology was introduced in Somalia, by whom, and why it was able to take hold?

Am I crazy for thinking this is a pretty serious ask of someone who is presumably just a regular person from Somalia. I could be way wrong and "mahmud" may have some great insight into this question. It just seems like someone would write an entire dissteration on after having spent many years conducting research.

Well, the lay-person's understanding of it would be interesting as well. Like asking an American "Can you tell me about your war for independence against the British and why it happened?" You could write a dissertation on it, but it's also interesting to hear the tl;dr that a citizen believes (correct or not).

I agree, it's a bit of a crazy question, but, as "articfox" also points out, "mahmud" may have some interesting insights to share.

That is one region of the world that I do not know much about. Would you have any links about the history that led to the current state of the affairs that you've described?

I visited Colombia for a week about a year ago, and was very pleasantly surprised with what I saw versus the typical foreign perspective IE: Colombia as a violent narco-state.

There are still dangerous parts of most cities, but places like Cartagena and Bogota are generally very safe and a lot of fun. Here's hoping the progress continues.

Bad neighborhoods are one thing--just street crime like anywhere else--but what about the kidnapping of rich tourists as a business model? In plenty of cities in the world, that's a targeted professional thing where local police might even be in on it if not participating.

Can you clarify here? Are you accusing the Colombian police of this? Like most developing nations with a history of corruption (particularly narco-corruption), kidnapping is a danger, but like most violent Colombian crime, has become progressively less common.

Not Colombia in particular, no. But there's huge money pressure for anyone to take on this business, and it helps to have the cops or be the cops, no? [1] Not even a 3rd world thing![2]

1. http://www.scotsman.com/news/venezuela-police-corruption-bla...

2. http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/30/justice/philadelphia-police-co...

I can assure you that anyone with a net-worth north of a hundred million dollars (that's how I define "rich tourist")already takes the right precautions when traveling overseas.

The kidnappings that you are describing are locally known as: "paseo millonario" Which main goal is to get you to the nearest ATM to withdraw as much as your bank limit allows. There was a notorious case a few years back of a paseo millonario gone horribly wrong when a DEA agent named James Terry Watson found himself at the wrong place at the wrong time.

There was recently another tourist who made headlines when it was revealed that he had traveled all the way from the Netherlands deliberately to go on a week long drug binge in Bogota's skid row. The hoodlums who ran this place known as "el Bronx" held him hostage when he failed to pay for the drugs he had already consumed. Here's a video of the Dutch guy escaping from his captors:http://www.semana.com/nacion/multimedia/bronx-bogota-asi-sec...

i think his remorse would be more believable if he donated all / most of his video income to the victims' families.

I second this, the fact that he's making money for the lifestyle he lived is disgusting.

Hey, thanks for your great comment. How it would be to live in Colombia today? And what's the main difference between Carthagena, Medellin, etc?

Cartagena is a beautiful, small city that's mostly for tourism. I go there approx. once per year.

Medellin is a mid-sized city with a perfect climate. It's currently the safest major city in the country. It's the most modern city as well. It has acquired a great reputation as a place to live and a lot of people are coming here. For example, I'm currently staying in my grandma's apartment and the guys of the apartment below are american, the ones above are german and the ones in front are portuguese.

Bogotá is the capital city; you'll find the best universities, best companies, etc. here. It's a big city with a nice cold climate. Lots of startups there BTW, including Authy (YC S12), Platzi (YC W15) and Rappi (YC W16).

Thanks for the insight - it's always good to hear from average people who were on the ground.

I'm glad you clarified the Colombian perspective on Pablo - his philanthropic efforts were inarguably happily accepted by locals, but that doesn't equate to admiration, more of an acceptance that taking his largesse beat the alternative.

Finally, I think you make a good point about being a model for failed states, at least re: coming to terms with reintegrating some number of the architects of the failure back into society, although the influence of American military assistance and Plan Colombia cannot be ignored either.

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