Escobar Uncovered: Episode 1 - Meet Popeye
15,689Meet Jhon Jairo Velásquez alias Popeye - Pablo’s Escobar’s right-hand man. A former member of Colombia’s Medellín cartel, he was recently released from prison & tells us all the truth behind it all in our brand new series Escobar Uncovered. This is the real Narcos!
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He goes by Popeye, but that’s just a nickname. His real name is Jhon Jairo Velasquez and he worked for Pablo Escobar’s. He’s now 55 years old and has traded in his former life with Pablo Escobar to become a YouTuber…and that was the grounds on why we decided to meet. He’s built up a bit of a celebrity following in his hometown of Medellin in Colombia.
So after a couple of exchanges, he invited us to Colombia. That’s when I decided to grab my camera and get on a plane to Medellin. I was accompanied one of my closest friends Rene, who runs the YouTube channel World 5 List. We were really looking forward to seeing how the world looks through his eyes.
For those who don’t know, Pablo Escobar was the wealthiest Colombian in history. He was the head of the Medellin Cartel, which was a Colombian group that supplied 80% of the products smuggled into the US, making over $20 billion a year.
To give you an idea of how rich he was, Pablo spent over $2,500 a week in rubber bands alone just to hold together his stacks of cash. He even proposed to pay Colombia’s national debt of $20 billion as deal to prevent him from getting extradited to the US. His wealth was unimaginable, and his power was almost limitless.
He told me he was gonna show us around Medellin and take us to some of the important historical spots like Pablo’s fincas, big meetup locations, and where some important events took place. He’d also show us how Pablo’s organization worked and would give us real, firsthand accounts of the biggest Colombian empire in history…not the overdramatized storytelling you see on Narcos, but instead debunking the myths and giving the truth behind it all.
This was it: this was the real life Narcos. But we were also really interested in him. There we were, face-to-face with Pablo Escobar’s former employee.
Powerful crime bosses rose up in rank and amassed HUGE fortunes from sending products: I’m talking about in the billions. In Medellin, one such person was Fernando Galeano. Although he was wanted in the government’s eyes, Pablo Escobar was seen as a sort of Robin Hood paisa among the ordinary people of Colombia.
He donated considerable amounts of money to help poor neighborhoods by building hospitals, schools, parks, soccer fields, churches, and even creating jobs and full-on neighborhoods and homes for the poor people of Medellin and Colombia.
Popeye showed me the video that was aired on Colombian national television when he was working for Pablo. Like most of his stories, for me, it seemed almost surreal—just out of this world.
It was crazy to me about how straightforward and open he was because behind his warm smile lurked a cold, heartless. Leading up to the shoot, he was saying things like “Hey brother, you’re gonna love the stuff I’m about to show you. I’m gonna welcome you to Medellin with all the love and affection in the world. By the end of this shoot, we’ll be like brothers!”
But while we were with him, it became pretty clear pretty fast how experienced he was. We were curious as to how Popeye got started in his journey. I mean, it’s not like a normal job that you apply for in response to a “help wanted” ad in the newspaper.
There was also a lot of irony behind his beginnings too, as you’ll soon come to learn that the man that first inspired him to begin his career was the same man he was ordered to end later on in life.
Unfortunately for Popeye, Pablo Escobar, and the Medellin Cartel, it was the endings of Fernando Galeano and Kiko Moncada that sparked the creation of a resistance group known as “Los Pepes,” short for "Perseguidos por Pablo Escobar,” meaning “Persecuted by Pablo Escobar."
It was a vigilante group comprised of the rival gang from Colombia’s city of Cali known as the Cali Cartel as well as former Medellin Cartel members who broke away from Pablo’s organization to retaliate against him. Also joining the ranks of Los Pepes was the CIA and DEA, although these last two—being U.S. government agencies—will to this day deny their participation in any Los Pepes-related activities.
For Pablo, this was the beginning of the end. Those same members who once associated themselves with the Medellin Cartel knew the ins and outs of Pablo’s organization, so THEY posed as the biggest threats with the most knowledge on how he ran his business like clockwork. And just as easily, they were able to topple it.
Popeye was right by Pablo’s side this whole time. And there we had him: ready and willing to tell truth behind it all, and how the once-powerful Medellin Cartel eventually met its slow demise.
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