2006 Colombian presidential election of Pablo Escobar and mafia boss Fabio Ochoa. In 1983, Alberto was assassinated by FARC rebels at his estate, after which Alvaro sold off the property and dedicated himself to politics. However, Mary Beth Long, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Counternarcotics, in a 2004 opinion letter to the New York Times claimed that allegations of links between Alvaro and the Medellin drug cartel or Pablo Escobar from 1991 were never substantiated. As governor of Antioquia, Uribe held known contacts with the paramilitary group the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), the goal of which was fighting leftist insurgents. His
Pablo Escobar Dolores Gaviria Berrío (d. 2006), an elementary school teacher. Raised in the nearby city of Medellín, Escobar is thought to have begun his criminal career as a teenager, allegedly stealing gravestones and sanding them down for resale to local smugglers. His brother, Roberto Escobar, denies this, instead claiming that the gravestones came from cemetery owners whose clients had stopped paying for site care, and that he had a relative who had a monuments business. Escobar's son, Sebastián Marroquín, claims his father's foray into crime began with a successful practice of selling counterfeit high school diplomas, generally counterfeiting those awarded by