After that
famous day at Gabba, I have now read at least 100+ forwards on a substituted
team India won the Test with ease and created history. Am no big follower of Football, yet the name
Escobar did ring a bill – for I saw that 1994 FIFA World Cup match !! the Colombian footballer played as a defender for
Atlético Nacional, BSC Young Boys, and the Colombia national team. Not sure how popular this name (Escobar) is
in Colombia, yet this post on his namesake, a notorious don !
I feel and I
think most feel happy and gleeful in seeing animals – visiting Zoo, though
there could be arguments galore that they are moved out of their natural
habitat and held captive by mankind.
There are many Zoological parks that provide good healthy natural
environment and large space for the animals, though some of them could be in a
foreign land !! While
the purpose of Zoo is different, the animals do face different types of trouble
from the visitors !
A few years ago, in El Salvador, occurred the gruesome killing of
Gustavito, an adored hippo, attacked and badly mauled with metal bars and
knives that shocked even the Nation,
where killings are so high. Close on its
heels, came the news of a group of
visitors at a Tunisia zoo stoning a crocodile to death. People at times turn crude, savage and do
gruesome acts !
Hippopotamuses
love water, which is why the Greeks named them the "river horse."
Hippos spend up to 16 hours a day submerged in rivers and lakes to keep their
massive bodies cool under the hot African sun. Hippos are graceful in water,
good swimmers, and can hold their breath underwater for up to five minutes. One
detail that cannot be misunderstood is that hippos are huge – mature males
weigh up to a whopping 3,200kg. They also have a well-documented reputation for
aggression and engage in brutal battles over mates, slashing and biting with
their incisor teeth, which can measure up to 40cm (1.3ft) in length.
Scientists have got it
wrong about hippopotamuses a lot over the years. Their name in ancient Greek
translates to “river horse” yet modern science linked the animals to pigs. The
most recent studies have found they are more closely related to whales.They
also don’t sweat blood as once thought, but excrete a red fluid that contains antibacterial
sunscreen. Plus the stubby-legged rotund creatures have surprised biologists
with running speeds of up to 19mph. While hippos can be very aggressive towards
humans and are considered one of Africa's most deadly animals, they are
herbivores and the battle with the crocodile was likely territorial. The pair
share the same habitat and clashes are not uncommon.
Slightly more
than a dozen years ago, in 2007, 14 years after Escobar's death, people in
rural Antioquia, 200 miles north-west of Bogota, began phoning the Ministry of
Environment to report sightings of a peculiar animal. It was stated that ‘they
found a creature in a river that they had never seen before, with small ears
and a really big mouth." –startling for the villagers for it was not native
to that place…. Situated halfway between the city of
Medellin and Bogota, the Colombian capital, Hacienda Napoles was the vast ranch
owned by the drugs baron Pablo Escobar. The estate covered about 20 km2 (7.7 sq
mi) of land. In the early 1980s, after
Escobar had become rich but before he had started the campaign of
assassinations and bombings that was to almost tear Colombia apart, he built
himself a zoo. He smuggled in elephants, giraffes and
other exotic animals, among them four of
these - three females and one male. And
with a typically grand gesture, he allowed the public to wander freely around
the zoo. Buses filled with schoolchildren passed under a replica of the
propeller plane that carried Escobar's first US-bound shipments of cocaine.
The animals
now vast in number and fully grown are dangerous. Despite their ungainly
appearance, they are very agile in the water and can charge on land at up to 18
mph (29km/h). It's often said that they are responsible for more human deaths
in Africa than any other animal - though it may be more accurate to say they
cause more deaths than any other wild mammal. Attacks happen when humans
encroach their territory – they are not crocodiles – not instinctive killers,
nor man-eaters. Yet living near the
animals is inevitably a risk, - one that local people have to decide whether
they are willing to take.
Pablo Emilio Escobar
Gavíria (1949 – 1993) was a notorious
and wealthy Colombian drug lord and an exclusive cocaine trafficker. He is
regarded as the wealthiest criminals. In 1975, Escobar started developing his
cocaine operation. He even flew a plane himself several times, mainly between
Colombia and Panama, to smuggle a load into the United States. Reports state that he later bought fifteen
new and bigger airplanes (including a Learjet) and six helicopters, he
decommissioned the plane and hung it above the gate to his ranch at Hacienda
Napoles. The war against Escobar ended on Dec 2, 1993, when Colombian National
Police assisted by Colombian electronic surveillance team, using radio-triangulation technology, found
him hiding in a middle-class barrio in Medellín and shot him dead.
Following Escobar's death
in 1993, his family went into a legal struggle with the Colombian government
over the property. The government prevailed and the neglected property was
later managed by the Municipality of
Puerto Triunfo. The cost of maintenance for the zoo and the animals was too
expensive for the government, so it was decided that most of the animals would
be donated to Colombian and international zoos. Escobar's
hippopotamuses became feral, living in
at least four lakes in the area and spread into neighbouring rivers. Now
comes the news that Pablo Escobar's 'Cocaine hippos' have overrun
Colombia's waterways with their prodigious breeding after four escaped from
drug kingpin's compound in the 1990s
Now decades after his death and escapade by
hippos, they became 100+-strong herd that rampage his former village. Their
toxic urine and faeces are killing wildlife, say eco-experts. They are now the
largest invasive species in the world with largest, wild hippo population
outside of Africa. It is apprehended
that by 2040 numbers could rise to 1,500, making their environmental impact irreversible
and their numbers impossible to control !!
their erstwhile owner, the King of Cocaine was once estimated to be the
seventh richest person in the world, worth around $59billion in today's money. The Medellin Cartel once controlled over 80% of
the cocaine shipped to the US.
Now, dozens of the
descendants of the original three females and one male roam the wetlands north
of Bogota, causing untold damage to local wildlife with their 'toxic' urine and
feces. By 2040 the invasive population
could swell to almost 1,500 individuals, making their environmental impact
irreversible and their numbers impossible to control, a new study has
claimed. David Echeverri Lopez, a
researcher at the regional environmental agency Cornare who led the 2013 sterilization
effort, told The Washington Post that Colombia is a 'hippos paradise' with the
animals spending hours grazing and basking in the Magdalena River, with no
large predators to keep numbers down. He
said: 'I’ve worked for many years to understand the problem and find solutions,
but the problem keeps happening over and over again. The only thing that
changes is the number of hippos.'
Attempts to kill the
animals have been met with resistance by locals who see the hippos as
unofficial mascots. Gift shops in nearby
Puerto Triunfo sell hippo keychains and T-shirts. At Hacienda Napoles, the zoo
opened on Escobar's former pleasure palace and private zoo, a few of the
recaptured animals attract tourists, whilst their wild cousins occasionally
plod into town. In 2013 a judge issued a ruling making it illegal to kill
hippos in the country, sparking the start of the sterilization campaign. But
Echeverri Lopez said that sterilization of the 4,000lb animals is difficult to
do and going too slowly, with the team managing only one a year, whilst the
population grows by about 10%.
The animals have turned themselves into an emblem
for a whole community of people. It’s not possible to just take them away.' A renowned Colombian ecologist working at the University
of Quintana Roo in Mexico, said that the hippos threatened native species
including the giant, guinea-pig-like capybaras that feed on the grasses and
fruits now consumed by hippos, as well as endangered Antillean manatees. In September 2020, the nephew of drug kingpin
Pablo Escobar said that he found a plastic bag with $18million of cash hidden
in the wall at one of his uncle's houses.
Escobar reportedly wrote off 10 per cent of his profits per year, $250
million per month, because it was being damaged by water, eaten by rats, or
otherwise destroyed. He owned luxury
cars, planes and even two submarines at one point.
Now moving to the other
Escobar - Andrés Escobar Saldarriaga played for Atlético and the
Colombia national team. Sadly, Andres Escobar was killed in the aftermath of
the 1994 FIFA World Cup, reportedly as retaliation for having scored an own
goal which contributed to the team's elimination from the tournament. At that time, Pele’s suggestion that Colombia would at least
make the semi-finals of USA 94 wasn’t a crazy shot in the dark. Those would
come later, six of them; bullets fired in a Medellín nightclub car park during
a row that occurred in the early hours of 2 July, 1994. They would ring around
the world, rendering millions incredulous that the captain of Colombia had been
murdered, shot six times in the back, apparently as revenge for his
contribution to his own team’s elimination from a World Cup that was not yet
over. It seemed that for no crime more heinous than accidentally scoring an own
goal during a football match, Andrés Escobar had been gunned down in cold
blood.]
With regards
– S. Sampathkumar
21.1.2o21.
pics not mine .. taken from twitter and reposted.
