Pablo Escobar’s hippos that were brought to Colombia in the late 1980s from Africa were left to their own devices in the Antioquia region after his death in the 1993. As the animals reproduced, without natural predators in the climate, they began to impact the environment of the marshy area. 60 of the roughly 130 hippos currently living in the region are soon going to be sent to an animal rehabilitation center in Gujarat, India. The operation is estimated to cost around three and a half million dollars.
The first article I analyzed came from Al-Jazeera. This article combines a brief description of Pablo Escobar and his hippos with the importance of the detriment to the local environment attributed to the hippo’s invasive presence in the issue. Latin America’s environment is given high value in this article, and several Latin American countries other than Colombia are mentioned as offering to take some of the hippos from the region, but largely the people of Colombia as a whole are not mentioned.
The second article I read from CBS news provided more recent historical context of alternate methods of sterilization for the hippos, and explicitly details the ways in which the environment is being degraded, including the production of waste that pollutes nearby rivers, which in turn kill wildlife that depend upon those rivers. The article briefly mentions a 2021 lawsuit against the Colombian government as news broke to the public that there were plans in place to sterilize or kill the hippos, but the person or group behind that lawsuit is not named.
The Al-Jazeera article was overall more serious in nature, focusing on the detrimental effects of the hippos on the ecosystem of the Antioquia region of Colombia. The CBS article was more comical, providing anecdotes from a Colombian man who says he supports the hippo’s current living situation, despite being bitten by one of the hippos after fishing one day. I think the seriousness of the situation should definitely be considered, but I also understand the desire to laugh about the outlandish idea of hippos that were paid for by cocaine money from an extremely wealthy criminal.
This situation relates to the extreme wealth of Pablo Escobar and cartels following the Cold War that we have been discussing in class.
Aljazeera. 2023. “Removing Pablo Escobar’s Hippos from Colombia to Cost $3.5m,” March 30, 2023. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/3/30/removing-pablo-escobars-hippos-from-colombia-to-cost-3-5m.
CBS News. 2023. “Deporting Pablo Escobar’s Invasive ‘Cocaine Hippos’ from Colombia Carries a Hefty Price Tag,” March 30, 2023. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pablo-escobar-cocaine-hippos-colombia-transfer-cost-3-5-million/.