On his birthday, a look at Pablo Escobar’s cousin Gustavo, the coke-dealing kingpin of 'Narcos' fame

Everyone knows who Pablo Escobar is — but he didn't run the Medellín drug cartel single-handedly. Instead, as "Narcos" fans have learned, it was a two-man operation run with cousin, long-time business partner and lesser-known accomplice, Gustavo Gaviria.

Gaviria, who — had he lived — would turn 67 on Monday, spent less time in the limelight than his charismatic (and arguably psychotic) cousin, but he was just as involved in the business.Growing up, the two were thick as thieves — and also actual thieves.

Gustavo Gaviria

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As kids, they both had a pretty good upbringing, according to Mark Bowden, author of "Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw.""Neither Pablo nor Gustavo came from poor families," he said."They had well-educated parents. They were kind of middle class so the decision to leave school and become outlaws was very deliberate and kind of surprising."

But Escobar was nothing if not surprising, and he and cousin Gustavo jumped into small-time crime with enthusiasm.

"Pablo began his criminal career as a petty thug in Medellín and he and Gustavo were partners in a number of petty criminal enterprises — stealing headstones from graveyards and holding them for ransom, stealing tires, cars," Bowden said.

"Then they graduated to kidnapping when they kidnapped an industrialist and held him for ransom."

They were still hanging out and committing crimes in the 1970s, when they got pinched together.Although "Narcos" only focuses on Escobar's arrest — and the grinning mugshot that haunted him in real life — Gaviria got collared, too, according to Douglas Farah, the senior visiting fellow with the National Defense University who covered Colombia as a journalist toward the end of Escobar's reign.

After that arrest, Farah said, "They essentially built everything together."

They worked together, but each had their own specialties.

"Pablo was more specialized in violence and Gustavo was more specialized in business — illegal business, of course," according to Gustavo Duncan Cruz, a political science professor at EAFIT University in Medellin.

Gaviria was responsible for keeping the accounts, according to Farah. Escobar, on the other hand, wasn't that great at business — and he really, really wanted to be president.

"He spent a lot of time on his campaign trail and essentially left Gaviria to run the business side of things," he said.

As shown on Netflix, Gaviria was the calmer of the two. "He was the brains," Farah said. "Not nearly as emotional and much easier to deal with."

Then, in August 1990, the brains of the operation died — or was murdered, depending on your point of view.

"When Gustavo was killed, the police claimed it was in a shoot-out, but Pablo always claimed he'd been kidnapped, tortured and executed," Bowden said. It's the latter option that is shown in "Narcos," and Bowden said there's a good chance that's true to real life.

"I think the expression 'killed in a shootout' kind of became a euphemism," he said.

However it happened, Gaviria's death was the beginning of the end for Escobar. Although it ultimately led to his downfall, in the short-term it created an uptick in violence.

Escobar and his cousin were close, so the drug kingpin took his cousin's death very personally.The cartel has declared a truce with the government when Cesar Gaviria was elected president on Aug. 7, 1990. Then, five days later, Escobar's beloved cousin was killed and everything changed.

"That set off the war that really wreaked havoc," Bowden said.It also spelled bad news for Escobar, who ended up on the run. Without his partner to take care of the business, things started to fall apart.

Ultimately, a lot of the problems that plagued Escobar at the end of his life could be traced back to his desire for power and his meddling in politics.

"Most people think drug traffickers want money, but some of them want power," Cruz said. "Pablo wanted power. Gustavo was more for the money."