This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

Back in the late 1980s, when Luis Gio was a little kid growing up in Colombia,

he and his brother didn't have babysitters. They had bodyguards.

His parents would send them to school in an SUV that was accompanied by another identical SUV,

which was a decoy. Because that meant if one of the vehicles was attacked,

they would be a chance it would not be in it. That's Luis. Our life was strangely many ways back then.

My brother and I had our own bedrooms, but every night, our whole family would sleep in the same room.

It had a door to the back patio and a ladder ready to use in case we needed to flee.

My parents made it seem like we were just having a slumber party.

But the real reason that Luis's family took these precautions is that Luis's dad was a captain

in the anti-narcotics unit for Colombia's national police. In Pablo Escobar,

the notorious drug lord had declared war on the police, on the whole Colombian state, really.

It's become a typical day in Colombia. Three more judges have quit their jobs after being threatened.

By the murderous drug cartels, the government has imposed a curfew in nine cities

in the heart of cocaine country, including the cartels capital Medaín.

Today, the government...

But the late 80s and early 90s Escobar was supplying 80 percent of the world's cocaine.

And the violence surrounding the drug trade had gotten really bad.

The epicenter of the violence was Medellín.

Escobar's cartel was based there, and they controlled much of the city.

13 bombs have gone off the median since the weekend,

all aimed at government-owned banks or state liquor stores.

...