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

Back in the late 1980s, when Louise Gaio 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, there would be a chance we would not

be in it.

That's Louise.

Our life was strange in 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 Louisa's family took these precautions is that Louisa's dad was a

captain in the anti-narcotics unit for Columbia's national police.

And 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 cartel's capital Medaein.

By the late 80s and early 90s, Escobar was supplying 80% of the world's cocaine.

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

...