The Laredo Community College Distinguished Speaker Series will feature a senior DEA official, whose lecture will focus on one of the world’s most powerful narco-traffickers. The presentation will be offered on Thursday, April 22, at 9:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. in the de la Garza Building, room 101. Admission is free of charge.
Sponsored by the LCC Honors Program and the Student Advisory Board, the Distinguished Speaker presentation will be delivered by Javier F. Peña, a former Laredoan and assistant special agent in charge of the San Antonio District Office of the Drug Enforcement Administration. He also oversees the Austin and Waco DEA resident offices.
Peña will speak about the rise and fall of Medellin Cartel leader Pablo Escobar. He will discuss how Escobar rose from obscurity to become one of the world’s richest and most powerful narco-traffickers and in so doing challenged the legitimacy and authority of a nation through narco-terrorism.
Peña will also discuss the inner workings of the Medellin Cartel and how the cartel successfully channeled tons of cocaine through Mexico into the United States. Escobar accomplished this through a combination of corruption on the one hand and narco-terrorism on the other, says Peña.
“He (Escobar) had a total disregard for the lives and property of anyone other than himself and had elected officials, judges and law enforcement officers and their families kidnapped or killed to intimidate the Columbian government.
Escobar’s acts of terror committed upon the people and government of Colombia had no limits. He coordinated atrocities such as the bombing of the Security Police Headquarters in Bogota, which killed hundreds of people, the downing of a commercial airliner, the assassination of the leading presidential candidate and the wanton killing of hundreds of innocent people during his many car bomb attacks,” added Peña.
Peña, a 1974 graduate of Hebbronville High School, began his college studies at then Laredo Junior College. He transferred to Texas A&I in Kingsville and later graduated from Laredo State University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1978. He majored in sociology and minored in psychology.
He entered the law enforcement field as a deputy for the Webb County Sheriff’s Office in 1977. He also taught in the LCC Criminal Justice Department and was the chief of campus security.
Peña joined the DEA in 1984 at the Austin Resident Office and transferred in 1988 to Bogota, Colombia. He was assigned as the primary case agent for the Bogota Country Offices investigation of Escobar’s Medellin Cartel. He was promoted to group supervisor and transferred to San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1994. In 1997, he was reassigned to DEA headquarters as a staff coordinator for the Special Operations Group.
Peña was again promoted and returned to Colombia as the assistant country attaché for the Bogota Country Office in 2000. In 2001, he was reassigned to his current position in San Antonio.
For more information about the LCC Distinguished Speaker Series, contact LCC Honors Program Coordinator Anna Maria Mendiola by calling 721-5441.
Javier Peña
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