I just read this a few days ago and it is far, far too appropriate to not share here, in this thread, and especially in response to this argument:
"Killing Pablo" by Mark Bowden
Page 188:
"In February 1993, Los Pepes began killing in earnest. On the 3rd, the body of Luis Isaza, a low-level Medellin cartel manager, was discovered in Medellin with a sign around his neck that read, "For working for the narco-terrorist and baby-killer Pablo Escobar. For Colombia. Los Pepes." Four other low-level cartel workers were found murdered in the city that day. The next day two more were found murdered, two men known to be Pablo's business associates. there were more bodies the next day, and the next, and the next, up to six people a day.
It was a controlled bloodbath, because all of the victims had one thing in common–Pablo Escobar. Among them was a former director of the Policia Nacional de Colombia who had been publicly linked to the Medellin cartel. On February 17, one of the dead was Carlos Ossa, the man thought to be financing Pablo's day-to-day operations. Ossa, who was shot several times in the head, had taken over the duties of a man who had dissappeared after taking over for another who had also dissappeared. On the same day Ossa's body was found, a government warehouse burned to the ground, destroying Pablo's collection of seventeen antique and luxury cars, valued at more than $4 million and including a Pontiac he had purchased in the mistaken belief that it had once been owned by Al Capone.
As the murders and fearful surrenders mounted, Los Pepes publicly offered cash rewards for information on Pablo and his key associates, and began broadcasting threats against the drug lord's family. Just a few weeks after surfacing, the vigilante group had spooked Pablo more than anything the government had been able to do."
Page 192, beginning at paragraph 5:
"All of this was mild, and had occurred before Los Pepes had surfaced. Now things were much worse. On March 4, one of Pablo's legal team, Raul Zapata, was found murdered, and a note left with the body threatened four other lawyers. Two of those on the list were killed weeks later as they were leaving Modesto prison in Bogota, one an attorney for Pablo's brother Roberto. Any public outcry over these killings was far outweighed by anger over another huge blast in Bogota, attributed to Pablo (e:false flag?), on April 15. A car bomb loaded with more than three hundred pounds of dynamite exploded at a busy intersection, killing eleven people and injuring more than two hundred. The nightly news was filled with images of flaming vehicles, victims trapped in the carnage crying for help, and bloody bodies.
Los Pepes answered immediately. They blew up three fincas owned by members of the Escobar family. On April 16, police found the tortured body of Pablo's most prominent lawyer, Guido Parra, along with that of his eighteen-year-old son, Guido Andres Parra, stuffed in the trunk of a taxi in a deserted area near an Envigado country club in Medellin. Parra was the lawyer who had negotiated Pablo's surrender almost two years earlier, who had conferred with the families of the kidnapped journalists and with the president, and who had confessed how much he feared his client. He had been abducted from his apartment in Medellin by fifteen heavily armed men who had arrived in three cars. Father and son were found with hands bound in plastic tape and bullet wounds to the head, along with a chilling hand-lettered sign that read, "Through their profession, they initiated abductions for Pablo Escobar." It was signed, "Los Pepes.""
Los Pepes was a combination of disgruntled citizens, marginalized rivals to Pablo's cartel, and members of the police, the army, and the government. They combined their powers to create a sustained terror campaign that ultimately brought about the downfall of the Pablo cartel.