by David Fisher
Where the poor were involved, Pablo became the man of getting things done. He bought a much larger house in the middle of Medellín that became known as the Chocó Embassy because he would bring the very poorest people from Chocó to the city to get them medical care and clothes, to put their lives in shape. Usually there were about sixty people living there and they stayed for several weeks, then others took their place.
Pablo did so much for people. He paid the expenses for those who couldn’t afford the medical treatment they needed; one employee’s only job was making sure the twenty or thirty people a month who asked him to pay for cancer and AIDS treatments truly were sick. He paid for the college education of young people. When the rivers rose during the winter there were many floods and Pablo and Jaime would go around our country replacing everything washed away by the waters, bringing mattresses, cooking utensils, furniture, and the things people needed for living. And then they would bring engineers to find ways to prevent more flooding. Pablo would supply the materials to the villagers so they could help reconstruct the affected areas. Our mother, Hermilda, had been a teacher and she went all over Colombia to work with teachers and build schools and buy supplies for schools. Pablo built hospitals and equipped them, he built roads for small towns that before had been unreachable by car. He built hundreds of soccer fields with bleachers and lights and supplied equipment for the games—and he would often attend the opening of these fields and give a speech to the people. The girl with the pretty legs was charged with buying gifts for children on holidays, and each year at Christmas and Halloween she would go to local stores and order five thousand toys for Christmas. There was no limit. He fed the hungry, he provided medical aid for the poor, he gave shelter to the homeless, jobs to the unemployed, and education to those who couldn’t afford it and they loved him for it.
He became just like the Godfather. People would line up for hours outside his office to ask for his help. And if they truly needed that help, Pablo would provide it for them. When others write about all the good things he did they always give Pablo a sinister reason for doing so: He was trying to make them ignore his real business. He was buying loyalty so no one would report him to the law. They tell endless stories. But the absolute truth is that this goodness was part of Pablo Escobar, as much a part of him as the person who was able to take the violent actions. I’m defending him because it is the right thing to do. The houses he built still stand, the people he paid to educate still have good jobs, many of the people whose medical expenses he paid are healthy. All the good things he did should be remembered. If Pablo had not been so successful as a drug trafficker that he attracted the attention of the world he would have continued his good works. He might have even achieved his goal and become the president of Colombia. And without any question the lives of countless thousands of people would have been made much better. But none of that happened.
I have also been asked what Pablo bought for himself with his money. And I smile and respond: everything. Pablo and all of us lived very nicely. If we wanted something we took the money and bought it. Pablo and I had no salaries, we just took money as we needed it. We took from the bank accounts as well as the caletas. When I wanted to buy something expensive I would tell Pablo, “I’m going to buy this apartment. This is how much it’s going to cost.” He never objected.
It was important to Pablo that our family be taken care of. In one of the deals Pablo made, instead of receiving cash he was offered the deed to a new house. This wasn’t common, but it wasn’t too unusual; most of the time the value of the transaction was far greater than a house. One day Pablo took our mother on an appointment, I don’t remember where, maybe a doctor. On the way he told her, “You know what, I’ve got to check this property because I’m doing a business deal and I might take a house in return.” She accepted this; as far as she was concerned, Pablo was a real estate man. When Hermilda saw this house she fell in love with it.
Our mother was part of a singing group with her older women friends called the Golden Ladies of Antioquia. All of them were teachers. After finalizing the deal for the house, including all the furniture, Pablo invited our mother and the ladies to the house for a mass in celebration of this new house. Our priest was there to bless it. After the singing was over Pablo handed the keys to Hermilda. “This is yours, Mother,” he said. She cried with her friends out of happiness.
That’s the way Pablo gave things away to our family. At Christmas in 1981 he bought an entire block and built houses for members of the Gavíria family, about forty houses total. He wanted the family living close together. He gave our family many presents, including nice cars. Not Porsches or BMWs, but regular cars for safe transportation. The children in the family had their education supported. For Maria Victoria, his own wife, he would give anything. Whatever she wanted he would have for her—beautiful clothes, jewelry, paintings, and many houses.
For himself, Pablo was not that interested in fancy clothes. He wore jeans and white sneakers pretty much every day, although he always had new sneakers. But Pablo bought pleasure. He had a lot of beautiful cars and so many farms and houses and we had many people to serve us at all times of day and night. We ate food prepared for royalty. And when possible we traveled; Pablo loved to travel with his family and friends. In 1982 we went all over Europe and then to Hong Kong. It was in 1983, when it was still safe for us to travel, that we made our second visit to the United States—and that was when we went to Disney World and the White House and Las Vegas where we made friends with Frank Sinatra.
This was years before Pablo became infamous in America. Pablo, Gustavo, and I took all our families, including our wives and children, our sisters and cousins, nieces and nephews, and our mother to Florida. We visited Disney World and other tourist places, and we had some business meetings too. One night we almost got killed. Pablo, Gustavo, and I and a couple of the guys went to a monster truck rally. We were sitting there happily right in the front row, in the best seats we could buy, watching these huge trucks smashing cars, when I got the feeling that we should move. “Come on,” I told him. “We need to move now.” Pablo thought I was silly, but he moved. We all moved.
A few seconds later a monster truck smashed into the place we had been sitting. If we hadn’t moved we would have been killed. Pablo just looked at me with wonder, and said, “Are you a magician or what?” How did I know to move? There was no answer, I just felt that we had to.
Another night in Miami we almost got arrested. Pablo and I and our two bodyguards, Otto and Pinina, went to a nightclub to meet some associates. I always carried cash with me wherever we went. That night I had at least $50,000, hidden at the bottom of a camera bag under a nice camera and souvenir T-shirts for the kids. When we left the club we got into a large van. While we were waiting for the remainder of our friends the driver fell asleep or skidded, and the van went crashing into several other expensive cars. The event was bigger than the damage, but people got scared and started yelling. The police came racing toward us. Pablo said to me, “We don’t need this, let’s get out of here.”
We ran away, not wanting to answer questions about the cash we were carrying. Maybe running wasn’t such a good idea. The police stopped us half a block away. “Somebody told us you were involved in the accident,” they said. They frisked us, but just casually. They didn’t find the money. Pablo denied we had been in the van. He explained innocently that we were just plain tourists from Colombia. The police locked us in the back of their police car and returned to the scene. This was a dangerous situation for us. The police did not know who we were and definitely we did not want them to check our identities. We didn’t know what the government had on file about us. We had to get out of there.
The police made the mistake of leaving a nightstick in their car. We were able to use that to reach into the front and open the locks. We opened the door and got out of the patrol car. We ran. We took a taxi back to the hotel and got out of there with our belongings, spending the night at the
home of a friend. Otto and Pinina stayed at the accident and paid the owner about $10,000 cash, much more than the cost of repairs. But to be careful we left Florida the next morning.
We went to Washington, D.C., and did the tour of the FBI Building, we visited President Kennedy’s grave, and we had our pictures taken in front of the White House. I remember that Pablo was fascinated by the FBI museum, particularly the guns belonging to the famous criminals like Al Capone and Pretty Boy Floyd. From there we went to Memphis to see Elvis Presley’s house, Graceland. Pablo Escobar and Elvis Presley, the two kings! Pablo loved Elvis’s music. He played his tapes all the time and used to try to dance like him. “Look at me, Colombian Elvis!” While we were there he bought the entire collection of Elvis’s music—and years later when we submitted ourselves to arrest that collection was one of the things he took into the prison with him. When we left prison we couldn’t take it with us, which Pablo always regretted. Somebody stole it.
Our families went home and Gustavo, Pablo, and I went to Las Vegas. We had arranged for more than $1 million in cash to be waiting there for us. We stayed at Caesars Palace for five days, and I actually won $150,000 playing blackjack. We had an American friend who made all the arrangements for us, and he was the one who introduced us to Frank Sinatra, who was singing at the hotel. Supposedly our friend, who did big real estate deals, told him that we were important real estate investors from Colombia. It quickly became obvious that Sinatra thought we were involved in the Mafia, but I don’t know if he knew of our involvement in the drug business. I have absolutely no knowledge if Pablo and Sinatra did any business. There are stories, but I don’t know the facts.
I know that we had dinner one night with Sinatra and our translators in a private room in the back of a restaurant. It was an honor for us. When I met him I actually had goose bumps, but I had to be cool to maintain my position. During dinner Pablo told Sinatra that we were going to make a helicopter tour the next day and Sinatra asked to come with us. The next day Frank Sinatra became our guide as we spent about an hour and a half flying all over the area. This is the Colorado River, this is the Grand Canyon. He showed us all the scenery.
We got some of his albums signed by him—and lost those too when we escaped from the prison.
Supposedly, after Pablo became infamous our friend who had arranged this got a phone call from Sinatra. “I’ve been watching TV,” he said. “Is that Pablo Escobar the guy we met in Las Vegas?” I don’t know what happened after that, but I guess Sinatra said very firmly that he didn’t want to be associated with Pablo. And until now he never has.
It was a great life we were leading. We had to be careful with our actions, but nothing like what it would soon become. Although none of us knew it at the time, the wars had actually begun in 1979, when the United States and Colombia signed a treaty that declared drug trafficking a crime against the United States and permitted Colombian traffickers to be extradited to the U.S. It was that law that changed everything.
Four
IKNOW THAT AS THE PRESSURE ON PABLO INCREASED, as people who had profited from him betrayed him, to protect himself and his family and the business, Pablo became vengeful against those who deceived him or his organization. But for as many people who will tell you that Pablo killed someone himself there are as many who say that he only gave the orders. Pablo wouldn’t kill anybody himself, and of that I am sure. The Lion remembers being there when Pablo made his decisions. “When Pablo talked it was an order. Everybody knew that what he said was going to happen. So he would say, ‘You have to kill this guy,’ like it was nothing. He would say it as if he was asking for more water. But I never saw Pablo doing anything himself. None of the executives ever saw that.”
There are people who tell stories about things they supposedly saw at the Hacienda Napoles. George Jung, the original partner of Carlos Lehder, said that he was at Napoles when a man was brought there by two bodyguards. Later Jung was told the man had been caught providing information for the police. This man believed that if he had escaped his whole family would have been killed so instead he gave himself up. Jung claims that as he watched, Pablo got up from the table, walked over to the man, and from a few feet away shot him in the chest.
This is typical of the stories told about Pablo, but like most of them I don’t believe it to be true. I know what the world believes about my brother and I know his legend has been built on tales of brutality like this one. People have their reasons for telling these stories. And I know that when I protest against them people think that I am protecting my brother. But I am telling the truth as I know it to be.
The violence was always part of it, but it was never the soul of Napoles. Napoles was Pablo’s favorite home, it was his finest possession, it was loved by the family and all our friends, and it was a place unlike any that had ever been built in Colombia.
Hacienda Napoles was a drive of several hours or a brief flight from Medellín. Far enough away from the problems, and the people, of the city. Pablo and Gustavo bought the land and began building their dream kingdom in the late 1970s. It was ready in 1980, almost 7,500 acres of beautiful land, with a river running through the property. The land was spread over two departments, or political regions. Eventually it would contain several houses in addition to the large main house, a complete zoo opened for free to the people, as well as some runways for airplanes to do business. For someone who had been raised as simply as he had, Pablo somehow understood and appreciated great quality in all parts of his life. And Napoles was the fulfillment of all his material passions.
There are two things that everyone who was ever there remembers: Above the entrance gate he had mounted that first Piper airplane that he used in the business. He believed that airplane had started his fortune. After passing through the strong security at the gate, people would drive on a winding road past fields of lime trees, lemon trees, and all sorts of tropical fruit past the open meadow with several thousand grazing purebred Braham cattle, for almost two miles until they reached the zoo. The zoo was another crazy dream of Pablo’s that came true. Who builds a zoo at his house?
This was a real zoo with many big animals, including hippopotamuses, rhinoceroses, giraffes and ostriches and elephants, emus, a pink dolphin, zebras, monkeys, and a kangaroo that liked to kick soccer balls. There were also many types of exotic birds. Pablo loved birds, especially parrots, and wanted to have a male and a female of every species. He had a favorite parrot, Chinchón, who could name most of the great soccer players of Colombia. However, Chinchón also liked to sip whiskey and would fall asleep. Unfortunately, one evening she fell asleep on a table and one of the cats ate her. After that Pablo prohibited cats from Napoles—even big cats like lions and tigers.
Pablo bought the animals from the circuses that performed in Colombia as well as from the United States. It was legal to buy them in America, but not legal to import them into Colombia without a special license. Bringing those animals in from America was a big problem, a very big problem. How do you smuggle a rhinoceros? Pablo was careful, and a veterinarian traveled with each animal to advise our keepers about the proper care of the animal. Usually they were landed on our business runways and transported by our disguised trucks to Napoles. One time, though, a rhino arrived illegally in Medellín but it was too late to drive it to Napoles. The journey would take them through guerrilla territory and they did not want to make that trip at night. That left Pablo with a great problem—how do you hide a rhino overnight? Even in Medellín where people have become used to some unusual sights that was hard to do. It was suggested they put it in a private car garage and so that’s what they did. The truck put the cage inside this garage and a keeper stayed with it. The family kept its car on the street that night, although they could not explain to anyone that it was necessary to do so because there was a rhinoceros in their garage. The next morning it was put on a truck and driven to Napoles where it joined the herd. There was a whispered saying that came from that: “If he is willing to hide an
illegal rhinoceros there is no question he would hide cocaine anywhere.”
The only animals that I kept at Napoles were my horses, my beautiful horses. From the time I was a boy I have loved riding and when it became possible I started buying horses to ride and to breed. Pablo didn’t share my passion for them, he never bought one for himself, only for the ranch. But he would often joke with me, “Oh, what a beautiful horse. You spend all your money on these expensive horses. That’s a crazy thing to do.”
I would respond to him, “You know, Pablo, at least I enjoy riding my horses, but you and all those animals . . . You don’t enjoy the animals. Try to ride a hippo and see what happens.”
Pablo did keep some horses at Napoles. He had four horses that pulled a silver carriage slowly around the property, and he also had miniature ponies to entertain the children who visited.
The zoo at Napoles was open for the public to enjoy. Pablo explained to a Medellín newspaper, “Napoles zoo belongs to the Colombian people. We built it so that children and adults, rich and poor, can enjoy it, and owners cannot pay for what is already theirs.”
One day three years after the zoo had been open an official document from the Institute of Renewable Resources arrived and told Pablo he possessed eighty-five animals and he did not have the proper license: “This is all illegal. You have these animals without permits. What are you going to do about it?”
Pablo was polite. “Please, if you want, take them,” he said casually. “But you know the government doesn’t have the money to feed them all and take care of them. So you should sign this paper and I’ll take care of them.” The government fined Pablo about $4,500 but left the animals at Napoles.
In addition to his real animals, Pablo had five full-size cement prehistoric animals, including a T. rex and a woolly mammoth, all constructed for the children to play on them.
