by David Fisher
There were more than a hundred bombings. This was all-out war. Judges were bombed. Newspapers who wrote in favor of extradition were bombed. Every policeman had become a target. The police of Medellín had stopped living in their own homes to protect their families and stayed together in secure places. Everyone in the city, probably in the country, were touched somehow by the bombing campaign. For example our cousin, “the girl with the pretty hair,” was a student at college. She was registered there under a new name and only her best friend knew of her family. During the war against the police a bomb was placed in a police car near a stadium and when it exploded hundreds of people were killed and wounded. It was horrible. Even now I can’t really understand or accept how it came to this. But there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. In that bombing the grandparents of another student were killed. When it was reported a few days later that Pablo’s men had planted the bomb this student approached our cousin in the cafeteria filled with people. “Your cousin killed my grandparents,” she screamed and started hitting her. She grabbed her by the hair and pulled her down.
The girl with the pretty hair started crying too, not for herself, but for the grandparents, for everything that was happening in our country. She grabbed the girl by the arm and put her into a corner. “Stop screaming,” she said. “I want you to understand this has nothing to with me. I have the same last name, but I had nothing to do with this incident. I’m not like that. I can’t go to Pablo and tell him ‘Stop doing this.’ I can’t.”
But later she did go to Pablo and ask him why he did such terrible things. And he told her, “You don’t even know how many people that I care about are gone because of this war. This is what I have to do.”
She said to him that he had two personalities. Sometimes he could be so nice and kind, but on the other hand, “You can be so ruthless.”
“They made me like this,” he said. “I have to be strong. I have to fight back because people turned their backs on me. I know I’m not going to die like a regular drug dealer.”
If there was one personal enemy Pablo had it was General Miguel Maza Márquez, the head of the DAS, a man who had made a vow to defeat the cartels. In an American trial a drug pilot testified that Maza had been involved in the cocaine business, that he had been told by a major connection that Maza was shipping between twenty and twenty-five kilos a flight. I have no personal knowledge of this; it could be another situation of someone trying to make a good deal for himself at the sake of an innocent man. But is it possible? In Colombia in those days anything was possible. Until the government focused on Medellín the money was so easy to make and the big people were not touched at all. The only people taking the risks were those on the lower levels who were actually doing the moving. It was well known that many famous people in politics in Colombia had been involved in small ways in the business. If Pablo or his high associates agreed to include your drugs in their shipments you were almost guaranteed to make a profit.
There was also the possibility that some agents were on the payroll of the drug organizations. A lot of poor people feared the DAS in that period just like the police for all the atrocities done in the city much more than they respected it. To them DAS wasn’t the Colombian FBI, it was the police who came in the night.
Maza has said that Pablo offered him money through a lawyer to work with the cartel and that he turned him down. That I had not heard. But it makes good sense. So many politicians and policemen were happy to take money from the traffickers that there would be no reason not to make such an offer.
Pablo despised Maza, due to the crimes committed by him and his agency. Numerous times Pablo had denounced these illegal acts to the Colombian government but everything was overlooked. Maza has claimed that Pablo made seven attempts to kill him. Maybe. There were many bombings at this time. In one car bombing Maza lived but seven of his bodyguards were killed. Maza proved to be a very lucky man. In December of 1989 the plan was to blow up the entire DAS building to kill him. This would be just like bombing the FBI Building in Washington, D.C.
At least a thousand and perhaps as much as eight thousand pounds of explosives were loaded onto a bus. One man was waiting in the lobby of the building. After Maza and his bodyguards arrived this inside man was supposed to contact the outside men with the bus and give them the okay. Then they were to direct the bus into the lobby of the building and explode it. But the plan went wrong in many respects. The man inside was waiting and waiting but he didn’t see Maza arrive because he came into the building a different way than usual. Finally the inside guy decided to step outside—and when the bombers saw him walk out of the building they detonated the bomb—almost killing him too.
It was probably the biggest bomb of the whole war. The bus crashed into a car outside the building, and the whole front of the building came off as if it had been pulled away. The bomb was so strong that the engine of the bus landed on the roof of a knocked-down building blocks away. There was serious damage to buildings as far as twenty blocks away. At least fifty people in the DAS headquarters and nearby were killed and as many as a thousand were wounded. It was written in newspapers that the walls of the building were covered in blood and, unfortunately, parts of bodies were found many blocks from the explosion. If the bus had managed to reach the building there would have been even bigger destruction.
But Maza survived. His office had been protected with steel and that saved his life. He said that he was almost the only person on his floor to survive the attack.
I always loved my brother, but my soul was not blind. I could see that there were parts of him that I couldn’t recognize. Now more than ever we lived day to day. Each movement had to be planned in secret. There was no going back to Napoles or the places we knew. Even seeing our families was difficult as we guessed they were being watched. Gustavo, for example, would show up in disguise—like all of us he would wear a mustache, glasses, a hat, and even a wig—at the home of a friend without any announcement. He would wait in their small living room and during the next few hours his wife and some of his children would arrive. The family would show up at different times in different cars. They would share cups of hot chocolate, knowing the time was precious. When they left, Gustavo would hug them and even sometimes cry. When we saw the people we loved no one knew if it was going to be the last time ever.
No one can ever know with confidence how many people died on all sides in the drug war. There were so many deaths that the figure is lost. Certainly many judges and policemen and politicians died, and three of the five candidates for the presidency in 1990 were killed, as well as members of the drug organizations and our families and friends. When I turned myself in for a second time and was sent to the maximum security prison in Itagüi, we built a board as a shrine to honor the perished friends and family. There were so many good names on that board. So many innocent people died for no reason. All of it could have been avoided. That’s the real tragedy; it all could have been avoided.
While the bombings continued Los Extraditables began kidnapping the elite of Colombia. The very wealthy and their families in most ways had been protected from the street violence, and because they controlled the power it seemed obvious that nothing would change until they were affected. The news said that the kidnappings were just a way to raise money by ransom, but money was never short. More than the money it was the pressure that these people could apply on the government to end the extradition treaty that was the real goal, and of course to let everybody know what kinds of corrupted officials were running the show with their gruesome murders. Rich people were taken off the streets, and most of the time their chauffeurs were killed to send the message.
The kidnappings of the wealthy had more effect than all the violence. The government used three former presidents to negotiate with the Extraditables. I think it’s true that Pablo wanted the fighting to end. He knew that this was not a way to live—or to die. But the one thing that Pablo always insisted on absolutely was an end to extradition.
Everything else could be negotiated. The business would end, he would give up some of his fortune, he would surrender and agree to serve time in prison, there could be some compromise on all points—but there could be no compromise about extradition. There were times we spoke about this and I saw his frustration.
The country was in chaos and confusion. Before in Colombia, the shadow world had been allowed to exist along with the public world and there was calm and stability in the country. The government had accepted and even worked with the emerald trade, the marijuana smugglers, and all the illegal businesses. It was safe for everyone to walk in the streets. Everyone was making money. The people outside the business almost never got hurt. But that was not true anymore. By attacking the Medellín cartel and especially Pablo, who had become a political figure when he announced his presidential aspirations, the government had forced them to fight back. This was the terrible result.
A few of the leaders that lived in the poor neighborhoods of Medellín were murdered for supporting Pablo’s political career. I believe the real reason this war against my brother began was because of his politics, instead of the drug business. When Pablo used to get up on stage to give his speech to thousands of followers throughout the country his ideals were compared to that of presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, who had been assassinated in 1948. Gaitan had been Pablo’s idol. Pablo’s ideals in his speeches were to work to eradicate poverty in our country, provide a chance for an education, health care, and decent employment for everybody in the country. He was proud that he had always shared his winnings with the country’s poorest people.
The government attacks did have many successes. A lot of our people were killed by the national police, Cali, or by the elite troops of the Search Bloc. Hernando, who was the manager of Napoles, was with his family on a farm for a weekend. Our enemies showed up at the place and Hernando told his son to run and hide. These people took a tool and broke every bone in Hernando’s hands and fingers and burned him all over his body with cigars until he was dead. Many of our employees were killed, including Ricardo Prisco and his brother Armando, who was shot by the national police as he sat in his wheelchair. Two of María Victoria’s brothers, Pablo’s brothers-in-law, were killed. Our cousin Luis Alfanso was killed and his parents, Lucy and Arnand, were beaten black and blue and burned and killed. Another cousin Rodrigo Gavíria, had his skull blown off by a machine gun, and another cousin, John Jairo Urquijo Gavíria, was shot as he tried to flee, as was their eighty-seven-year-old father, Luis Enrique Urquijo, an innocent man who had gone to church every day. My cousin José Gavíria was tied up in front of his wife and children and stabbed in the neck and allowed to die there. Our cousin Lucila Restrepo Gavíria was gunned down with her husband in front of her children. Now they all rest in the family cemetery with Pablo.
On August 7, 1990, Cesár Gavíria, Galan’s campaign manager, became the president of our country. Gavíria immediately announced his new policy: The government would continue to fight against drug terrorism, the bombings and kidnappings and assassinations, but Colombia could not stop drug business without the cooperation of the rest of the world. He said, “Drug trafficking is an international phenomenon that can only be resolved through the joint action of all affected countries. . . . And no success will be possible in this area if there is not a substantial reduction of demand in consumer countries.” There were many people who did not understand the important difference. This was interpreted to mean that there could be some agreement if the violence was stopped. But the new president’s message was clear; he wanted to change the situation.
But any thought that real change might come quickly ended four days later when the Search Bloc found Gustavo in a guarded house in Medellín and killed him in a gunfight: Gustavo, who had been with Pable since the first day. The shame of that for Pablo was that Gustavo almost lived to see the war against the government won.
Three weeks after Gustavo died the daughter of a former president, Diana Turbay, was kidnapped. It’s not possible to really know how that affected the government, maybe it didn’t at all, but Pablo had proved to them again that their own families could not be protected. A week later the new president agreed that those drug traffickers who surrendered would receive reduced sentences. They would have to serve some time in prison for drug trafficking, but they would eventually walk out free to live the rest of their lives.
During the next few months the three Ochoa brothers surrendered and eventually got reasonable prison sentences, but Pablo refused until the government agreed to change the constitution and put in new justice laws. He never for one second forgot the sentence the Americans put on Carlos Lehder, life plus 135 years in a maximum security penitentiary. Better a grave in Colombia than a jail cell in the United States.
Today the situation in Colombia is the opposite. Drug dealers work differently. The sentences in Colombia are more rigid than in the U.S. because there by giving up the names of other people and some money it is possible to have a long sentence reduced. Many present-day drug dealers earn fortunes and after serving some time recover it. These sorts of benefits are reserved for the wealthy drug lords, not for the petty drug dealers.
The negotiations with the government went on for almost a year. Most of the meetings took place in the middle of the night at farms owned by Pablo outside Medellín. In 1990 the M-19 guerrillas that Pablo had long ago fought for the kidnapping of Martha Nieves, Pablo’s friend’s sister, had made a deal with the government that allowed them to end the violence, surrender their weapons, and become a political party, and in return they would receive pardons for their crimes. Pablo believed he should be granted the same offer. Why not? M-19 had been guilty of violence; it was their guns behind the raid on the Justice Ministry. And yet the government had allowed them an entrance back into society. So why not Pablo and his associates? Even before the negotiations began Pablo had decided exactly what he wanted and what he would give in return.
The attorneys and government representatives who came to these meetings were picked up at night by vans without windows and had to wear black glasses so they couldn’t see anything. They were driven around for a time so they wouldn’t know how far from the city they had traveled. Even our own representatives did not know where we were hiding or how to get directly in touch with Pablo.
Meanwhile, unknown to us, American airplanes were still flying over Medellín, listening to telephone conversations, trying desperately to find Pablo. Cali was also trying hard to find Pablo. There was no question they knew we were talking to the government and they wanted to find Pablo before an agreement could be made. At this time there were no criminal charges against me. There was no reason for them to arrest me. But people on the payroll had told us that Cali had put out an order to kill me. So, unbelievable as it seems, the safest place for me was in prison with Pablo.
The church played an important role in these negotiations. Even with his sins, Pablo remained a religious man. Like our mother, who was saved from death when a picture of the Baby Jesus of Atocha fell on her and protected her, he almost always slept beneath a drawing or painting of Jesus. During his telephone conversations with our mother they often prayed together. Father Rafael García Herreros appeared on television every night just before seven o’clock on the show Minute of God. The audience heard him say, “I would like to speak to Pablo Escobar, on the edge of the sea, right here, on this beach,” but what they did not know was that Father García provided information for us about the progress of the negotiations, like when the government wanted to meet with our representatives, with his secret signals. For example, on his TV show he would say that they got a donation of 1,370,000 pesos, but what he was telling Pablo was that they were going to have a meeting on the 13th at seven o’clock.
When Pablo and I spoke on the telephone we also used a code. In the most dangerous time Pablo would call himself Theresita, the name of the nanny we had as little children, to avoid danger in case the phones were tapped. Theresit
a was a woman who did not wear shoes. She used to change our diapers, feed us with the baby bottle, and was with us until she died of cancer. When Theresita died I was saddened and thought why the scientists hadn’t discovered a cure for this disease. This began the great search of my later life. I started to buy every book I could find about cancer. In 1987, when one of my favorite horses got sick with equine anemia, I started to research this disease, which is similar in many ways to the human AIDS virus. When all of our troubles began I had to put aside my desire to contribute to finding a cure for this terrible disease.
One of the most important people involved in these negotiations was Archbishop Dario Castrillón of Pereira, who had a special relationship with the president, having been the official at his marriage. Pablo also had a strong friendship with this priest; he had worked with the churches of Colombia for many years, giving money to provide food, clothing, and shelter for the parishes of Medellín and Antioquia. The archbishop was important throughout all the negotiations until the end, and at this moment he is serving in the Vatican. It was normal for Pablo to use a helicopter to visit small villages in Chocó or Urabá. Even during the worst times Pablo continued to help the underprivileged citizens in these government-forsaken towns. Pablo and I met with the archbishop in a house at the highest point in El Poblado to ask him to go directly to the new president with his offer. Pablo told him, “I’ve decided to surrender myself but I have to get some guarantees before that. I would like you personally to take this message to the president so there will be no mistake.”
