Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar

by Virginia Vallejo

  The program filmed in the dump causes a national sensation. All my colleagues want to interview Pablo Escobar and find out where he gets his money: a thirty-three-year-old alternate congressman who seems to have inexhaustible resources and a generosity never seen before, as well as an unnerving flair for political leadership that comes from his unusual blend of money and heart. Many want to know, as well, the nature of his relationship with a high-society TV star who has always jealously guarded her private life. I roundly deny any romance with a married man, and I advise Pablo not to grant any interviews until after the test I plan to give him before a camera in his TV studio. He agrees, but grudgingly.

  “Next week I’m going to invite you to the First Forum Against the Extradition Treaty, here in Medellín,” he tells me. “And at the next one, in Barranquilla, you’ll meet the most important men in my trade, who are also now the richest men in the country. Almost all of them are with us in MAS, and they’re determined to defeat that monstrosity, whatever it takes. By force, if necessary.”

  I tell him that that bellicose language is going to win him many enemies in the initial stage of his rising political career. I advise him to study Sun Tzu’s The Art of War so he can learn strategy and patience. I teach him some of the wise philosopher’s maxims, such as “Don’t attack uphill.” He says that when it comes to strategy, he adapts his to the needs of the moment. And anyway, books bore him terribly, and he has me, who has read voraciously since I was little, so he doesn’t have to study. He knows this is the last thing a desirable woman in love wants to hear, so he adds in a merry tone, “I bet you can’t guess the alias I’ve instructed my men to use for you when you land at the airport? None other than…‘Belisario Betancur,’ the president, so you can enter the underworld at the highest level! You can’t complain, my dear V.V.!”

  And he laughs with that mischievousness that disarms me, that in one fell swoop erases all my worries and melts me in his arms as if I were a caramel ice cream with vanilla and chocolate chips, left outside on a summer afternoon.

  The people who travel in his plane with me are an ever more varied group. One person is coming back from speaking to Kim Il Sung in North Korea. Another passenger, returning from the most recent summit of Non-Aligned Nations, knows Petra Kelly, founder of the German Green Party, whom Pablo has decided to invite to see his zoo and his social projects. Another guest is a personal friend of Yasser Arafat’s. Once we are in Pablo and Gustavo’s offices, the color blue replaces red, very dark glasses are everywhere, and the green is not exactly the one of European environmentalists: that group is from the police F2; the Paraguayan man is close to Stroessner’s son or son-in-law; those men over there are Mexican three-star generals; the ones with the suitcases are Israeli arms dealers; and those in the back have come from Liberia. Pablo’s life in those first months of 1983 seems like the Permanent Assembly of the United Nations. And I learn gradually that the man I love, on top of a talent for disguising himself and buying nationalities, has a chameleonlike ability to adapt his political ideology to the consuming audience. His discourse is extremely leftist to appeal to his poorest listeners, political parties, and the media; it becomes the most bone-chilling and repressive right to defend his family, his business, his property and interests when he’s in front of multimillionaire associates or uniformed allies. And he flaunts both extremes in front of the challenging woman he loves, showing off his talents as a puppeteer of history, in perfect control of the multicolored strings of that formidable web he’s weaving. He has chosen her as the observer of his evolutionary processes, and as a possible accomplice so that she can see how every form of masculine power converges in him. And, as he makes her into the sole witness of his ability to subjugate all other men, she’s discovering as well his ability to seduce other women.

  The first Forum Against Extradition is held in Medellín. Pablo invites me to sit at the main table beside the priest Elías Lopera, who is sitting to his right. There, for the first time, I hear his fiery nationalist speech against that legal concept. Over time, the fight against extradition will become his obsession, his cause and his fate, the plight of an entire nation. It will affect millions of our countrymen and claim thousands of victims, and it will be a cross for him and for me to bear. In Colombia, justice almost always takes twenty years or more in coming—if it comes at all, because along the way it’s often sold to the highest bidder. The system is designed to protect the criminal and wear down the victim, which means that someone with Pablo’s financial resources is destined to enjoy the most egregious impunity throughout his life. But a black cloud has now appeared, not only on his horizon but on that of everyone in his trade: the possibility that any accused Colombian can be requested for extradition by the U.S. government. In other words, they could be tried in a country with an efficient judicial system, high-security prisons, multiple life sentences, and the death penalty.

  In that first forum, Pablo speaks before his peers using much more belligerent language than I have heard from him. He doesn’t hold back in his fierce attacks on the rising political leader Luis Carlos Galán. Pablo berates the presidential candidate for having expelled him from his movement, Renovación Liberal (Liberal Renewal), whose main cause is the fight against corruption. In 1982, after Galán found out where Pablo’s money really came from, he had notified Escobar of his expulsion—though without mentioning him by name—in front of thousands of people gathered in Berrío Park in Medellín. As long as he lives, Pablo will never forgive him for that.

  I had met Luis Carlos Galán twelve years before in the house of one of the nicest women I ever remember meeting: the beautiful and elegant Lily Urdinola, from Cali. I was twenty-one years old, and I had just divorced Fernando Borrero Caicedo, an architect who looked exactly like Omar Sharif and was twenty-five years older than me. Lily had just separated from the owner of a sugar mill in the Cauca del Valle, and now she had three suitors. One night she invited them all to dinner, and she asked her brother Antonio and me to help her choose among them. There was the Swiss millionaire who owned a bakery chain, the rich Jewish owner of a clothing chain, and the shy young man with an aquiline nose and enormous blue eyes whose only capital seemed to be a brilliant political future. Although that night neither of us voted for Luis Carlos Galán, a few months later, at twenty-six years old, the quiet young man with light eyes became the youngest minister in Colombia’s history. I never told Pablo about this “defeat,” but for the rest of my life I would regret not having given my vote to Luis Carlos that night, because if Lily had let him court her, between the two of us I’m sure we could have fixed that blessed problem between him and Pablo, and thousands of deaths and millions of horrors could have been avoided.

  The photograph of Pablo and me at the first Forum Against the Extradition Treaty becomes the first of many to document the beginning of the most well-known part of our relationship. A few months later, the magazine Semana will use it to illustrate an article on “the paisa Robin Hood,” and with that generous description, Pablo will begin to build his legend, first in Colombia and then in the rest of the world. After that, in all our encounters, Pablo will greet me with a kiss and a hug followed by two spins, and then he’ll always ask me:

  “What are they saying in Bogotá about Reagan and me?”

  And I’ll tell him in detail what everyone thinks of him, because what they say about President Reagan is only interesting to Nancy’s astrologist and the Republican congresspeople in Washington.

  For the second Forum Against the Extradition Treaty we travel to Barranquilla. We stay in the presidential suite of a recently opened grand hotel, instead of El Prado, one of my favorites. Pablo likes only the most modern things, while I like only the most elegant, and we will always argue over what he considers “antiquated” and what I see as “magical.” The event takes place at Iván Lafaurie’s splendid residence. The house was beautifully decorated by my friend Silvia Gómez, who has also done all my apartments since I was twen
ty-one.

  This time, the media has not been invited. Pablo tells me that the poorest of the participants has ten million dollars, while the fortunes of his partners—the three Ochoa brothers and Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha, “the Mexican”—plus his own and Gustavo Gaviria’s, total several billion dollars and far exceed those of Colombia’s traditional tycoons. While he is telling me that almost all the attendees are members of MAS, I’m reading disconcertion in the expressions on many faces when they see a well-known TV journalist is present.

  “Today you will witness a historic declaration of war. Where do you want to sit? In the first row down below, looking at me and the bosses of my movement, who you met in Medellín? Or at the main table, looking out at the four hundred men who are going to bathe this country in blood if that extradition treaty is approved?”

  As I’m starting to get used to his Napoleonic speaking style, I choose to sit at the far right of the main table. It’s not that I want to get to know those four hundred faces of the new millionaires who could eventually replace—and even guillotine—my powerful friends and ex-lovers in the traditional oligarchy (a thought that produces mixed emotions in me, from deepest fear to the most exquisite delight). Rather, I want to try to read on those hardened and leery faces what people really think of the man I love. While I don’t like what I see, what I hear makes my blood run cold. I don’t know it, but this starry night, in this mansion surrounded by gardens beside the Caribbean Sea, is the baptism by fire of the Colombian narco-paramilitarism. And I am attending it as the only woman, the only witness, and the only possible historical chronicler.

  When the speeches are over and the forum ends, I descend from the stage and walk toward the pool. Pablo stays, chatting with the hosts and his partners, who all congratulate him effusively. A crowd of curious people surrounds me, and several of the attendees ask me what I’m doing here. One man, who looks like a traditional landowner and livestock breeder from the Coast—with one of those last names like Lecompte, Lemaitre, or Pavajeau—emboldened by rum or whiskey, says in a loud voice for all to hear:

  “Now, I’m too old for one of these kids to come in and tell me who to vote for! I’m a godo [member of the Conservative Party], the old-fashioned and lifelong sort, and I’m voting for Álvaro Gómez, period! That’s a serious guy, not like that rascal Santofimio! Where does this Johnny-come-lately Escobar get off, thinking he can barge in and give me orders? Does he think he has more money and more cattle than me, or what?”

  “Now that I know you can get a TV star with the coke money, I’m going to get rid of Magola, my wife, and marry the actress Amparito Grisales!” brags another one behind me.

  “Does this poor girl know that the guy was a ‘trigger man’ who’s got more than two hundred deaths under his belt?” taunts a third one in a low voice to a small group gathered around him. They celebrate his words with nervous laughter before beating a fast retreat.

  “Doña Virginia—” an older man who seems to be listening to the others with displeasure addresses me. “My son was kidnapped by the FARC over three years ago, and they still have him. May God bless Escobar and Lehder and all these men who are so brave and determined. People like them are what this country needs, because our army is too poor to fight alone against the guerrillas who’ve gotten rich off kidnapping. Now that we’re joining forces, I know that I can dream of seeing my son again before I die. And that he will be able to hug his wife again and finally meet my grandson!”

  Pablo introduces me to Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha, “the Mexican,” who is accompanied by some of the Boyacá emerald dealers. He receives warm congratulations from almost all the participants, and we stay chatting for a while with his friends and associates. When we return to the hotel, I don’t say anything about what I heard. I only comment that some of the people—like the right-wingers they clearly are—seem to feel a deep distrust for someone as liberal as Santofimio, Pablo’s candidate.

  “Wait till someone kidnaps their sons, and the first one of our colleagues is extradited, and you’ll see how they run to vote for whoever we tell them to!”

  After he was expelled from Luis Carlos Galán’s movement, Pablo Escobar had joined that of Senator Alberto Santofimio, the liberal leader from the Tolima Department. Santofimio is very close to ex-president Alfonso López Michelsen, whose son’s mother-in-law is his cousin. Gloria Valencia de Castaño, “the First Lady of Colombian TV,” is the unrecognized daughter of an uncle of Santofimio’s, and her only daughter, Pilar Castaño, is married to Felipe López Caballero, the editor of the magazine Semana.

  In every Colombian presidential and senate election, the flow of santofimista votes constitutes a substantial part of the total obtained by the Liberal Party, which exceeds the Conservative Party in number of votes and presidents elected. Santofimio is charismatic and has a reputation for being an excellent public speaker, as well as the most able, ambitious, and astute politician in the country. He is around forty years old and is figured to be a presidential hopeful. A short and chubby man, he has a satisfied face and is almost always smiling. We have never been friends, but I like him and I’ve always called him Alberto. (In 1983, everyone calls me Virginia socially, and I call other well-known personalities by their first names; I only use the term “Doctor” with those I want to keep at a distance, and “Mr. President” with heads of state. In 2006, after twenty years of ostracism, people will call me “señora” and I’ll call them “Doctor” and “Doctora,” while former presidents, when they see me coming, will take off at a run.)

  A few months before Escobar and I met, he and Santofimio, along with other Colombian congresspeople, had attended the inauguration of the socialist Felipe González as prime minister of Spain. González’s trusted adviser, Enrique Sarasola, is married to a Colombian woman. I had interviewed González for TV in 1981, and I’d met Sarasola in Madrid during my first honeymoon. With a terribly serious expression, Pablo has described for me the scene in which the other politicians in the retinue asked him for cocaine in a Madrid nightclub, and how offended he was. And thus I confirmed what I already knew: the King of Coke seems to detest, almost as much as I do, the export product on which he is building a tax-free empire. The only person Pablo has given coke rocks to without even being asked is his girlfriend’s previous boyfriend, and he didn’t exactly do it for humanitarian or philanthropic reasons.

  Since in 1983 the liberal senators Galán and Santofimio are the two surest options for a generational changing of the guard in the 1986–1990 presidential term, Pablo and Alberto have become fierce allies against the presidential campaign of Luis Carlos Galán. Escobar has admitted to me that for the midterm elections in 1984, he is investing millions into Santofimio’s political movement. I try to convince him that it’s time for him to call the recipient of his donations by his first name, as Julio Mario Santo Domingo does with Alfonso López, but Pablo will always call his candidate “Doctor.” In the following years, “El Santo” will be the constant link between Escobar’s operation and the political class, the bureaucracy, the Liberal Party, and, above all, President López. El Santo even connects him to parts of the Armed Forces. In fact, his cousin is the son of a well-known army general and is married to the daughter of Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela, one of the heads of the Cali Cartel.

  *

  —

  TODAY I AM RADIANT WITH HAPPINESS. Pablo is coming to the congressional sessions in Bogotá, and he’s finally going to come to my apartment. And he says he’s bringing another surprise! Every petal on every rose is perfect, and so is everything else: my bossa nova music on the stereo, the rosé champagne in the refrigerator, my favorite perfume, the dress from Paris, and the copy of Twenty Love Poems by Pablo Neruda on the coffee table. Clara, my best friend at the time, has come from Cali. She sells antiques, and she wants to offer Pablo a Christ from the seventeenth century for Father Elías Lopera. For the moment, only she, Margot, Martita, and Pablo’s partners know about our relationship.

 
; The doorbell rings. I dash down the steps that separate the study and the three bedrooms from the social part of my apartment, which is more than two thousand square feet. When I reach the living room, I find myself face-to-face not only with the candidate and his patron but also with more than half a dozen bodyguards. They insolently look me over from head to toe and then take the elevator down to wait for their boss in the garages or the lobby. The elevator comes up again with another dozen men and goes back down with half a dozen. The scene is repeated three times, and three times Pablo reads the displeasure on my face. Everything in my reproachful expression warns him that this will be the first and last time in his life that I allow him to enter the place where I’m waiting for him—especially my own house!—accompanied by bodyguards or strangers.

  Over the years I will see Pablo some 220 times, around 80 of them surrounded by an army of friends, followers, employees, or bodyguards. But starting after that day, he will arrive at either of our apartments or my hotel suite completely alone, and when we meet in his country houses, he will order his men to vanish before they see me. He has understood in seconds that when a married man visits the woman he loves—and who, by the way, is a diva—he cannot act like a general but must behave like any other man in love. Also, that the first honor one lover owes another is an almost blind trust. For the rest of our days together, I will always thank him—with gestures, never words—for his tacit acceptance of the conditions I imposed that night with only those three looks.