Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar

by Virginia Vallejo

  “You’re seeing that with some extra calls to DAS, you could spend a few years in jail while they investigate whether or not what my witnesses say is true. And who do you think they will believe? Maza and your enemies in the press…or you, poor thing? What wouldn’t that old Nazi lady give to get her son back?…Right, my love?”

  I am chilled as he explains—with those short sentences followed by silences that I’m more than used to—that he needs me to speed up things that would otherwise take months, because he doesn’t have trusted translators in several languages. It’s a matter of choosing, not between silver or lead—because he knows death doesn’t scare me—but between money and jail! In a few days he’ll call me, and in the following days he’ll give me a demonstration that he’s serious. And he hangs up.

  I get a call from Stella Tocancipá, the journalist writing a profile on me for the magazine Semana. She informs me that she chose to quit her job rather than say all the nasty things about me that her superiors would have expected her to write. Someone else who doesn’t have Stella’s bravery or conscience writes everything they dictate, and after I am fired from Caracol, he’s rewarded with the Miami consulate.

  What El Tiempo publishes is even worse: now I’m the lover of another drug dealer—no one knows his name—and I’ve become nothing but a vile thief of all kinds of sumptuous things, and for that I’ve again been hit, kicked, and mutilated without mercy. What Pablo Escobar is telling me is that—as had happened with Rafael Vieira—for the rest of my life, any man with whom I have a serious relationship will be described by journalists who take dictation from his sicarios as “another narco-trafficker, only anonymous.” Also, that instead of spending the rest of my life condemned to solitude and unemployment, I should start to think like a “businesswoman” and abandon my scruples. Since the authorities who are not on the payroll of the drug cartels are on my enemies’, I cannot denounce Escobar’s blackmail. The stories are so sordid—and the phone stalking and the mockery every time I go to the supermarket so terrible—that I develop anorexia, and for several days I seriously consider the possibility of killing myself.

  Then I think of Enrique Parejo González, the galanista minister of justice who signed the first extraditions after the assassination of his predecessor, Rodrigo Lara. As Colombia’s ambassador to Hungary in 1987, he has become the only person to survive a personal attack from Pablo Escobar: five point-blank shots in the garage of his house in Budapest, three of them to the head. This brave man—today miraculously and completely recovered—embodies like no one else the narcos’ power to reach the most places very far from Colombia when it comes to taking their revenge. In my country without a memory, Escobar does not forgive.

  I know that Pablo already has a lot of information about my fiancé’s family, but my instinct tells me that as long as he doesn’t come to Colombia and I don’t go to Germany, he won’t be in danger. After thinking about it all night, my conscience dictates my only option: I will remain alone, and since I don’t have recent material to show an international artists’ agency, I will accept my fate and live in my country. From a public phone, I ask my boyfriend to meet me in New York on an urgent matter. On the saddest day of my life, I return his ring and tell him that as long as that monster is alive, I won’t be able to see him and he can’t call me again, because Escobar will kidnap or kill him and accuse me of involvement in his crimes. More than six years would pass before we were both free of our circumstances, but by the end of 1997 he would already be very ill, and the last of the torments Pablo Escobar left me would begin.

  When I return to Bogotá, I change my phone numbers, and I only give the new ones to four people. I am so terrified by the possibility of my own kidnapping that when my two girlfriends close to the extreme leftist groups ask me about my ex-fiancé, I reply that he was only one of the media’s many inventions.

  *

  —

  THE CONSTITUTIONAL ASSEMBLY OF 1991 has the country immersed in a climate of hope and dialogue, in which the traditional parties participate alongside the rebel groups, ethnic and religious minorities, and students. Antonio Navarro of the M-19 and Álvaro Gómez of the Conservative Party shake hands, and after a few months, the Constitution is amended, extradition is eliminated, and the good and bad people of Colombia prepare to start the new era in a framework of understanding and harmony.

  But things are not so simple in a country where the rule of law is always being sacrificed on the altar of some peace agreement—which, for the narco-terrorist group of the moment, will always consist of some kind of amnesty. That way, they can make fun of the judicial system and not be extradited. The beginning of the nineties sees the birth of “Los Pepes,” short for “Los Perseguidos por Pablo Escobar”: people persecuted by Pablo Escobar. Again, everyone down to the last village idiot knows that the group’s members are also in the paramilitary groups commanded by the brothers Fidel and Carlos Castaño, the Cali Cartel, dissidents of the Medellín Cartel, police and intelligence organizations that were Escobar’s victims, and one or another foreign adviser in the finest style of the Contras. After the new—and seemingly definitive—fall of extradition, and to protect himself from the Pepes who are stalking him ever more mercilessly, Escobar agrees to turn himself in if a prison is built especially for him in Envigado, on a seven-acre plot of elevated land of his choosing, where he’ll be attended by his own surviving boys of his choosing, with guard personnel approved by him, a 360-degree view, protected airspace and electrified fences, and, of course, all the basic comforts and entertainments that modern life can offer. The wealthy classes in Colombia will always enjoy the legal concept “La Casa for Cárcel,” or house arrest. And Gaviria’s government, in order to get a break from Escobar, tells him, “Okay then! Go right ahead and build your soccer field, your bar, your nightclub, and invite anyone you want to come dance in it, but just give us a break.”

  Pablo’s surrender becomes the event of the year. Obsessed with his only weak flank—which we both know well—he demands that no airplane fly over Medellín during the day he has chosen to proceed, amid a caravan of official vehicles and the national and international press, to his new retreat paid for by the Colombian government.

  The problem with desperate presidents and the good people of Colombia is that they still don’t know the owner of “Puppets.” Everyone believes he is worn out and his intentions are good; but from the prison, baptized “the Cathedral,” he goes on managing his criminal empire with an iron fist. In his free time he invites big soccer stars like René Higuita to play with him and his boys, and at night, before their well-deserved rest, he invites dozens of good-time girls to play with them all. Like a king, he receives his subjects: his family, his politicians, his journalists, and the bosses of other regions of the country who still aren’t affiliated with the Pepes. Everyone comments that “in Colombia, crime does pay,” but any protest is furiously hushed in the name of peace, because—finally!—Pablo is contained.

  Now only Todelar, the third-largest radio chain, offers me work, and only on the condition that I obtain my own advertising budget. I ask for a meeting with Luis Carlos Sarmiento Angulo, now the richest man in the country, and beg him to save my life, because among the big media there seems to be a consensus to kill me with hunger. That noble man gives Todelar advertising for some $10,000 a month, and the station pays me the 40 percent agreed on, allowing me to live without anxiety for the first time in several years. Since I don’t have an office, once again everyone has my phone number. (After Pablo’s death, my contract will be canceled without explanation and Todelar will keep 100 percent of the advertising money.)

  One day, Deep Throat tells me that some friends of his were visiting Pablo in the Cathedral. One of them commented that an acquaintance of his had seen me recently at a restaurant in Bogotá and said that I looked beautiful and that he would die to go out with me. When he heard that, Pablo cried, “Hasn’t your friend heard that Virginia tried to keep the yacht o
f some colleagues of ours, and they had to take it back by force? And I’m sorry for that poor friend of yours: he’s blind, and he should get some glasses! Who wants an old woman like that, when there are so many young ones? She’s just a lonely and broke fortysomething, forced to work at a shoddy radio station so she doesn’t die of hunger, because no one will hire her for TV anymore.”

  “My friends couldn’t believe what they were hearing,” Deep Throat tells me, visibly bothered. “They said it was the last low blow that asshole hadn’t taken!” And he goes on talking: “Get this: one of them is very tight with ‘Rambo’ ”—Fidel Castaño, head of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC)—“and a few days ago we were on his ranch in Córdoba, and suddenly the guy comes up on a bicycle. He chatted with us for a while and then he left, same way he’d come: alone and pedaling, nice and calm! In this country everyone knows each other….There’s a reason why they all kill each other. This Rambo seems made of steel: even though he goes around unarmed on a bike, no one in their right mind would dare mess with him. That’s the guy who, sooner or later, is going to finish your Pablito, the Ungrateful—”

  “Well, God bless Pablito the Possessive! Could you tell your friend to tell Rambo, in detail, how much Escobar hates me, to see if the Pepes will stop tormenting me? Ask your friend to tell Castaño about a couple of men who call me at midnight, put a chainsaw on the phone, and whisper that they’re sharpening it for ‘the whore of the Envigado psycho.’ You can’t imagine the terror I live in: every night, when I leave work at eight and I’m waiting for a taxi, if I see one of those SUVs with tinted windows go past, I think it’s the Pepes coming for me! Tell him I’m begging them to stop those threats, because I’m just one more person persecuted by Pablo Escobar. And ask him when he’ll let me interview him for that shoddy radio station, to see if he’ll tell me how he’s going to finish off the Monster in the Cathedral.”

  After a few days the calls lessen considerably. It seems that this time, my poverty or old age has saved me, and now that I am seemingly under the Pepes’ protection, I can finally sleep in peace until the next of Pablo’s enemies appears. Because when it comes to threats, the only ones missing are the Pentagon missile and the Kremlin’s atomic bomb!

  Chainsaws have become the weapon of choice for all the groups. Somewhere I read that in a village in the Antioquia or Córdoba Departments—the AUC’s center of operations—the shrieks of the victims could be heard from one end of town to the other, while drugged-up paramilitary men raped the women in front of their young children. When Escobar finds out that the Moncadas and Galeanos, associates of his, have hidden five and twenty million dollars, respectively, he invites them to the prison and starts to cut them, using that weapon that doesn’t need a license because it’s in the prison workshop. After forcing the treasure’s location out of them, not only does he get his hands on it using the men he still has on the outside, but he also goes after all the associates and accountants of both organizations, torturing them until they hand over their remaining capital, including haciendas, livestock, planes, and helicopters.

  And when the story that Escobar has also built his own dungeon and a cemetery right under the noses of his guardians reaches the presidential palace, César Gaviria decides he’s had enough. He sends the vice minister of justice Eduardo Mendoza—the son of old friends of mine—to see if something so spine-chilling can be true or if it’s just the invention of the Cali Cartel and the Moncada and Galeano families. When he’s told that an army contingent is coming to transfer him to another prison, Escobar thinks the government plans to turn him over to the DEA; and when the young official enters the jail, Escobar takes him hostage. After a series of confused events of which many different versions exist, Pablo comes walking out past the guards—who don’t move a finger to stop him—and flees with his men through some tunnels they’ve been working on for months. A marathon live broadcast begins at all the stations in the country; while the new director of the Todelar newscast station—in the service of the Cali Cartel—won’t let me take the microphone all afternoon, Pablo makes Yamid Amat of Caracol believe that he’s been hiding for three hours in a big tunnel near the Cathedral. In reality, he is already miles away and protected by the dense jungle.

  I am happy, because I know that with his escape, Pablo has signed his death sentence. The authorities immediately form a police “Search Bloc,” trained in the United States with the single mission of finishing him off once and for all. From the start, the Pepes offer their full cooperation. After intensive training, the Navy SEALs and Delta Force also enthusiastically join the Search Bloc, and the DEA, the FBI, and the CIA send Vietnam vets. German, French, and British mercenaries follow them—hoping for the twenty-five-million-dollar reward—and a total of eight thousand men are allocated in various countries to a multinational war against a single individual, whom the Americans want alive and the Colombians want dead. Because only death guarantees his silence.

  In retaliation for the interrogations and deaths of a few underworld martyrs in the name of the rule of law, Escobar places one bomb after another, practically one per week, and his hit men, now converted into media stars, begin to appear on magazine covers and on the front pages of every newspaper. As if Pablo were some Resistance leader, the media publish everything they say and everything he dictates to them:

  “Terrorism is the atomic bomb of the poor! Although it’s against my principles, I have to use it!”

  Pablo Escobar has always known how to act the poor man when it’s convenient. In 1993, I am miraculously saved from the worst of all the recent attacks, a bombing at the elegant Centro 93 mall, but I’m left weeping at the spectacle of a little girl’s severed head atop a lamppost, and of hundreds dead and wounded.

  By now I have sold my apartment, because I can’t stand my phones being tapped and all the insults, and I have rented a new one on the first floor of the chic El Nogal condominium. My neighbors include a former first lady who is a relative of my father, three children of former presidents, and Santo Domingo’s niece. All of their bodyguards guarantee me relative protection, half a dozen residents share my DNA, and I can finally rest from the telephonic buzz of chainsaws. After the sale, Deep Throat asks me for a loan of $2,500. Though I never see him again after that, I resignedly tell myself that the information he’d given me over these six years was worth all the gold in the world.

  The last thing that my source had told me was that Pablo is hiding in houses he’s buying up in middle-class neighborhoods around Medellín. It surprised me, because in the most clandestine phase of our relationship, the men who drove me to his hideouts told me that he had five hundred country houses scattered throughout the Department of Antioquia. Deep Throat’s friends had told me that, seconded by the Search Bloc, the Pepes were determined to kidnap Pablo’s closest family members to exchange them for members of both groups who have fallen into his hands. Since he is desperate to get his family out of Colombia, I am convinced that he will put off the good-bye until there is nothing more for him to do, because—since he surely will never see them again—that day will break his heart into a thousand pieces. If he still has one.

  In any Latin American country, the Escobars would be an easy target for Pablo’s enemies, who could kidnap or extort them for the rest of their lives. The United States would never receive them, and flights to the East or to Australia from Colombia are nonexistent. In 1993—before the 2001 Schengen Agreement—Germany is the only country in Europe with direct flights from Bogotá, by which Colombians could enter without a visa or many customs checks. I know that several members of Pablo’s family are already in that country, and I know that sooner or later his wife and children, his mother and siblings, will also head for Europe.

  The only thing I feel for them now is a deep compassion. But the compassion I feel for Pablo’s dead and for myself is greater, because after ten years of insults and threats, I’ve been forced to bear the sorrow for Escobar’s victims and the
rage of his enemies. And the straw that finally breaks the camel’s back is Wendy’s death. During a luncheon at the home of Carlos Ordóñez, the guru of Colombian cuisine, a famous comedian tells me she had been married to an uncle of Wendy’s, and that Wendy was murdered under Pablo’s orders during a trip she took from Miami, where she lived, to Medellín. He had adored Wendy; and he had left her with a fortune of two million dollars in 1982, the equivalent of around five million today. The two of us were opposites in everything, and though I’d never met her, the story of the abortion at the veterinarian’s had chilled me, and I had always felt a great compassion for her. I think it was this death—not slandering me in the media, or mocking me in front of his colleagues for the poverty and solitude he had condemned me to—that was the last offense that cowardly monster could commit. Gilberto had told me six years earlier that someday Pablo would order me killed, too….Because of all those things, from some very distant, immaterial point, an inexplicable strength—maybe the spirit of that other poor woman who had loved him almost as much as I did—tells me that the time has come to add my humble grain of sand to the scales, to help bring an end to all that infamy once and for all.

  *

  —

  I HAVE BEEN WAITING six years for my moment, and after thinking about it for several days, I make a decision: one day toward the end of November 1993, I go to a public phone and make a call to a European institution in Strasbourg. I have always had the phone number of the brother of the man with whom I could have been happy, and he has always felt a great affection for me. For the next half hour I explain to him why I think that at any moment, those people will fly to Europe and try to enter through Frankfurt. Using all the arguments I can think of, I beg him to explain to the upper levels of the German government why, the day after they are in a secure country, Pablo Escobar will be free to destroy mine as he pleases. Although hundreds of people of different nationalities haven’t been able to catch him, everything seems to indicate that the Search Bloc and the Americans have him cornered, thanks to the most advanced phone tracking system in the world. And though Escobar is an expert in communications, it’s only a matter of weeks or months until they locate and kill him. After a few minutes, my friend asks why I’m so passionate on the subject, and why I know the modus operandi of a terrorist like that.