A complaint Colombians commonly make about tourists is that their only reference to the country is Pablo Escobar and narco trafficking. What about the biodiversity, the music, dance, cuisine, amability, they might note.
Indeed, a surefire way to pierce a budding friendship with a Colombian is to respond with Escobar when they ask what you know about the country. The gripping but often factually lazy Narco netflix show made things worse.
Upon arriving to the country you quickly learn that the subject is taboo. Something not to bring up unless prompted. Any tentative enquiries heavily caveated.
The hush-hush imbues you with a guilty feeling of wanting to find more. What’s taboo is tempting.
After all Escobar was an intriguing character – someone whose face graced the cover of Forbes magazine. The 7th richest man in the world. The collection of hippos, football matches with professional footballers, piñatas overflowing with U.S dollars. The sheer audacity. His greed. The Robin Hood myth, the evil cloaked in charm.
A robin hood villain?
Indeed, his perception as a Robin Hood hero that took from the rich to give to the poor still persists. One afternoon after hopping into an Uber my grizzled driver turned to me and without prompting exclaimed, ‘Escobar was a hero’. I nodded along politely as the elderly driver expounded on his genius and all the good things he had done for the city. ‘A genius’, he told me, ‘and he sure did much more for us than the crowd in charge …’
Over his life Escobar funded many projects to aid the poor. This generosity helped propel him to win a congress seat in 1982.
However his philanthropic endeavours were more than offset by his blood-thirsty ruthlessness. As well as fellow rivals, his victims included government officials, police, and civilians. Most notoriously, the cartel placed a bomb aboard an aeroplane in an attempt to kill an alleged informant, resulting in the death of 110 people.
Amid rising bloodshed, a massive manhunt sought his capture. On the same day in 1991 that the new Colombian constitution outlawed extradition, Escobar surrendered. He was jailed in a self-built luxurious prison known as La Catedral, where he could enjoy a private nightclub, sauna, waterfall, and football pitch as well as take advantage of the time’s latest technology, including telephones, computers and fax machines, to communicate with his crime empire.
Pablo Escobar’s death
Pablo Escobar died on a rooftop in the Los Olivos neighbourhood in Laureles, Medellin on December 2nd 1993.
His death came 16 months following his escape from from La Catedral. After he tortured and murdered two of his associates, the authorities wanted to incarcerate him in a more traditional prison, prompting his flight.
On December 2nd, the Colombian task force specifically created to find him intercepted a call he made to his son from the Los Olivos neighbourhood in Laureles. The call immediately identified his hiding place. Only hours before he was celebrating his 44th birthday, reputedly gorging on cake, wine, and marijuana.
The hunting party surrounded the house while others stormed through the door. Alerted, Escobar and his bodyguard stumbled out a back window onto an orange-tiled roof. They were met with a barrage of gunfire, and both fell from shots to their heads — Escobar with one that entered his right ear and killed him instantly.
It is still debated as to who was responsible for the shot that killed Escobar – the task force claim it was their men, the rival vigilantes Los Pepes, led by Don Berna (and future instigator to a Medellin Christmas tradition), say they contributed , while Escobar’s family have insisted that he took his own life.
A visit to the house where Escobar died
By chance I discovered that the house was only a five minute walk from where I had been staying in Laureles, one of the more popular neighbourhoods for expats. In fact I had jogged past the house a number of times without knowing its significance.
Sensitive to the preference of the locals, I had been reluctant to participate in any narco-tourism. However, its close location, I felt, gave me an excuse…
It’s a quiet and leafy middle class neighbourhood. When I turn up, the streets are empty apart from the odd elderly person shuffling along. Away from the traffic you can hear the sound of the rushing river opposite the house.
There’s nothing in the vicinity to signal its significance. To be sure I check Google, which solemnly marks the locations as ‘casa donde se escondía Pablo Escobar’, the house where Escobar hid. I notice the orange tiled roof where Escobar is said to have scrambled across.
Its anonymity is the intencional there are no signs, no memorials, no kitschy museums. It’s simply a run-of-the mill Medellin suburban house. I sheepishly take a photo. An old man lounging on balcony of the adjacent building exchanges eye contact as if to shame me and would be tourists.
The next day, a Saturday morning, I turn up again. This time there’s already a yellow taxi. A Latin American man stands gleefully in front of the house, arms aloft, directing the taxi driver to take photo after photo. Another yellow taxi pulls up. A shier European hops out, not sure what he’s supposed to look at, his taxi driver points to the roof. I walk on.
Medellin today, a city transformed
Today the city once known as the ‘murder capital of the world’, Medellin, is much safer. The murder rate has plummeted, falling from 350 per 100,000 inhabitants in 1992 to 10.2 per 100,000 in 2022, placing it just above Florida (10.15) and just below Fresno in California (10.6) in the United States rankings.
It’s become a haven for back-packers and digital nomads, wanting to take advantage of the temperate climate. 1,4 million international tourists visited in the city in 2022. A tourist report showing the growth in popularity, noted that prior to 2010 there were only five hostels in the city catering to tourists – before the pandemic this number had risen to over 150.
Part of the improvement has been attributed to an unofficial agreement between drug traffickers and security services.
Peace is good for business, a drug trafficker told France 24, in a news article released in 2022. As long as they keep the streets peaceful, the police turn a blind eye to their lucrative illegal dealings, the gang-member said.
Another factor behind the improvement has been the employment of “urban acupuncture”, a tactic that employs urban design to solve social problems. In some of the deprived neighbourhoods that snake up the hills of Medellin, the authorities built cable cars to enable residents reach other parts of the city. The increased accessibility helped the locals find jobs, and feel more part of the city. Elsewhere, there was greater investment in the provision of basic services – particularly libraries and schools.
Indeed a change to the Colombian constitution in 1991 (the same constitution that outlawed extradition) devolved more power to municipal authorities, which laid the groundwork for creative local governments to experiment in social initiatives. In 2013, Medellin was named the world’s most innovative city on the back of its civic spaces, libraries, and art galleries, as well as its infrastructure, including escalator and cable car to improve accessibility.
The relationship between Medellin and narco-traffic
Dealing with the narco-traffic past has been a tricky balancing act for Medellin. On one hand, it’s been important to look to the future and not to romanticise its tortured past, whereas on the other hand it’s vital to confront its history so that mistakes aren’t repeated. Education rather than ignorance. The results have been mixed.
The Museo Casa de la Memoria (the memory house museum) is an excellent example of how to confront past trauma and to commemorate victims. It doesn’t glorify the perpetrators but ensures those that paid with their lives have a legacy. It’s somewhere you could spend a whole day perusing all the extensively resources.
Generally, it’s rare that you come across Escobar’s image and while narco tours happen they are hush hush and tend to be run informally. In general, the tourist industry has not exploited the renown of Escobar and his cartel, despite an obvious financial incentive.
His famous finca, the Hacienda Napoles, was turned into a theme park (read about my visit here) and tour guides aren’t allowed to mention his name explicitly, using the ‘old owner’ as code. It contains a memorial museum that dramatically condemns his atrocities. However, despite these attempts, the theme park’s grandeur and popularity have become, at least indirectly, a tribute to the mob boss’s eccentricity.
In contrast to the house where he died, Pablo’s mansion in El Poblado was demolished in 2019. The mayor at the time said, ‘this symbol, which is a symbol of illegality, of evil, will be brought to the ground’. Burying its past and / or reinventing the future?
However, the site of his downfall survives, albeit in relative anonymity. A contradiction perhaps? Or maybe its survival serves as a reminder of his demise and the resilience of the city.
