Getting to Know About Pablo Escobar

Probably the two best known sons of Medellin --are Fernando Botero and Pablo Escobar.  Botrero is an internationally acclaimed artist; Escobar achieved notoriety as a drug trafficker who terrorized Colombia for much of the 1970s and 1980s. He was the head of the Medellin Drug Cartel, considered by some to be the world's greatest outlaw whose life of crime also made him, at one time, the seventh richest man in the world.

I traveled to Medellin one weekend in April to learn more about this past. I got interested in the Pablo tour after another friend and colleague wrote up a story about it. My trip developed out of a dinner conversation with Jaime Velez, dean of one of Medellin's journalism schools following a journalism conference in Bogota. We got to talking --Velez grew up in Medellin and waited tables at some of the restaurants frequented by the narcotraffickers during the drug war years.  "Why don't you come to Medellin and I will show you around," he said. So I did.

Velez enlisted his longtime friend and companion,  Luis Bernardo Cano, who goes by the nickname El Mono, in the venture.  "El Mono really knows a lot," Jaime said. "He worked in the communications office of Envigado while Pablo was in La Catedral."

La Catedral?  No, not a cathedral. But the luxury prison Escobar built for himself and his companions on the outskirts of Envigado, is at the end of a long, winding road -- and you can't drive up it without being seen from the top -- which I guess was Escobar's idea when he agreed to accede to a government demand in the early 1990s to serve a prison sentence.  Pablo ran the show from there.

El Mono used to go up there every week to bring the payroll from the mayor's office for Pablo to sign off on.  Pablo paid the guards. And the cost of the food and drink that was brought up to the prison to feed Pablo and his crew.  El Mono said he would go up to the prison about once a week with the paperwork for Escobar. Sometimes he saw him, sometimes he didn't. But Escobar, he said, was always gracious.  And good to the people around him, as long as you were not perceived as a threat or an enemy. And then...well the then, probably needs no mentioning.

We visited the grounds of what was La Catedral. Of course, the prison is no longer there and many of the buildings are in ruins. But you could still get a sense of the grandeur of what was. La Catedral is not a site open to the public. It has been taken over by an order of monks and the city of Envigado for use as an old-age home. No one is living there yet, though.

 The view of Medellin on the way up and once there is nothing less than spectacular.  Pablo of course had the best vantage point to see the sights and of course, the best room. A wall still stands that is decorative, rather than any attempt to keep someone in -- or someone out.



There is a soccer field still standing. It is said that some of the drug lord's wealth (cash) was buried on these grounds. So, it is also said were the bodies of some of his enemies. And there were also plenty of soccer games.

As Jaime and El Mono reiterated, Pablo Escobar was a man who hid in plain sight. There were times when everyone looked for him, but no one could "find" him, even though he showed up at parties, nightclubs and soccer games.  Life at La Catedral wasn't bad -- complete with the big screen TVs, back in the day when having a big-screen TV was a big deal.

But one day the government had enough. They sent up hundreds of troops to send Pablo to a "normal" prison.  But Pablo wasn't buying. Somehow he made his way past hundreds of troops and escaped to the hills. It was another year and a half before Escobar was found and killed -- on Dec. 2, 1993 in a house in Medellin. It is said that a phone call to his son allowed authorities to track him and gun him down.  An added aside -- according to Luis Bernardo, the man who killed Pablo Escobar is now in prison himself on drug charges.

 We visited the house in the Las Americas neighborhood where Escobar was killed. It looks normal and like any other house in the neighborhood. But it is for sale now, and so far there are no buyers.

We went to the cemetery where Pablo Escobar is buried, alongside his mother, who died in 2008, his father, who died in 2002 and other family members. It is the biggest plot in the cemetery, next to the cathedral and very well-tended.  There was a mourner there when we were present. Luis Bernardo said it was one of Pablo's brothers -- but one who was not involved in the drug trade.  No, he did not talk to us.

We also went to some of the buildings where Pablo either lived or worked during his Medellin prime. The Monaco apartment building, one of the homes he occupied with his wife and two children, was destroyed by a car bomb placed outside by the Cali drug cartel. Pablo wasn't there at the time, but his family was. They were not hurt, but it is said either his wife or daughter (or both) suffered some hearing loss form the explosion.  The building has been occupied for government offices from time to time, but not lately. A lone police officer stands guard.

The commercial center in Envigado where Escobar had his fist office is busy. It overlooks the plaza and there is normal, every day commerce there now.

A few of the buildings look like the Bronx in New York with heavy graffiti, like the multi-story building on Avenida Poblado, one of Medellin's main drags. " It bears the legend, "Pablo lives."  Many people think he does. 

At La Catedral, the caretaker,  who was there when Escobar was in prison, believes Escobar never died. "The pensions he began paying old people and those without jobs in Engivita are still being paid. Where is that money coming form?" she said.  And then recalling how much money Escobar had -- "of course he paid off someone to take his place and he had surgery."

Maybe?  Who knows?  Not I?  But if Pablo's death is not immortalized in the hearts of all,  there is a painting in the Medellin museum by world-famous artist and native son Fernando Botero that is a take on the photograph that shows the body of the man identified as Escobar.  And that picture is worth a thousand words.