Four
IKNOW THAT AS THE PRESSURE ON PABLO INCREASED, as people who had profited from him betrayed him, to protect himself and his family and the business, Pablo became vengeful against those who deceived him or his organization. But for as many people who will tell you that Pablo killed someone himself there are as many who say that he only gave the orders. Pablo wouldn’t kill anybody himself, and of that I am sure. The Lion remembers being there when Pablo made his decisions. “When Pablo talked it was an order. Everybody knew that what he said was going to happen. So he would say, ‘You have to kill this guy,’ like it was nothing. He would say it as if he was asking for more water. But I never saw Pablo doing anything himself. None of the executives ever saw that.”
There are people who tell stories about things they supposedly saw at the Hacienda Napoles. George Jung, the original partner of Carlos Lehder, said that he was at Napoles when a man was brought there by two bodyguards. Later Jung was told the man had been caught providing information for the police. This man believed that if he had escaped his whole family would have been killed so instead he gave himself up. Jung claims that as he watched, Pablo got up from the table, walked over to the man, and from a few feet away shot him in the chest.
This is typical of the stories told about Pablo, but like most of them I don’t believe it to be true. I know what the world believes about my brother and I know his legend has been built on tales of brutality like this one. People have their reasons for telling these stories. And I know that when I protest against them people think that I am protecting my brother. But I am telling the truth as I know it to be.
The violence was always part of it, but it was never the soul of Napoles. Napoles was Pablo’s favorite home, it was his finest possession, it was loved by the family and all our friends, and it was a place unlike any that had ever been built in Colombia.
Hacienda Napoles was a drive of several hours or a brief flight from Medellín. Far enough away from the problems, and the people, of the city. Pablo and Gustavo bought the land and began building their dream kingdom in the late 1970s. It was ready in 1980, almost 7,500 acres of beautiful land, with a river running through the property. The land was spread over two departments, or political regions. Eventually it would contain several houses in addition to the large main house, a complete zoo opened for free to the people, as well as some runways for airplanes to do business. For someone who had been raised as simply as he had, Pablo somehow understood and appreciated great quality in all parts of his life. And Napoles was the fulfillment of all his material passions.
There are two things that everyone who was ever there remembers: Above the entrance gate he had mounted that first Piper airplane that he used in the business. He believed that airplane had started his fortune. After passing through the strong security at the gate, people would drive on a winding road past fields of lime trees, lemon trees, and all sorts of tropical fruit past the open meadow with several thousand grazing purebred Braham cattle, for almost two miles until they reached the zoo. The zoo was another crazy dream of Pablo’s that came true. Who builds a zoo at his house?
This was a real zoo with many big animals, including hippopotamuses, rhinoceroses, giraffes and ostriches and elephants, emus, a pink dolphin, zebras, monkeys, and a kangaroo that liked to kick soccer balls. There were also many types of exotic birds. Pablo loved birds, especially parrots, and wanted to have a male and a female of every species. He had a favorite parrot, Chinchón, who could name most of the great soccer players of Colombia. However, Chinchón also liked to sip whiskey and would fall asleep. Unfortunately, one evening she fell asleep on a table and one of the cats ate her. After that Pablo prohibited cats from Napoles—even big cats like lions and tigers.
Pablo bought the animals from the circuses that performed in Colombia as well as from the United States. It was legal to buy them in America, but not legal to import them into Colombia without a special license. Bringing those animals in from America was a big problem, a very big problem. How do you smuggle a rhinoceros? Pablo was careful, and a veterinarian traveled with each animal to advise our keepers about the proper care of the animal. Usually they were landed on our business runways and transported by our disguised trucks to Napoles. One time, though, a rhino arrived illegally in Medellín but it was too late to drive it to Napoles. The journey would take them through guerrilla territory and they did not want to make that trip at night. That left Pablo with a great problem—how do you hide a rhino overnight? Even in Medellín where people have become used to some unusual sights that was hard to do. It was suggested they put it in a private car garage and so that’s what they did. The truck put the cage inside this garage and a keeper stayed with it. The family kept its car on the street that night, although they could not explain to anyone that it was necessary to do so because there was a rhinoceros in their garage. The next morning it was put on a truck and driven to Napoles where it joined the herd. There was a whispered saying that came from that: “If he is willing to hide an illegal rhinoceros there is no question he would hide cocaine anywhere.”
The only animals that I kept at Napoles were my horses, my beautiful horses. From the time I was a boy I have loved riding and when it became possible I started buying horses to ride and to breed. Pablo didn’t share my passion for them, he never bought one for himself, only for the ranch. But he would often joke with me, “Oh, what a beautiful horse. You spend all your money on these expensive horses. That’s a crazy thing to do.”
I would respond to him, “You know, Pablo, at least I enjoy riding my horses, but you and all those animals . . . You don’t enjoy the animals. Try to ride a hippo and see what happens.”
Pablo did keep some horses at Napoles. He had four horses that pulled a silver carriage slowly around the property, and he also had miniature ponies to entertain the children who visited.
The zoo at Napoles was open for the public to enjoy. Pablo explained to a Medellín newspaper, “Napoles zoo belongs to the Colombian people. We built it so that children and adults, rich and poor, can enjoy it, and owners cannot pay for what is already theirs.”
One day three years after the zoo had been open an official document from the Institute of Renewable Resources arrived and told Pablo he possessed eighty-five animals and he did not have the proper license: “This is all illegal. You have these animals without permits. What are you going to do about it?”
Pablo was polite. “Please, if you want, take them,” he said casually. “But you know the government doesn’t have the money to feed them all and take care of them. So you should sign this paper and I’ll take care of them.” The government fined Pablo about $4,500 but left the animals at Napoles.
In addition to his real animals, Pablo had five full-size cement prehistoric animals, including a T. rex and a woolly mammoth, all constructed for the children to play on them.
Beyond the zoo were the houses. There was intense security on every part of the property, some of it easily seen, but more of it concealed. No one could get through the gates to the house unless they were cleared personally by Pablo. If you didn’t have an invitation the armed guards turned you away. Even if people did have invitations the guards faxed them to the house for Pablo to check. Near the house was a lighted runway for the transportation planes to land. By the runway was Pablo’s collection of cars, and among them was an old bullet-holed car that he told everyone had belonged to Bonnie and Clyde and an old Pontiac that supposedly had belonged to Al Capone. The Bonnie and Clyde car had been sold to him by our friend in the United States who introduced us to Frank Sinatra. Frank Sinatra was real, I wasn’t so certain about those cars.
By the main house were the lighted tennis courts, swimming pool, and basketball courts, the outdoor dining areas, and the game room. Everything for pleasure that could be wanted was there. The river on which we often held races with wave runners, spaces to play soccer, and long open pastures for my horseback riding and hiking. There were stables where the riding horses were kept, even a bullring where visiting matadors entertained our guests. For transportation and to race we had cars and motorcycles, some of them with sidecars for passengers, we had Jet Skis, boats, even hovercraft.
The houses offered even more pleasures, swimming pools, Jacuzzis, large dining rooms, a theater for watching recently released movies, even a discotheque for parties. The professional kitchen was always open and if we wanted a special meal in the middle of the night it was prepared for us. The meals were so nicely prepared that for each meal there was a menu. During the meals Pablo would move among the tables, sitting with his workers, his guests, his bodyguards, and the family. He would stand up and recite poems, which he loved, or even sing tango music from Argentina to the music that seemed to be always playing, just like he always loved to sing opera in the shower.
Every member of the family had their own bedroom and bathroom on the first floor, which were named for the letters of the alphabet. The second floor was the private floor where Pablo and Gustavo lived. There was always noise and life going on in the house. It was always fun. Pablo liked to have people around. He would sit with Gustavo or the Mexican relaxing and sometimes they would bet a lot of money. They would bet 50 or 100, but that meant thousands of dollars and they would not bet on the usual winning or losing, but instead it would be $100,000 if at 1:27 of the first half Nacional had the ball. The money meant nothing to any of them. There was more than they could spend.
The parties were like those of Hollywood or even better. The performers would be the best singing groups from Colombia as well as all over South America. The most beautiful women were at these parties, the beauty contest winners. People from business. Artists. And, always, the people he worked with in the business. There was no better place for the politicians of Colombia to raise money for their campaigns. But remember, at that time Pablo’s true business was still hidden and he was accepted by the public as a successful real estate investor.
There was also business done at Napoles. When those public crowds were gone, Pablo quietly entertained important people for the business. This included Colombian politicians, government leaders from nearby countries, people on the upper levels of the operation. This was one place where everyone could relax in complete privacy and safety. Flights to transit points took off from the runways. One incident I remember well was the afternoon an old friend named Walter came to visit. When Pablo was just starting out in contraband he had earned $10,000. This was right at the very beginning. “Do me a favor,” he had told Walter in 1973. “Hold this money for me. I’ll ask you for it in a couple of weeks.”
When Pablo needed the money he reached out for Walter—who had taken the money and moved to the United States. He had disappeared. Ten years later Pablo was informed that Walter had returned to Medellín. Pablo said to a friend who knew them both, “Tell Walter you’re going to invite him to a nice farm for the weekend. Tell him it’s going to be a great party. But don’t tell him it’s me.”
Walter came to Napoles. When he learned he was on the ranch of Pablo Escobar he was shaking worse than leaves in a hurricane. They brought him to the dining room, which easily sat fifty people. But only Pablo, myself, Walter, and the person who brought him there, our cousin Jaime, and an aunt and two daughters were there in the big room. “Long time no see,” Pablo said. “How are you?”
We were laughing to ourselves to see this guy shaking. He’d stolen money from the wrong person.
Walter could barely speak. “I’m sorry for the $10,000. I’ll find a way to pay you back. Just give me time, please.”
“No, no, don’t worry about it,” Pablo said casually; his whole attitude was not angry. Then Pablo asked one of the bodyguards, “Hey, please bring me my gun.” Pablo’s favorite gun was a big Sig Sauer. When the bodyguard returned Pablo stuck the gun in the waistband of his jeans.
Walter’s eyes popped open. “Are you going to kill me?”
Pablo’s exact words were, “No, listen. I don’t kill anybody for money, and especially you because you were my friend when we were kids.”
They ate lunch, but naturally Walter didn’t eat too much. After, Pablo offered to show him around the ranch. “That’s okay,” Walter said. “I already saw around.”
“Come,” Pablo said.
“I don’t want to go, Pablo.” He was afraid to leave the dining room.
Pablo insisted, and when they stood up Pablo touched his gun. We thought Walter was going to jump through the ceiling. Pablo showed him his collection of beautiful cars, but still sometimes touching his gun. When they finished Pablo said, “Come to my bedroom upstairs. I want to show you something.”
Walter was convinced that was where he was going to be killed. As they walked up the stairs Pablo asked him what he was doing. “I have a taxi in Medellín that I drive. I just bought a house. I promise, Pablo, I’ll pay you the money little by little.”
Instead, when they reached the bedroom Pablo opened up a suitcase filled with cash. He reached and took a pack of bills. I don’t know how much it was, but a lot. “Here,” he said, handing it to Walter. “But listen to me. Don’t ever ever steal anything from me again, because I won’t take it.”
Walter was crying, but he wanted to get out of there. He couldn’t believe Pablo would let him go. He did a kind of walk that was really running, and went back to Medellín with the money Pablo gave him. We never heard a word about him again.
What made our lives change forever was Pablo’s decision to run for the Congress of Colombia. This was to be the beginning of his campaign to become the president of our country. At no time did he believe his business would prevent him from having a political career. The tradition of corruption was very strong in Colombian politics, many of the country’s elected officials had accepted his money without complaint, and he also knew from experience that the leaders of other Central and South American countries were doing business. Even in America it was well known that the father of the beloved JFK had made a fortune from the sale of illegal alcohol. What all of these men had in common was that they had power before they were elected, military or financial. Pablo had the financial power. He believed that once he had the political power his career in the drug business could be put away. The whole idea of getting involved in politics seemed very bad to both me and Gustavo. We were very much against it. In the business we were in, the last thing you want is attention; in politics, attention is first and necessary. I predicted it would cause us great problems. “Don’t do this, Pablo,” I told him. “That’s the biggest mistake you are going to make. We should stay calm and quiet.”
Gustavo also argued this with him, but Pablo was firm. “I’m going to be the president of Colombia,” he still insisted. “We already have money. I don’t have to worry about my family having a place to sleep or getting food. We’ve been established, Roberto. I want to help people the legal way. And I’m going to stay away from this.”
I believe that was true. He was always talking about one day being president. He felt certain it would happen. And he promised that he would be the president of the poor people, he would work for them. Colombia had been ruled for so long by the same class, “the Men of Always,” as they were called at that time. Maybe the faces of the leaders changed, but their policies were always against the poor.
Now, other people say that his real reason for joining politics was that he was worried about the laws passed by America and Colombia allowing drug dealers to be extradited to the United States. I agree that was also true. Pablo often said he would rather lie dead in Colombian dirt than be alive in an American prison. By Colombian law, as a member of Congress he would be immune from prosecution. Also, he believed that by being an elected representative he could begin his campaign to make it illegal for Colombia to extradite people in the drug business to the United States.
The first race he would make, he decided, would be for representative. The system in Colombia works a little different from that of the United States. Our representatives in Congress are elected with alternates, so if they are sick or absent the alternate will take their place. Pablo ran for office as an alternate for the municipality of Envigado. It’s probably true that Pablo supported much of the primary candidate’s positions. Pablo could have been the main candidate, but this was better. It attracted less attention. To start, he was to be a candidate for alternate for the New Liberal Party, a people’s movement against the traditional ruling class. But the leader of that party, Luis Carlos Galán, insisted he knew where Pablo’s fortune had been made. Galán had heard the rumors. When Pablo refused to reply, he and his running mate were cut out from the party. Instead they became candidates of the Liberal Party. Pablo didn’t lose his temper, but I know inside he was angry at all the politicians who were happy to take his money but then ran away from him.
Pablo’s strongest supporters were always the poor people. During his campaign Pablo held most of his rallies in the poorest towns in the election district. His campaign slogan was “Pablo Escobar: A Man of the People. A Man of Action! A Man of His Word!” Many thousands came to these events, and sometimes after the speeches money was handed out to the people. To begin these appearances our little niece and nephew, María and Luis Lucho, would sing the campaign song that had been written by our mother, Hermilda: A human person has just been born, a very human person. As very good Pablito citizens we are here to show our support. The new politician. The people run and run and run and jump and jump and jump. They run to go and vote. Everyone is so happy they can go and vote for Pablo Escobar!
Pablo liked to campaign. He would always dress as a man of the people, in his jeans and sneakers, but well groomed of course. Nothing fancy. During those times when he was speaking to the people, I believe in his mind he was able to move himself into another world, a world away from the business. He could see his future. “I’m tired of the powerful people running this country,” he would tell them. “This is a fight between those powerful people and the poor and the weak people, we have to start with that. Being powerful doesn’t mean you can abuse the poor.”
After giving his speech Pablo had his bodyguards around the stage and he opened some cases with money. People came close to the stage and Pablo had his bodyguards handing money person to person. He told the bodyguards to give money to everyone but especially to old people and young people. The people loved him. They would kiss his hands. Pablo didn’t like that touching, but he would put his hands on the person’s back and hug them, saying, “Do well.”
It was funny. Some politicians find secret ways of buying votes. Pablo just handed out money to the poor people, but not demanding anything in return. Sometimes instead of rallies he would have his airplanes fly over small towns dropping flyers, “Vote for Pablo!” And money. Of course the people loved him.
Also like every politician at these rallies he would make promises about what he was going to do. “I’m going to put good lights on the football field . . . I’m going to paint the church . . . Provide books for the schools . . . I’m going to do this and that for you . . .” He said the things he would do—but what was different from other politicians is that within a few days his men would begin doing what Pablo had promised.
At these rallies Pablo often spoke out strongly against extradition. “This is our country,” he would say. “Why do we let the Americans make policy for us? We don’t need American judges to be in charge of Colombian law. Colombians should be free to take care of Colombia’s problems. As a Colombian every person who makes a mistake against the law should be judged in Colombia, nowhere else!” The fact that President Ronald Reagan in 1982 declared trafficking in drugs a threat to American national security was understood in Colombia to mean that people in the business would be considered the same as terrorists. If they were allowed to be extradited they would be treated very harshly, they would spend their life in an American prison.
One of the principals who helped Pablo throughout his campaign was Alberto Santofimio, a Colombian politician with experience. He had been a minister and a senator and he very much wanted to be president. I remember he used to promise Pablo that when he became president he would eliminate all extradition, and he suggested that if Pablo helped him become president, after his term ended Pablo should become the president. That was exactly what Pablo wanted to believe. Now it seems easy to see that it was never possible, but during that time it really did seem like it might happen. Politics in Colombia was always dirty, and many times before the voters had forgiven the past.
In 2007, in Colombia, Santofimio was convicted of being the mastermind behind the killing of New Liberal Party presidential candidate Luis Galán during the campaign of 1988. During the trial it was testified that Santofimio was always telling Pablo that he had to kill people to move ahead. But that would come much later, and was nothing that Pablo ever spoke of to me.
One big issue of the campaign of 1982 was called “hot money.” That meant money given to politicians by drug organizations. All of the different drug groups supported candidates who were sympathetic to them. The New Liberal Party, the group that had broken away from the traditional Liberal Party, particularly accused Pablo and his running mate, Jairo Ortega, of being supported by the “drug mafia,” as these organizations were called in Colombia. The word “cartel” wasn’t heard for a few more years. This was the first time that Pablo was accused publicly of being connected to the cocaine organizations.
The media was pretty fair to Pablo, sometimes calling him “a real Robin Hood.” They wrote about him as a philanthropist, a man who easily gave away his money to people who needed it. They also wondered where his fortune had been made, but most of the media didn’t write about the drug business. The people didn’t care how Pablo got rich. He came from them and had become the equal of the wealthy class, and didn’t forget them, so they loved him for it. On election day I rented buses for my three hundred employees to drive them to the voting station so they could vote for Pablo. But truthfully, I didn’t vote for my brother. He knew that I thought this was a big mistake and I couldn’t personally support it. So I didn’t vote at all.
No matter of importance. Pablo easily was elected as a deputy/alternate representative to the Chamber of Representatives of the Colombian Congress. The Congress is in Bogotá. On the first day he was to take office I was there with him, but I was to leave the country to go do business for my bicycle company, my right business. I don’t remember Pablo being excited; as with his anger he kept his joy inside. I know he was proud and believed this was his new beginning. I dropped Pablo at the Congress and went to the airport, so I didn’t know what was erupting there.
One thing, Pablo never wore a tie. He was wearing an expensive respectable suit, but no tie. The rules said that all members of Colombia’s Congress must wear a tie. So the guard refused to allow him to enter the chamber. Pablo was upset by that. He said, “Here in Colombia the people know that members of the Congress wear nice suits and expensive ties and then they go and steal money. What does appearance have anything to do with the work?”
The radio reporters told their listeners that a congressman was stopped at the door because he didn’t want to wear a tie. It became a big story. Meantime, because of traffic I missed my plane. That was okay, I decided, if I miss this trip it is because it is no good for me. So I returned to the hotel to see this mess going on with Pablo. His very first day and he was attracting attention.
Finally a guard said to him, “Mr. Pablo, Mr. Escobar, here is my tie. Just use it.”
Pablo put on the tie and entered the Congress. Then when he sat down he took off the tie. Basically he was telling everyone that the tie wasn’t essential, I’m here and I don’t want to wear this tie and it has nothing to do with the job that we are supposed to do. That was Pablo’s introduction to government.
One of his first official duties was to travel to Madrid with others from the Congress for the inauguration of Spain’s prime minister, Felipe González. He met the new prime minister at an official meeting. At that time the operation was opening up Europe, so Pablo also met some important businessmen and politicians knowing that they might become sympathetic. It’s accurate to say that some of the most successful people in the legal business world in Spain today made their first fortune with Pablo. From Madrid, Pablo visited other countries in Europe, including the small principality of Monaco. Monaco impressed Pablo, with its freedom and fun. So eventually when he decided to build a lovely modern building for himself in Medellín, he named it Monaco.
Under the law of my country, our president must give several cabinet posts to members of the opposition parties. President Belisario Betancur awarded the Ministry of Justice to the New Liberals, who named Senator Rodrigo Lara Bonilla to the position in 1983. Lara was one of the strongest speakers in the government against the influence of the drug mafias, against the hot money.
During the political debate about hot money in August 1983, Jairo Ortega held up for everyone to see a photocopy of a check for one million pesos, about $12,000, to the campaign for the Senate of Lara Bonilla signed by the chief of a drug group in Leticia, the capital of the Colombian Amazon, who was known for bringing in paste and other chemicals from Peru. He had once served a sentence in Peru for smuggling. Pablo knew this drug chief and some people accused him of getting this copy of the check. It is possible that this money had been donated to Lara’s campaign with this accusation in mind. It was an amazing moment—Lara was being accused of taking hot money!
In response, he denounced the drug chief and Pablo. This was the first time that Pablo had been accused in public of being a drug trafficker. A few days later a newspaper in Bogotá reported, also for the first time, that Pablo Escobar had been arrested for smuggling thirty-nine kilos in 1976. Pablo told me he was not surprised at any of this. “The people running this country don’t want me to succeed. I’m a threat to the same politics. They’re going to be against me because they’re used to robbing and I’m going to transform the system. Everybody in Medellín knows that I have real estate businesses and that’s how I get my money for politics. I love my country, and we want to make this country beautiful. I admire the United States, but I don’t agree with the way they are doing politics here in Colombia.”
Lara, the justice minister, told the newspapers that the United States had made charges against Pablo accusing him of being a drug trafficker. Pablo had a response for everything. “That’s not true,” he replied. “As a matter of fact, here is the visa I got three days ago from the American embassy.”
Within a few days, however, the U.S. canceled that visa. Two months later Lara requested that the Congress take back Pablo’s immunity from extradition. Pablo never returned to the Congress. His political career was over.
At first President Betancur was against extradition. This was a very controversial issue. Many agreed with Pablo and the other leaders of the cartel that our country should not allow the Americans to enforce their law on our territory.
Pablo remained calm throughout and denied all of Lara’s charges, continuing to proclaim that he was a real estate man. But this was what Gustavo and myself had most feared. The attention being paid to Pablo Escobar had shone a bright light on the business. Now people were asking hard questions and the police were looking around.
For many of the Colombian people the facts were simple: Pablo and the other business leaders provided more to them than did the government. Even if they believed the stories, the drugs were not hurting them as much as ending the drug trade would hurt them. Later, when we were trying to make peace with the government, an important drug trafficker of Medellín explained this to a representative: “This is a business like any other business. The cocaine that leaves from Colombia is not being used in Colombia. The cocaine that leaves is giving many peasants a source of work. People who have no other means to survive. Right now there are more than 200,000 people in the plantation.”
So naturally there was very mixed reaction to Lara Bonilla’s call. But the justice minister continued his campaign mainly against the drug traffickers. He named thirty politicians he claimed had accepted hot money. He insisted that Aerocivil, the government’s aviation agency, take back the licenses for three hundred small planes owned by the leaders of the Medellín cartel, and eventually the deputy director of this department went to jail for assisting the traffickers. Lara even proclaimed that the drug mafias were helping control six of Colombia’s nine professional soccer teams. No question he was making an impact. In Colombia, our secret had finally become public knowledge.
Until that moment we were doing business pretty easily. The operation was smooth. We were well established in the U.S.—just like in Colombia, in Florida and New York we owned many stash houses and apartments. Usually we got old couples that no one would suspect to live normally in them, except that in their closet was three hundred or four hundred or even five hundred kilos of cocaine. It was stored there until the time and place for distribution. The market just couldn’t stop growing. Sometimes we worked in cooperation with other cartels like of that of Pereira in Colombia, and those of Peru and Bolivia to fill the needs. All of our employees were making incredible sums. A pilot could earn $3 million for a single trip. Tito Domínguez, who was one of our main transporters, had a fleet of thirty airplanes, including a 707; he owned one of the largest exotic car dealerships in the world, which had Clark Gable’s $6 million Duesenberg on his lot; and he owned entirely a new housing development of more than one hundred houses. Domínguez owned personally four Lamborghinis in different colors and each day he would drive the color that matched the shirt he was wearing. Another pilot when he was arrested admitted he owned thirty cars, three houses, some warehouses, twelve airplanes, and millions of dollars in cash.
Until this time the problems had been pretty simple to deal with. They weren’t exactly the normal problems, for example the operation was consistently losing product that was dropped into the water to be picked up by the fast boats, because no matter how well it was packed some of it got wet. And definitely we did not have the benefit of other businesses of firing employees who stole supplies. But Lara brought other problems to the organization.
The biggest thing Lara accomplished was the raid on Tranquilandia, which was one of the largest jungle laboratories. It was owned mostly by Gacha, but all the others of Medellín contributed to it. About 180 people lived there full-time, making cocaine. Deep in the Colombian jungle, Tranquilandia was 250 miles from the nearest road. Its advantage was it was the bridge between Colombia, Bolivia, and Peru, the place where all the chemicals and raw product from those countries met to become cocaine, and could easily be flown out. The chemists at Tranquilandia could turn out as much as twenty tons of cocaine each month. In only two years it had produced $12 billion worth of product. The existence of this place was well known, even to the authorities, but they had not been able to locate it in the canopied jungle until March 1984, when two helicopters carrying forty-two armed men landed and destroyed it completely.
It was only many years later that I learned how Tranquilandia was located by the authorities. One of the chemicals necessary to make cocaine is ether. Seventeen liters of ether are required to produce one kilo of coke. At this time the supply of ether in the world was limited. Only five companies in America and seven others around the world produced it. The U.S. government and the Colombians, using turncoats, wiretaps, and inside agents, learned that a company in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, supplied most of the ether for the cartel. Eventually they sold ninety-five drums of ether to the American representative of the owners of Tranquilandia. What nobody knew was that inside two of those drums were transponders to signal their location.
In March, while Lara continued his campaign, the transponder signals came from a ranch. Two days later the signal had moved to the jungle. Tranquilandia. The raiders followed the signal and arrived in force. They burned down the entire camp, destroying almost twelve thousand drums of chemicals and fifteen tons of cocaine. At that time it was the largest seizure of cocaine in history. The impact on the marketplace was severe. For the first time in three years, the price of cocaine in Miami went up.
There are many pieces of the business that Pablo kept from me. I was the front man to the world for Pablo and so as much as possible he kept me away from certain parts of the business. In his mind, I believe, he thought he was protecting me. And, in fact, he did. When we surrendered finally to go into our own prison we had to invent a crime for me to plead guilty to. My real crime, as I told them then, was that Pablo Escobar’s blood ran in my body.
So to tell the whole story of Pablo I sometimes have to refer to information provided by other people. Such as the assassination of Lara Bonilla. Wherever there are great amounts of money there are always people who want to take some of it for themselves. In Colombia, in addition to the normal greed we have struggled with kidnappings. So from the beginning the organization had to have people able to protect the money and protect the leaders. These were the security people, the bodyguards, the people able to do whatever jobs were necessary to protect the organization. They were people capable of violence. Men with ready guns who took nicknames like Chopo, Arete, El Mugre, Peinina, La Yuca, La Kika and his brother Tyson, named for the American boxer. Sadly, it was not difficult to find young people to do these jobs. They wanted these jobs. As the Lion once described the process: “These were mostly the poor people from Medellín, people who lived in the mountains. Recruiting them was simple because they had nothing to lose in life: ‘You have no money. Your mom is broke. Your sister is pregnant and she doesn’t even know who the father is. There’s nothing to eat. Tomorrow I’m going to give you a motorcycle and I’m going to give you some money and help you find a clean apartment, but today you’re going to work for me.’ Who is going to say no? They said, ‘Okay, patrón.’”
When you live in poverty in Colombia or Peru or anywhere in our region there is no time to be a child. You survive, that’s all it is. The men and sometimes the teenagers who protected the organization became known later as sicarios, assassins, or in Mafia talk, hit men. They could be very young, and too many of them did not survive to become old. In the poor parts of Colombia many children have their own guns by age eleven. They get them where they get them. Guns are easily available in my country. Sometimes these are machine guns.
It wasn’t only Pablo who had these young guns working for him. All the organizations needed the protection and fear that they offered. So long as they kept their work within the business the police would leave them alone—and as long as the police continued to be paid their fees. The police in Medellín were paid $400,000 monthly to cooperate and offer some protection.
One of these young sicarios told the American court trying La Kika how he got into this world. “I was working at a garage making 300 pesos a week, approximately one dollar. So I quit to hang out at El Baliska, the pool hall where the hit men from the Antioquian neighborhood fell out.” Someone there gave him an assignment to locate a gunman who had betrayed the organization, and paid him about $300 to do so. When this gunman was found, he contacted La Kika, and told him, “I have already located him. And he told me he didn’t need him alive. That he should be killed. I went over and I looked for two hit men I knew so they would kill him. I hired Tribi and Paleo to kill him. Tribi and Paleo were more or less thirteen to fourteen years old. I told them where he was and they went over and killed him. I was a few blocks away and I heard the shot and went over to see what happened. The gunman was lying on the floor. I was paid 1,500,000 pesos, I kept 500,000, which was between $3,000 and $4,000 then, and paid the rest to them.”
There were always people near Pablo ready to do whatever he told them to do. When he said something needed to be done, no one questioned, they did it. Pablo never told me a word about the assassination of Lara Bonilla. It was not something I wanted to know too much about. And I was still living with my family in the city of Manizales and was not with him every day. But Lara’s murder changed the lives of all Colombians. There are many stories how it went down. During the trial of Alberto Santofimio in 2007, one of the people testifying claimed that Santofimio had taken part in the planning.
It was on the night of April 30, 1984. In the weeks before there had been many threats made on Lara for him to back off. He had many enemies. So for his safety, earlier that day he had been told that he was to be Colombia’s ambassador to Czechoslovakia and would be moving there with his family.
There was a new method of assassination that was becoming common in Colombia. It was to become known as parrillero: A man with a machine gun riding on the back of a motorcycle sprayed his victim—usually in a cart—with bullets. The safety helmets gave the assassins a good disguise and the bike provided the best way of escape after the shooting. Eventually this method became so common in Colombia that the government passed a law against people on motorcycles wearing helmets, so they could be identified. The new law never made any difference, as no witness would testify against cartel assassins.
This is the way Lara was killed that night. He carried a bulletproof vest in his car with him, but he wasn’t wearing it. The justice minister had been assassinated, and because of that many thousands of others would die.
As a tribute to Lara Bonilla, President Betancur agreed to sign the extradition papers, allowing for the first time Colombians to be arrested and sent to the United States for prosecution. The name on the top of the list was Carlos Lehder, who was in hiding. I know I should remember all the details of those days, but there were so many moments when each decision determined our fate that they slip through my mind. I remember pieces of days, more than the events. After knowing that Lara had been killed I remember the feeling that I had, that the structure of our lives had been undone. I had a feeling of emptiness, I had the sense that something was coming toward us, but not knowing what it was.
About six on the morning of May 4, 1984, I left my house in Manizales to go to a hotel I owned, the Hotel Arizona. My wife, Dora, and my young son, José Roberto, remained at home with Hernán García, who would drive my son to school. The Hotel Arizona had been built completely with clean money from my bicycle stores and factory. It was top-of-the-line; the rooms were as big as apartments. They had full kitchens, cable television from the United States, large beds, some rooms with waterbeds, many mirrors. The amateur bullfighters stayed there during the Feria de Manizales, the annual carnival held the first days of January. Wealthy people stayed there and sometimes the expensive prostitutes with their dates stayed there. The hotel was a successful business and I worked hard to make it profitable.
We had heard rumors that the government believed Pablo was involved in the assassination, but there had been no action taken. But at seven that morning the police showed up at my house. They wanted to do a search but they had no legal authorization. When my wife asked for their papers they arrested her. They came into the house and basically destroyed it. When my four-year-old son started crying one of the police hit him, almost breaking his nose. He was bleeding. Hernán García told them to leave the boy alone, and the police said, “Stay quiet, we do what we want,” and then they started hitting him hard. They hurt him.
They were searching for guns or drugs, anything to attach me to the business. During those days everyone believed my work was in real estate. There was nothing to be found there, so they put some guns they had brought with them down on a table and they threw an army uniform on the floor, then they took pictures. Those pictures were published in the newspapers. They wrote that those pictures showed that I was trying to help the guerrillas by giving them guns and uniforms, which was totally untrue.
They stole some paintings from my house by Colombian and Latin American artists and took away my wife.
At the same time the police were searching my home other police squads were coming to the Hotel Arizona as well as Gustavo’s house in Medellín. It was all coordinated. When I saw them approaching the hotel I called my wife; when no one answered I knew something was wrong and escaped from the back. The police burst into the hotel, they knocked down doors of people sleeping and having sex, and everybody was screaming and had to go into the street without their clothes. It was terrible. Again, they searched for guns, uniforms, drugs, anything that might associate me with the organization. They found nothing, for there was nothing there for them to find.
They put yellow police tape around the hotel and it was closed for a year.
I hadn’t committed any crime, yet they were looking all over for me, including going to my bicycle factory. They went to Gustavo’s house, pushing people around, making threats, setting up phony pictures and arresting his wife. Gustavo also managed to leave. The two wives were put in jail.
From my hotel I went to a farm that I owned just outside Manizales. I thought I would be safe there and have time to decide what to do. But soon after I got there the police showed up. This time to escape I tossed two car tires into the nearby river and floated safely downstream to the house of a friend. We made some phone calls so I could find out what was happening. My wife was taken to prison, my son had been hurt. I would never again have even a little trust in the police. I borrowed this friend’s car and drove to Medellín to speak directly to Pablo. What was happening? Gustavo was already there. My mind was in a terrible condition. When I found Pablo I was very upset: “I don’t understand what’s going on. We’ve got to get my wife out of jail. What’s going to happen?”
Pablo was calm. Pablo was always calm. “Okay,” he said. “I want you two guys to go to this farm and hide there for now. Let me see what I can do.”
This farm was not known to many people. It was just outside the city. Pablo had kept it as a good place to hide when he might need one. Gustavo and I got to the farm. We had to be careful but we were desperate for information. Both of us were worried terribly about our families. Gustavo wanted to call an attorney he trusted one hundred percent to try to get his wife out of jail. “Don’t do anything,” I said. “Nobody knows about this place. Let’s give Pablo some time.”
But Gustavo insisted. He gave the attorney directions to our location. We spoke with him at length and he decided, “Let me study the case. I’ll come back tomorrow.”
That night the little priest visited my dreams again. He told me we were in danger. The next morning I told Gustavo, “You know what, man, you made the biggest mistake. I don’t trust this guy. I think they’re going to come for us.”
A few hours later one of the bodyguards came into my bedroom. “Mr. Escobar, somebody called me from the town to say they saw a lot of police and army guys coming toward us.”
“See?” I told Gustavo. “See? I told you, man. Let’s go.” We ran. The sewer and water pipes from under the city ran near the farm to the river. These are huge round pipes that you can stand inside. We had no choice but to escape through this system. It was nasty, dirty, and disgusting. I had on shorts; Gustavo was wearing jeans but no shoes. We knew there were rats but we didn’t see them. We walked for a long time. Any connection with my old life, that life as a bicycle champion, El Osito, ended as we hurried through the filth.
We walked for a long time until we finally came into the streets. The police were looking for us, but as we were at that moment no one could recognize us. Our faces and our clothes were mudcovered, I had lost my shoes, we smelled bad—and we needed help. We decided to go to the home of one of my employees, who I trusted to help us. “Listen,” I told Gustavo. “We have to pretend that we’re crazy while we’re going there.” Crazy people could be as filthy as us. People would move away instead of looking to see who we were. So we acted crazy, hiding our faces with leaves from trees. People shouted at us from their cars, “Move, you crazy jerks, get out of the street.”
It was a very painful experience. One that lives with me now.
When we reached the home of my employee he first tried to get us to go away. Then he realized who I was and brought us inside. We took showers there, one of the nicest showers of my life, and put on loose clothes that we borrowed. For the first time in my life I was running from the police. It was a strange feeling, but in the years to come I would get used to it.
The question was what we were going to do at that moment. I didn’t know what the police had learned about Lara’s killing. But I knew they had created evidence against me and could assume they wanted to connect me to it. I was innocent, but at that moment I didn’t know exactly what Pablo’s involvement had been. When we got in contact with Pablo, he told us that he decided the whole family had to leave the country quickly and go into hiding. Some of Pablo’s partners who were being pursued had made the same decision and would go with us. Even some leaders of the Cali cartel were making plans to leave the country. We would go to Panama, Pablo said. He had worked out an arrangement with an important general to give us his protection. Each group in the organization agreed to pay him $1 million to stay there, a total of $5 million.
Pablo went to Panama first to get our situation established. We stayed hidden, the lawyers working to get our wives out of jail. My wife was locked up for fifteen days and was treated badly. They didn’t want to give her food or clean clothing and made her time there as difficult as possible. There was no reason for that. She had done nothing against the law.
Pablo made all the arrangements for us to join him in Panama. I was in charge of bringing his wife, María Victoria, who was pregnant, as well as my family. The helicopter that was coming to pick us up was late and we began to get afraid something had happened to it. I watched the area around us carefully, wondering if the police would suddenly show up. María Victoria was having a bad time. Finally, though, it arrived and we all scrambled aboard. For the first time I was able to relax.
And then the helicopter started making strange sounds. “We have a problem,” the pilot said. “Hold on.” We went spinning down too quickly. We thought we were going to die, but we landed safely near a small town in Chocó. We were surprised to still be alive. Within hours a second helicopter picked us up and took us to safety in Panama.
Life as we had enjoyed it was over. The existence of the Medellín cartel was now known all over Colombia. Pablo and the other leaders of the cartel were being blamed for Lara’s assassination. The United States was putting great pressure on our government to stop the flow of drugs and in the States the face they put on cocaine was Pablo’s. So instead of just being a fugitive from Colombian authorities, Pablo became known in America and Europe as the man behind the cocaine epidemic. They wrote as if all of the drugs reaching those places were because of Pablo.
We settled into Panama. We had no idea how long we would stay or what we would do next, where we would go. Obviously money was not a big problem. Pablo began meeting with Colombian government representatives to try to agree how we could return home safely without being extradited.
We were on the run and we wouldn’t stop for another seven years. And Pablo, my brother, who I loved, was becoming the legendary great desperado of the world.