My Father the Drug Lord
Pablo Escobar
Pablo Escobar, one of the world’s most infamous criminals, was born in Rionegro, Colombia, in 1949. At the height of his power in the 1980s, Escobar and his Medellín Cartel exported more than fifteen tons of cocaine, accounting for more than 80 percent of the drug entering the United States. His empire was fueled by violence, including a deadly siege on Colombia’s Supreme Court and the murders of politicians, police officers, judges, and hundreds of civilians. Escobar and his wife, Victoria Eugenia Henao, had two children, Sebastián Marroquín (born Juan Pablo Escobar Henao) and Manuela. He died in 1993, in a shoot-out with a vigilante group named Los Pepes, a day after his forty-fourth birthday.
Sebastián (age five) and Pablo, 1982
when i was seven years old, outside a safe house in Panama City, Panama, my father turned to me and asked, “Do you know what a bandit is?” I nodded. He said, “I am a bandit. That’s what I do for a living.” He had just ordered the murder of Rodrigo Lara, Colombia’s Minister of Justice. To have the minister killed was a big decision, since in doing so, my father would be publicly acknowledging that he was an outlaw. But he always knew what he was—a drug kingpin—and he never hid it from me.
I want to say, up front, that my father is 100 percent responsible for his crimes. But also that he was a wonderful father, one of the best in the world. Having a son myself now, I can see that. My earliest and happiest memories are of playing soccer with my dad at our home in Medellín and of the entire family gathering around the table for big meals. My father and I were very close friends. Everything changed for our family with the murder of Lara. Immediately my mother, sister, and I went into hiding in Panama, and my dad was rarely with us. The authorities were hunting for us all. Unlike what you see in popular depictions of that time, our lifestyle was not at all luxurious. We stayed in dingy and dirty homes. I was only seven, but I remember thinking, What’s the use of all my father’s money if he still has to live like this? You could be very rich, but you have to live like the poorest man in the world. It seemed so pointless.
Even when things were very grim, my dad was always near us. He called us and sent letters and recorded tapes for me and my sister, telling us stories. And we did see him, even when we were on the run. When I was eight years old, for instance, he sat me down and told me about drugs. By that time, my father was moving mostly cocaine, a lot of it. It was the biggest business in the world. He said, “A great man is the one who doesn’t do drugs.” The only drug he had tried was marijuana. But he knew I was surrounded by drugs and that all my friends had tried them. So he said, “When you become curious about them, just call me and we will do them together.”
When I was a teenager, I did my best to persuade him to change. I told him if you have to defend your ideas with guns, you have to check your ideas. I told him I was tired of the violence, tired of watching my family and friends disappear. There had been numerous kidnapping attempts against me. I had barely survived a car bomb in 1988. There was just so much blood being spilled in Colombia, you can’t imagine. I told my father he was the only person who could stop it. But he never listened to anyone—not the authorities and not his family. So I was shocked when he finally surrendered to the Colombian government in 1991 at La Catedral prison in Medellín and made a speech dedicating his surrender to his fourteen-year-old pacifist son. Unfortunately, it turned out he couldn’t stop the violence or control his own violent nature. While in prison, he tortured and killed two of his lieutenants and shortly thereafter escaped and went back on the run.
I was sixteen years old when my father died. He committed suicide rather than be captured. I spoke to him ten minutes before it happened. He said, “I’ll call you later.” That was the last time I heard his voice. I didn’t know he was dead until a journalist told me, live on television. I went crazy. I threatened the country and said that if my father was truly dead, I would kill everybody. Of course, I regret those words now. It breaks my heart that I will be remembered more for those five seconds of threats, from a son still in shock over the death of his father, than for the twenty-five years of peace that followed them.
Now I speak about my father’s legacy in an attempt to prevent more carnage and violence. Sadly, the world has more Pablo Escobars than ever. But I am trying to leave a better future for my son than the one I inherited from my father. At the same time, my dad was very clever and full of love for me, my sister, and my mom. So in that sense I am trying to imitate him, but only the good parts.