Peddling Pablo: Escobar\'s Cultural Renaissance

Peddling Pablo: Escobar’s Cultural Renaissance Aldona Bialowas Pobutsky Oakland University, USA [Pablo Escobar] es un personaje seductor porque su historia tiene todos los condimentos de las grandes historias pero, por supuesto, muy triste y muy dolorosa. —Nicolás Entel, director of Pecados de mi padre Abstract: Nearly two decades after his death, Pablo Escobar has reemerged in a number of autobiographical

publications that revisit the era of the Medellín cartel and its most infamous capo. Rather than providing strictly historical information, these texts adopt an anecdotal and intimate angle from the positions of Escobar’s hitman, his lover, his siblings, and his only son. The recent plethora of Escobar-themed bestsellers signals a collective need to confront the capo’s evil in order to bring closure to what can be considered his inner circle and the Colombian nation. It also underscores the tension between the state’s desire to curtail Escobar’s growing myth and the concomitant trends in popular culture and mass media that celebrate Escobar and the crass narcolifestyle. While the former strives to divorce the national image from narcoterrorism, the latter has found a new marketable commodity in Colombia and abroad.

Keywords: Colombia, drug trafficking/tráfico de drogas, hitman/sicario, narcoculture/narcocultura, Pablo Escobar

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ablo Escobar died on December 2, 1993, and with him, the heyday of Colombia’s populist drug lords came to an end. Drug trafficking evolved and became less visible, as the subsequent generation learned its lesson from the fate of Medellín’s biggest, most daring capo. With Escobar gone, one would think that his figure would fade away, replaced by more recent characters from the present-day drug business, especially in Colombia, where many would prefer to forget Escobar’s imprint on the nation’s history. However, the capo’s influence remains synonymous with murder and mayhem, but also known for staining the nation’s image on the international scene. Nearly two decades after his death, Pablo Escobar refuses to go away. His life continues to stir controversy, while his face does not cease to reappear in places both predictable (Medellín, Cartagena) and obscure (Ukraine), thereby converting his semblance into a timeless icon of notoriety.1 Pablo Escobar continues to attract morbid curiosity, subsequently providing an opportunity for commercial exploitation. News items related in some way to the cocaine kingpin erupt with regularity in the national press, while more reflective journalistic pieces revisit his era and the places that bear the imprint of his infamous legacy.2 Next to traditional tourist souvenirs, popular markets in Colombia sell Escobar t-shirts, while the geographical spaces that bear the drug lord’s mark—his gravesite, the ruins of his properties around Medellín, his famous ranch Hacienda Nápoles, or the hide-out where he met his end—are magnets for a growing number of visitors.3 Even museums, the storehouses of traditional culture, exhibit Escobar’s selling power. Fernando Botero’s 1999 painting “The Death of Pablo Escobar” has drawn so much attention from the visitors to the Museo de Antioquia that a decade later the artist bequeathed another painting of the capo’s death in response to the public’s Escobar mania (J. Saldarriaga). AATSP Copyright © 2013

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The infamous drug lord also reinserts himself into the panorama of popular culture through an impressive number of recent tell-all testimonies, typically journalist-mediated eyewitness accounts that return to the Escobar era. People from his inner circle, such as Escobar’s exlover, his former lieutenant, and his various family members unravel the story of the private persona behind the ominous myth.4 Escobar’s ever-stronger presence in the public eye signals a number of issues at play. First, enough time has passed to heal at least some wounds as well as to reflect on his phenomenon and the cocaine bonanza of the 1980s. As devastating as the capo was to Colombian society, his influence on the nation’s history cannot be swept under the rug. Secondly, Escobar continues to elicit curiosity, and writing about him has proven a profitable enterprise. Like Al Capone, Jesse James, and Juan Moreira, Escobar has entered the world of outlaw folklore, becoming a sought after—albeit highly controversial—commodity that speaks to popular tastes. Yet when it comes to literature born out of the drug trafficking era in Colombia, Escobar, so far, has played second fiddle to other, lower-rank and usually fictional characters of small-scale narcos (traquetos), hired assassins (sicarios), and cocaine mules. Fernando Vallejo’s groundbreaking La Virgen de los sicarios (1994) and Jorge Franco Ramos’s Rosario Tijeras (1999) inspired ample research into what is known today as narcocultura, with its subgenre of the novela sicaresca,5 where the cocaine boom and its multifold effects are studied through the lens of its minor players. In the last two decades, scholarship has examined Colombia’s transformation, focusing on the gargantuan violence that engulfed society, on the escalation of crime among the youngest and most underprivileged members of the cocaine business, on the mythification of the killer, or on gender and class issues resulting from the new distribution of wealth.6 The effects of the devaluation of human life, together with the sudden enrichment and parvenu tastes that engulfed architecture, fashion, female beauty, and television, have all been explored with Pablo Escobar in the background, yet almost never really taking him into account.7 One could speculate that “high literature” has hesitated to bestow upon a figure so hated a role so significant,8 while the mass market unabashedly exploits the popular fascination with crime and notoriety. In this vein, it is the private side of Escobar which receives attention in this tabloid-style outpouring, thereby feeding into the world’s insatiable demand for anecdotal sensationalism. Today’s market returns to the allegedly “authentic” Pablo, whose personal habits and idiosyncrasies had so far been dismissed in the official discourse under the common denominator of the evil “other.” Even the titles of new testimonies skillfully exploit the intimate relationship between the storyteller and Escobar, drawing attention to feelings, family ties, and the genuineness of the portrayal obtained from a personal affiliation with the drug lord. Not denying Escobar’s long-established acts of monstrosity, his recent biographers nevertheless humanize the malevolent legend behind the surface of a pudgy, regular guy. Pablo emerges variously as a charismatic boss, a dashing lover, and a doting father and brother, in Roberto Escobar’s Mi hermano Pablo (2000) and The Accountant’s Story (2009); Astrid Legarda’s El verdadero Pablo (2005); Virginia Vallejo’s Amando a Pablo, odiando a Escobar (2007); Nicolás Entel’s documentary Pecados de mi padre (2009); and Alba Marina Escobar’s El otro Pablo (2010). The tell-all accounts filter Escobar through the prism of the relationship each narrator had with the Jefe, thereby legitimizing the originality of the text precisely on the account of its subjectivity. Less interested in retracing Escobar’s overall impact on society, they tend to interpret the past from a personal angle, disclosing the few untold details of the drug lord’s life, but, above all, carving out each storyteller’s space at Escobar’s side. Except for Vallejo, who rejects allegations of having used a ghostwriter and insists on sole authorship of her material, all the other storytellers examined here have collaborated with journalists or documentary makers. The final product, peppered to differing degrees with sensationalism, melodrama, personal insight, and, of course, constant references to Colombia’s biggest criminal, belongs to popular or tabloid journalism in that the real-life criminal is both personalized and fictionalized through subjective storytelling and an almost inexistent referentiality.

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Fluid and hard to characterize except in the broadest terms, the tabloid style never fails to offend high and middlebrow tastes, all the while giving pleasure to common folk (Glynn 7). Likewise, popular memoirs related to Escobar, to other drug lords of yesteryear, or to the leaders of Colombian paramilitary groups outrage some sectors of the public that find their subjectivity highly questionable and their execution slapdash.9 They bemoan the market success of these publications as a frightening testimony to the attraction that the popular sector holds for criminals. Most importantly, they lament the skewed interpretation of Colombian history that they promote.10 Indeed, tabloid writing as a rule is associated with “trash taste,” as it resists objectivity and critical distancing, blurring public and private life, fiction, and documentary (Glynn 7–9). In a similar fashion, Escobar-themed narratives proclaim to give readers an uncensored, “off the record,” insider perspective on the kingpin’s life. Its readers become voyeurs to the spectacle of violence, sex, and domestic tragedies, implicitly accepting that the focus on melodrama and mayhem may come at expense of some facts. It would seem safe to assume that almost everything has already been said about Escobar. Myriad private photographs and family movies were made available in the years following his death via continuous press coverage and a steady flow of documentaries. Even the exhumation of Escobar’s remains, ordered by his family during the burial of his mother and filmed in a private ceremony, was leaked to the national news, causing rupture within the capo’s family.11 We live in a tell-all society, where airing the private confessions of celebrities is encouraged in the media. Intimacies become public and confidential information disclosed; advances in technology have only sped up this process. Whether the public is attracted to or repulsed by the outlaws and criminals, it is anything but indifferent. Such is the contradictory atmosphere surrounding the memory of Escobar. On one hand, his barely two-decades-old properties lay in ruin in Medellín, attesting to the government’s paralysis vis-à-vis the drug lord’s material legacy.12 On the other, popular culture feeds off his imprint by producing cocaine-themed films and telenovelas that feature the lavish narcolifestyle and human archetypes that populated his illegal business. Even the saga of Hacienda Nápoles reveals conflicting cultural phenomena, showcasing how the popular perception “often celebrates the potential and possibility of audience reconstruction or play with dominant symbols and signs of a culture,” as John Fiske has stated (qtd. in Marshall 47). While Escobar’s half-destroyed mansion has been thoughtfully converted into a monument to his victims in an effort to deliver a “crime doesn’t pay” message, Colombian television celebrates thug aesthetics by employing Escobar’s iconic sites in a palimpsestic fashion; the 2009 telenovela El Capo was filmed at Hacienda Nápoles, where a new mansion and an underground bunker were built just for the purposes of filming. The photographs below show posters of the telenovela displayed on the property of Hacienda Nápoles in 2010, and the finca featured in the series (Figures 1 and 2). This is certainly a dialogic relationship within the mass culture of capitalism, where the sanctioned institutions of information and literacy strive to reform and control cultural meanings, while the popular market circumvents it, selling whatever is deemed a hot product. In other words, Escobar has become a cultural icon of notoriety. The slew of new testimonies devoted to Escobar projects the entire spectrum as well: from brazenly unrepentant crime accounts by one of his goons to the love story, family saga, or the most earnest attempt to strip the cocaine business of its luster, as is the case of Escobar’s son. Legarda’s El verdadero Pablo is a chilling testimony of Jhon Jairo Velásquez Vásquez (alias “Popeye”), one of Escobar’s few surviving sicarios from the Medellín cartel, who is serving a life sentence in the Cómbita prison, Boyacá.13 The assassin’s utterly unapologetic stance towards his own criminal past of terrorism, kidnapping, and murder strikes the reader as an act of self-performance, rather than self-exposure, in that Popeye himself appears unnaturally tough, efficient, and composed as the drug lord’s devoted disciple. Popeye’s fascination with Escobar goes hand in hand with the hitman’s exaltation of criminal power in general, which, as he insists when giving reasons for why he left the naval academy school as a teenager, was ironically less

Bialowas Pobutsky / Escobar’s Cultural Renaissance

Figure 1. Promotional Posters for TV Series “El Capo” at Hacienda Nápoles

Figure 2. “La Luciérnaga” Constructed at Hacienda Nápoles for “El Capo”

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underhanded than legitimate options in Colombia. His argument goes as follows: “[S]i la cosa es por plata, mejor me voy a buscarla en otro lado… es mi conclusión. . . . Esa doble moral de la institución me desalienta y con la lección bien aprendida, me retiro desencantado. Ahora sé que los policías tienen un precio” (Legarda 23). Popeye’s ambition and disenchantment with traditional professions seek to legitimize his criminal choices, where he attempts to identify with his reader as a common man searching for the quickest way to socially advance. Working at first as a driver for Elsy Sofía, Escobar’s high-society lover and one time Miss Medellín, Popeye was awestruck upon his encounter with the capo. He immediately gravitated to Escobar’s entourage and became his right-hand man once the romance between his prior employer and Escobar cooled off. In Popeye’s account, “De ahí en adelante, no habría un día más importante en mi vida: ingreso al mundo de la mafia. En el barrio se riega la noticia como pólvora. Todos murmuran, con no pocas dosis de envidia” (Legarda 26). The sicario’s entrance into Escobar’s inner circle equated with social mobility and, above all, with the endorsement of his own bravery. After that, all Popeye set out to do was to impress his boss. Popeye details, for example, how he kidnapped the Attorney General Carlos Mauro Hoyos, how satisfied Escobar was with the execution of his “mission,” and how proud the sicario himself felt at the thought of his idol’s tacit praise. He feels honored “no tanto por el apunte del jefe, como por la consolidación de su admiración y respeto. Definitivamente, me convierto en el mejor de sus hombres” (Legarda 144). The presentation of the kidnapping is itself an exercise in self-promotion, reinforced by ample dialogues and emotions. They serve to pit “manly” thugs—mainly Popeye—against what emerges as a “sissified” elite. When the sicario, for example, looks the Attorney General coldly in the eye as he accuses him of betraying Colombia by supporting extradition, the victim interrupts him, abandons “sus modales y su compostura” (Legarda 143), bribes him with a cushy exile in the United States, and, screaming, begs to be permitted to talk to Escobar. Later Popeye attributes to his victim a certain “actitud digna” (143) when he does not beg for his life minutes before execution, yet it is evident that the depiction of this encounter serves to lay out the macho potential of Escobar’s tough-as-nails cohorts next to the inefficient and effeminate Colombian ruling class. Above all, Popeye’s story attests to the allure of a criminal whose limitless power and charisma were the glue that held the organization together. Like many other intimate biographers of Pablo Escobar, Popeye assuages his boss’s criminality by blurring the difference between the mafia, corrupt Colombian politicians, and the shady police. In his version of events, good and evil are substituted by mere competitors for power, who mediate their influence via lawful and illegitimate measures alike. Cops (or, all law enforcement in general) and robbers play in the same field, where mutual respect is predicated on macho bravado, connections, and economic opulence. State officials are no different from Escobar’s thugs in that they were all on the capo’s payroll. Such is the case of Alberto Santofimio Botero, a senator and two-time presidential candidate from the Colombian Liberal Party whose relationship with the drug lord has sparked public accusations and criminal investigation.14 Popeye makes evident the widespread servility to the mafia, assessing, “El doctor Santofimio y yo nunca hemos sido amigos, ni tampoco enemigos. El cumplía su función con Pablo Escobar y yo la mía; podría decirse que ambos éramos compañeros de trabajo, ya que teníamos el mismo patrón, el señor Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria. Yo ganaba un sueldo y él recibía comisiones” (Legarda 131). Though Popeye acknowledges Escobar’s strategic errors, which eventually lead to his demise, his account is a testimony of an unwavering admiration and loyalty for the patrón. Popeye describes Escobar as a man’s man, a cool-headed and charismatic leader who mesmerized the multitudes with his infinite self-confidence. Frequently, Popeye applauds his boss for teaching him to be a loyal soldier and for instilling in him a criminal code of honor that above all valued courage. It is about nerves of steel, when Escobar teaches Popeye that “cuando a uno le da miedo por todo, se muere veinte mil veces en la vida y cuando usted no es miedoso, sólo se muere el día que le toca y le da miedo una única vez” (Legarda 292). When, on one

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occasion, Escobar and Popeye were running away from the police, Escobar tuned in to a soccer match on a portable radio, seemingly unfazed by the impending danger. Such instances, and the fact that Popeye never saw his patrón agitated or scared, lead the hitman to believe that Escobar epitomized ultimate fearlessness. This, in turn, is an example worthy of worship and emulation for Popeye, who declares: “[A]l lado de Pablo Escobar aprendo que un hombre de verdad debe guapear hasta el final, nunca empequeñecerse ni doblegarse y éste era el momento para demostrar lo aprendido” (Legarda 300). Aside from glorifying his boss, Popeye also romanticizes the camaraderie within the gang, highlighting the unbreakable bond between Escobar and his hitmen, relationships allegedly stronger than the capo’s connection with the real key players of the Medellín cartel. True as this might be, such rhetoric also serves Popeye’s self-fashioning in that it reinforces his protagonism as much more than a mere thug for hire; Popeye portrays himself as his boss’s confidant and his worthy disciple. While the book plays down, to a degree, Popeye’s disturbing infatuation with his past, the interviews he gives following the publication of his memoirs make it evident. In them, he trumpets his personal killing record of over 250 victims, not to count hundreds of executions he delegated to his underlings. He takes pride in a volatile temper that made him execute people at whim, simply because they would not yield to his thuggishness (“Popeye”). Popeye’s thirst for fame, regardless of the moral implications of his actions, is further substantiated through the recurring references to his fugitive status. On a number of occasions, he reminisces how his photograph appeared right next to Escobar’s as one of Colombia’s most wanted criminals. Thus, the narrative that he crafts about himself lends him masculinized legitimacy, where he flaunts his tough adventure at the capo’s side. Finally, the exaltation of thug camaraderie substantiates the hoary truth that the drug cartel is a man’s world in which women’s worth is less than subsidiary. Even when the sicario falls in love with one of Escobar’s exlovers, Wendy Chavarriaga Gil, he does not hesitate to have her killed, once stipulated to do so by his boss. Wendy, a rowdy beauty from popular sectors of Medellín, was the drug lord’s one-time girlfriend who refused to play by Escobar’s misogynistic rules. She became pregnant by the capo and was subsequently forced to undergo an abortion. Enraged, she began to badmouth him and grew closer to his enemies from the Cali cartel, while, at the same time, romancing Popeye. When Escobar ordered his sicario to silence the unruly lover, Popeye proved his blind allegiance to the man’s world. As he sums it up, “Entendí que tenía que ejecutar con mis propias manos a la mujer que me hizo perder los sentidos. Así ocurrió” (Legarda 250).15 It is not the only instance in which Popeye mobilizes the hard-boiled tropes of treacherous seductresses and unforgiving men, delivered with a certain film noir nonchalance. In a conflict sparked over a flirtatious prostitute, Escobar’s partner Carlos Lehder loses his patrón’s support and eventually his freedom, while Escobar’s close thug Rollo loses his life.16 In Popeye’s version of events, the woman who appears to be the catalyst of the conflict is the one who disrupts the delicate harmony among men: La prostituta, mientras abre la papeleta se fija en Rollo y le coquetea abierta y descaradamente; Lehder mira de reojo; Rollo le contesta a la mujer con una sonrisa; Carlos Lehder lo nota. La mujer, una prostituta con bellos atributos físicos, cabellera dorada, piernas perfectas y caderas que enloquecen, acaba de sellar el destino de estos dos hombres. Lehder, un Capo en pleno descenso y Rollo, un matón en carrera ascendente. La mujer no tiene nombre, no importa, sólo es el destino disfrazado de prostituta. (Legarda 92)

The utter objectification of the woman, who is relegated to anonymity despite her alleged role in Escobar’s fall-out with Lehder, harkens back to the tough-guy narrative style, which soared in the 1920s and 1930s “tabloidia” and was further popularized in Hollywood mafia films. One of the classic features of tabloid hard-boiled writing is “a valorization of a masculine realm unsullied by feminine activity,” itself represented as “stultifying and claustrophobic” (Pelizzon

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and West 152). Likewise, for Popeye, women are appendages and a necessary evil; they are intruders, who, when forgetting their place, risk their lives for disturbing the environment of rough-edged masculinity. Thus, while Popeye’s unsentimental, hardened prose celebrates his own criminal past with Escobar, in passing, it also provides a glimpse of gender relationships within the cocaine cartel. It exalts the boys’ club with its sense of enterprise and courage, simultaneously disparaging women as second-class citizens and feminizing their opponents. Speaking of women in Escobar’s life inevitably brings to mind the Colombian television diva of the 1980s, a renowned pedigreed beauty, Virginia Vallejo. Vallejo’s 2007 memoirs Amando a Pablo, odiando a Escobar could not be more different from Popeye’s account both in terms of angle and narrative style, yet the credibility of her confession was questioned just as much as that of Popeye’s. While they both provide explosive material to incriminate members of political elite, Popeye was deemed an unsuitable witness due to his criminal history and Vallejo’s sanity was publicly questioned.17 Both went public with their experiences in the time when narco topics were gaining cultural momentum, spawning commentaries of their attention-seeking and money-grabbing motivations. Vallejo was placed under particular scrutiny because there was so much more at stake in her case; she was a celebrity with far-reaching cultural influence and high visibility in Colombia, which made her version of Escobar’s ties with politics so much weightier. Born into privilege, Vallejo attended prestigious schools, spoke several languages, and built her career in the media. Erudite and at ease with the camera, she talked with the same poignancy about politics, economics, and fashion. Her face and body were objects of veneration and her image adorned countless magazine covers, while her celebrity status was exploited in television commercials. Traditional capo narratives offhandedly mention Escobar’s erotic conquests as an unavoidable component of his exacerbated machismo, but the main focus, as in Popeye’s case, resides in classic masculine domains that favor action over introspection. In contrast, Vallejo’s memoirs are a classic romance narrative with plenty of passion and pathos, as well as gallant heroes and despicable villains who become one and the same person.18 Using the melodramatic mode, the populist form by definition and “the mold upon which the consciousness of Latin America is imprinted” (Félix-Didier and Levison 54), allows Vallejo to seek emotional solidarity with her readers, themselves familiar with the genre’s range and conventions. Its escapist imagination lets her employ universal tropes that build up upon the elements of wish fulfillment, thereby framing some situations in a tidy Manichean fashion. Her first meeting with Escobar takes place at Hacienda Nápoles, where Virginia almost drowns in the treacherous currents of a river. It is Pablo who rushes to rescue her, while the rest of the group—Virginia’s boyfriend at the time included—remains unaware of her predicament. Pablo’s heroic act sets the stage for their budding attraction, distinguishing the capo from the rest of the men as an all-knowing and gallant savior. Virginia describes herself as “una Eva perdonada,” rescued from river’s clutches to enjoy “su segunda vision del Paraíso” (Vallejo 37). She accredits Escobar with the superior power of a guardian, a role she reconfirms in the context of a domestic dispute Vallejo has with her estranged husband. In the diva’s own words, Escobar is a “zorro” who will silence “el ogro” of her uncooperative spouse, by making him sign their divorce papers to set free “la princesa enterrada en la torre” of her failed marriage (61). Virginia, the proverbial damsel in distress, permits Escobar to obliterate the forces of evil in a chivalric act which anticipates their romance and even presages the happily ever after. Pablo’s aura of power, reinforced by his cohorts of trigger-happy hitmen, sets him in stark contrast to the types Vallejo had dated before: beau monde men blessed with money and pedigree, but small-minded, stingy, and plagued with addictions. Along the lines of a bourgeois fairytale, Escobar sweeps her off her feet by appearing extravagantly indulgent when he regularly sends for her in a new jet set, “un carruaje para una Cenicienta moderna” (Vallejo 64) as Vallejo gushes over her extravagant car. On a different occasion, he fills her apartment with thousands of white orchids. Escobar’s generosity does not

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stop at his love conquest, for he has an ambition to convert the dangerous shanty towns perched on the mountains surrounding Medellín into functioning neighborhoods with an infrastructure that would “devolverlos a la condición humana” (58). He thus emerges in Vallejo’s narrative as a do-gooder of extraordinary resources with a clear agenda for radical social reform. Like a classic prince from fairyland, he saves her life, cleans up her affairs, and brings hope to others. To assure her credibility and to legitimize her romantic investment in Escobar, Vallejo recurs to conventional gender patterns, even when such approach has little or no relevance. The diva who helped Escobar become media-savvy (Salazar 100), and, later on, prided in having prevented some of his acts of terrorism through her intervention, repeatedly underplays her independent character and outspokenness. In her version of events, nothing can chip away at Escobar’s forceful presence: under the veneer of an unimpressive stature, there lies a spirit that commands everyone’s attention, a locus of prestige and power. Pablo channels a classic strong man, the quintessential caudillo who possesses “un cierto aire de respetable señor mayor, [con] las palabras cuidadosamente medidas que salen de su boca recta y firme, porque habla en una voz serena . . . con la absoluta certeza de que sus deseos son órdenes y su dominio de los temas que le conciernen total” (Vallejo 31). Surrounded by a coterie of confidants, bodyguards, and beautiful women, Escobar occupies the very center of the social gaze. He loves speed, risk-taking, and taming danger. The James Bond of Hacienda Nápoles, the drug lord masters racecars and speedboats with the same ease and determination that he has conquered society and her heart.19 He is an archetypical macho, audacious and willing to go after whatever his heart desires—nature, commodities, and women; the more beyond his reach the better. His fearlessness and voracious appetite for life are unparalleled, so it seems, and Vallejo marvels at how the world is Pablo’s oyster. Once they begin their affair, Escobar confesses an all-consuming drive that has propelled him to rise above the rest of humanity: “Yo sólo quería ser rico . . . más rico que cualquiera de los ricos de Colombia, al precio que fuera y utilizando todos los recursos y cada una de las herramientas que la vida fuera poniendo a mi disposición. Me juré a mí mismo que, si a los treinta años no tenía un millón de dólares, me suicidaría” (Vallejo 81). Vallejo’s melodramatic take on Escobar also allows her to channel a plethora of conflicting emotions, the extremes of which are already established in the title of her book, where the private man she loved clashes with the public figure she abhors. Thus, she does not shy away from disclosing Escobar’s good and bad qualities, his generosity and cruelty, his logic and arbitrariness, his independence of spirit and inexplicable reliance on faulty advisers like the shifty Santofimio. What becomes apparent in her personal insight into Escobar’s mind is his megalomania combined with his subsequent disrespect for others, his utter lack of fear tied to a blind self-confidence, and his ruthlessness and an unquenchable thirst for control. This is when their relationship disintegrates; when Escobar taps her phone, eavesdrops on her contacts, and, allegedly, almost strangles her to death in a fit of rage. Vallejo distances herself from the madman who was terrorizing the nation, while fondly remembering the gentleman he once was. Overall, Vallejo proves to be aware of how identities are created, performed, and disseminated. As a public figure, she knows that her celebrity status is a double-edged sword, where she can be vilified with the same ease as she was previously admired.20 Facing potential for humiliation—since the scorn of the society cost Vallejo her career for having romanced the most hated criminal of Medellín—the diva treads carefully in confessing her faults and disclosing a private affair hidden from the world for twenty years. Principally, she strives to exculpate herself by emphasizing the trope of a woman in love and by reconstructing her experience as a recovery story: she loved a mysterious visionary but got away from the criminal monster Escobar had become. She saw herself as an equal partner of a would-be statesman, a graceful mentor who shaped his public persona and steered him, albeit unsuccessfully, toward negotiations rather than armed confrontation. She reenacts the trope so familiar to a female readership that it becomes ultimately believable: a good girl who falls for a bad boy and naively sets out to

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pacify his personality and convert him into something he is not. In her mind, Escobar “tiene la personalidad más masculina que yo haya conocido. Es un diamante en bruto y creo que nunca ha tenido una mujer como yo; voy a intentar pulirlo y a tratar de enseñarle todo lo que yo he aprendido. Y voy a hacer que me necesite como al agua en el desierto” (Vallejo 72). Vallejo’s tale of sublime passion and love does not find validation in the capo’s other recent biographies analyzed here. Popeye mentions Vallejo in passing as Escobar’s one-time lover whom the boss discarded as he was always seeking fresher, younger conquests. Escobar’s sister remembers Vallejo’s deep involvement in the affair and her brother’s less enthusiastic attitude towards a clingy lover, whom he showered with extravagant presents but to whom he never committed (A. M. Escobar 190–91). These conflicting opinions about each biographer’s role in Escobar’s life spill over to other areas, since Escobar’s sister diminishes Popeye’s tale of macho camaraderie by singling out the sicario as the weakest, most neurotic of her brother’s thugs. Likewise, Pablo Escobar’s brother, author of two biographies on the drug lord questions Popeye’s importance in Escobar’s reign of terror by arguing that the sicario offers insider accounts that precede his actual relationship with the capo. The time inconsistency and the fact that in the gang hierarchy Popeye was much lower than many others, now deceased assassins undermine Popeye’s version of events, according to Roberto.21 This frequent discrepancy in the details between different versions that tell more or less the same well-trod story highlights the significance of the self that each storyteller constructs against the backdrop of Escobar’s legend. While Popeye reminisces about his Halcyon days by Escobar’s side from his dank prison cell with an attitude of nothing left to lose, Vallejo analyzes her own infatuation with the man whose reputation presumably put an end to her career. Both juxtapose Escobar’s positive qualities against his undeniable monstrosity in an attempt to justify their attraction to the infamous criminal. Simultaneously, they shed light on corrupt politicians and members of the elite who, despite their earlier ties to Escobar and to other drug barons, have maintained their untainted status to this day. Likewise, Escobar’s siblings, Roberto (alias “Osito”) and Alba Marina, attempt to balance out their brother’s evil by showcasing the tradition of bootlegging, corruption, and violence in Colombia, yet they refrain from pointing fingers at powerful political figures that formed alliances with him. This is how they suggest that sociopolitical disorder has influenced enterprising individuals of Escobar’s ilk to take part in unlawful measures: first, as a form of a business venture; then, as survival; and, finally, as retaliation. In other words, Escobar’s siblings attempt to recuperate the kingpin’s humanity not only via the predictable image of a solid family man but also as a product of an unruly society, an outlaw whose enterprising spirit was eventually corrupted by his environment. This is nothing new, for Escobar himself relished his celebrity outlaw status even though he went to great lengths to clean up his criminal record, while trumpeting his innocence and posing as a spokesperson for the masses. The décor of his prison La Catedral, which he left behind to escape the approaching army, gives insight into his fascination with rogue aesthetics, in that he displayed his own mug shots and photographs where he posed as a famous outlaw. Mark Bowden calls it the “cheerful cynicism” of a man who “viewed criminality as a normal, healthy outlet for his ambition, just as he remained devoted to his family while employing teenage whores and beauty queens to satisfy his wider sexual appetites. Pablo clearly saw government and law enforcement as nothing more than power rivals, earnest opponents in an ongoing chess match” (158). It is precisely this positive facet of the outlaw that Roberto Escobar strives to promote by detailing his brother’s charitable acts, the ongoing devotion from the masses for the capo, and Pablo’s love of nature.22 He cites the case of the private social security system the capo purportedly established in the town of Quibdó, where the unemployed received financial help and job opportunities provided they stayed employed for at least a year (Escobar, The Accountant’s Story 83–84). He mentions Escobar’s migrant shelter, the so-called Chocó Embassy, a building in the middle of Medellín that provided poor migrants from Chocó with medical attention

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and other services for a couple of weeks to get them on their feet (84). The list of charitable examples is long, yet even they are overshadowed by death that surrounded the drug baron. One such example of the popular classes worshipping Pablo Escobar to this day involves a woman who remembers fondly the kingpin’s kindness despite the fact that her own son died while working for him (83). If Roberto attempted to highlight Pablo’s benevolence, the effect is the opposite: it attests to Escobar’s pervasively destructive influence that cut short the lives of those who revered him. Roberto’s recollections freeze Escobar’s image in a frame of Hollywoodesque criminality, even when he addresses the pervasive skepticism that surrounds the goodwill of his brother. His reflections harken back to the era when Pablo was branded the Robin Hood of the slums, as seen in newsweekly Semana shortly before other newspapers exposed the illegal sources of his fortune, thereby putting an end to his political aspirations: He became just like the Godfather. . . . When others write about all the good things he did they always give Pablo a sinister reason for doing so: He was trying to make them ignore his real business. He was buying loyalty so no one would report him to the law. . . . But the absolute truth is that this goodness was part of Pablo Escobar, as much a part of him as a person who was able to take the violent actions. I’m defending him because it is the right thing to do. The houses he built still stand, the people he paid to educate still have good jobs, many of the people whose medical expenses he paid are healthy. All the good things he did should be remembered. (Escobar, The Accountant’s Story 85–86)

Roberto is well aware that his testimony goes against the grain of what is believed about his brother and he does not hesitate to adopt a defensive stance from the outset. Alba Marina goes further by placing the entire family on the loss side of the balance sheet; in the opening section of El otro Pablo, she contends that hers is the story of the defeated, of those who have lost the war, and an opportunity to disseminate to the world their interpretation of the past, that of the “real” Pablo (9). Whereas Escobar’s name has become synonymous with state terrorism—thereby condemning the capo’s entire family to ongoing public scrutiny and scorn—Colombia’s most infamous victimizer, in general, reflects a reversal of common values, a method that Alba Marina employs repeatedly in her story. In referring to the image of Colombia as an unlawful state that produces individuals who fend for themselves through equally illegitimate measures, Escobar’s sister lays out the atmosphere of state disorder that had affected her family even before her brother rose to power. Rather than singling Escobar out, such an interpretation accounts for some of his reactions, all the while suggesting that unlawfulness was the rule and not the exception in Colombia. Alba Marina opens up about the family tragedy that occurred on Christmas day of 1977, when one policeman’s power play put an end to the life of their younger sibling, Fernando. Her brother was caught necking with his girlfriend at the side of the road, and, accused of public indecency, he was ordered into the passenger seat (with his girlfriend in the back), while one of the cops took over the wheel. The policeman soon lost control of the vehicle and fell into a ravine, killing everyone inside. In Alba Marina’s recollections, even the chief of the police in the district of Envigado was infuriated with his own men because their excessive zeal led to a tragedy, and because it devastated a family that was becoming influential (A. M. Escobar 97). This is where Alba Marina implicitly and explicitly establishes a pattern of inverted values, portraying law officials and the state in general as inefficient, obstructive, and frequently criminal. Following the tragic death of Fernando, “dentro de la familia se empezó a fomentar la idea de que los policías eran malos, que eran asesinos y gente sin escrúpulos. . . . Nos convencimos de que en la fuerza pública y la autoridad no se podía confiar” (98). Alba Marina reinforces this idea by describing Escobar’s adversaries from the early 1990s, the vigilante organization Los Pepes (People Persecuted by Escobar), as a group of illegal and legitimate members alike.23 They joined forces to take an aim at her brother, either

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because, like the paramilitaries and various politicians, they were financially indebted to him, or because, like the CIA and DEA, they hoped to prove their efficiency to the public. In Alba Marina’s words, “a fin de cuentas se unieron un montón de bandidos contra otro montón de bandidos” (A. M. Escobar 337). The final chapter of the Escobar saga, marked by his death and the disappearance of the Capo’s fortune, once again incriminates the state. Alba Marina points out how, ironically, Escobar’s arch enemies, the leaders of the Cali cartel, offered support and protection while the state and the paramilitary groups threatened their lives and snatched away their riches, leaving them with nothing. Worse are the fabrications they constructed against the Medellín cartel, by allowing some of its members to remain alive, provided they confessed to crimes they never committed. As an unproven example, Escobar’s sister cites the national tragedy of the explosion of Avianca flight 203 in 1989, a terrorist act that has been attributed to the Medellín cartel (A. M. Escobar 393). The final lines of Roberto’s Mi hermano Pablo suggest that Escobar was not killed by the police but rather that he committed suicide, thus fulfilling the kingpin’s pledge that he would never be taken alive. Similarly, Alba Marina insists on this version of events, thereby stripping the legal authorities of the satisfaction of directly doing away with the criminal. Unlike Alba Marina, Escobar’s only son, Juan Pablo Escobar, who lives in Argentina under the name of Sebastian Marroquín, refrains from blaming the police and the state in Nicolás Entel’s documentary film, Pecados de mi padre. Instead, in an interview with El Espectador, he commends the national police for its courage and dedication in fighting drug trafficking: Hace un tiempo en Buenos Aires di una entrevista en televisión con Nicolás, donde reconocía que la Policía, en mi concepto, fue una de las instituciones democráticas que quedó con más víctimas de toda esta guerra que desató mi padre. Es a la que más respeto le debo por todo ese dolor causado. Por supuesto que todos ellos se merecen un pedido de perdón de esta familia por los actos cometidos por mi padre. (J. P. Escobar)

This is not the only way in which Juan Pablo distances himself from the rest of the narrators discussed here. His version is so repentant, so earnest, and so bereft of glamour that it makes any accusations of opportunism difficult to sustain. Even the title of the documentary presages the tone of Escobar’s son, in that it foregrounds an admission of guilt, that of his father and his own by blood association. The documentary adopts the biblical trope of children paying for the sins of their fathers, thereby giving Marroquín’s confession a moral if not a religious undertone. The son suffered the consequences of Escobar’s actions in a number of ways, and the Escobar family to this day bears the guilt of his monstrosity in the eyes of the world. Yet Marroquín claims not to seek sympathy, but rather to teach Colombian youth that drug trafficking is a force that destroys families on both sides of the law. This is why he reaches out to the sons of Escobar’s most renowned victims, Rodrigo Lara Bonilla and Luís Galán, in an attempt to demonstrate that hatred should not be hereditary. If Marroquín’s initial correspondence with the children of his father’s victims is a touching gesture between historical opponents, their later encounter is a momentous point in Colombia’s drug-related history. Witnesses to their fathers’ demise in the war on drugs, they address their personal tragedies in a broader, national context. The historical footage of the actual assassinations, of grieving families and children who now sit in the same room with Escobar’s son makes this encounter even more poignant. Marroquín humbly shoulders his father’s blame and asks for forgiveness. One of Galán’s sons empathically reaches out by admitting that there is an ongoing social condemnation of Escobar, his wife, and his family, thereby uniting with Marroquín as yet another victim. Unlike other biographers who, at least at times, recur to their grand times by Escobar’s side, Marroquín provides a predominantly sad portrayal of the man who, despite his talents, became consumed with power and violence and lost everything as a result. He cites one example, when the police were closing in on Escobar’s hideout while the capo and his son felt hungry and

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persecuted, burning stacks of banknotes just to stay warm. This story illustrates that money did not provide them happiness but rather deprived them of the freedoms enjoyed by less wealthy, non-criminal individuals. With this lesson in hand, instead of avenging Escobar—a retaliatory undertaking the teenage Marroquín had promised in a live telephone interview—he seeks forgiveness from the position of the Capo’s direct descendant. His is, by far, the closest to a cautionary tale with a message of atonement and hope. Anguished over his father’s bloody legacy, Marroquín strives to make amends with Colombia via a personal confession and with what comes across as a full disclosure.24 Not asking for redemption for Escobar, he nevertheless attempts to deliver himself from sin, the key concept behind his reappearance in the public eye and behind Entel’s documentary as a whole. Marroquín’s visit to Colombia and his televised encounter with his father’s victims carry a strong symbolic value in the process of bringing national closure to the era of grand capos. After all, Escobar has held up a troubling mirror to a nation long plagued by violence and disorder, and consequently the evolution of his image is of relevance to Colombians. This is perhaps why, plastered with photographs of his victims, the ruins of Escobar’s mansion in Hacienda Nápoles feature oversized posters of that very gathering as a symbol of national reconciliation (see Figure 3). On the other hand, the present-day mass media indulges the public’s fascination with criminals, crowning figures like Escobar with an iconic status through continuous exposure. The popular imagination resurrects him through biographies and tourist-oriented commodities, thereby allowing him to dwell in a distant folkloric time. Direct witnesses to his life are coming forward, feeling at least partially secure to tell their stories. In other words, and interpretative inconsistencies aside, the discourse on the Medellín cartel has become calmer and considerably more palatable for wide consumption.

Figure 3. Ruins of Escobar’s Hacienda Nápoles Converted into a Monument-Museum to
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A final case of conflicting trends within the Escobar saga involves Alonso J. Salazar, Mayor of Medellín from 2008 to 2011 and the renowned author of books on drug trafficking, including Escobar’s biography La parábola de Pablo (2001). He, too, revisits Pablo Escobar in the hugely successful 2012 Caracol television series titled Pablo Escobar, el patrón del mal, which traces Escobar’s rise and fall. Together, with Camilo Cano Busquets and Juana Uribe Pachón, whose families were directly affected by Escobar’s wrath,25 Salazar brings Escobar to life from the standpoint of the law and of his victims. In part, it is a reaction to a slew of recent narcotelevision series, which, skimpy on history, end up celebrating the crass extravagance of the narcolifestyle.26 Yet a skeptic could argue that under the guise of the sanctioned institution of information Salazar also taps into the trend of the drug-related television craze, even though his approach is historical. It helps that his coproducers had experience in television with both the English and Spanish–language markets in iconic shows like Betty la fea, and that its actors, together with the man portraying Escobar, Andrés Parra, appeared in other bestseller narcoseries, such as El cartel de los sapos I and II (2008, 2011). But, as the creators of the new series affirm in an interview for El Espectador, it is also a question of timing because “Colombia is prepared now to confront this ghost” (Durán Nuñez). Perhaps this is a natural course of events: rather than leave Escobar in obscurity where outlaw myths do the talking, Colombia is engaging his legacy both through the popular culture and more ambitious projects designed to teach history to younger generations. Escobar’s ubiquity in the media makes it evident that the capo has not disappeared from the radar; rather, he is being reconfigured as part of a painful history—from the local and anecdotal to the national and collective. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to Oakland University for a summer research grant that allowed me to travel to Colombia, and to John Eipper, whose adventurous spirit enabled me to visit the different sites associated with Pablo Escobar and his legacy. I am also thankful for his editing skills and incisive comments during the preparation of this essay. NOTES 1  “Nuevos horizontes,” a mural painted by Carlos Uribe Uribe on an outside wall of the Centro Colombo Americano in Medellín, lasted barely three days in July of 2010. The Center’s curator ordered it removed due to its controversial nature. A parody of a famous painting by Francisco Antonio Cano titled “Horizontes,” this piece substituted a peasant family with Pablo Escobar pointing at the horizon. Another recent reappearance of Escobar happened in the Ukrainian city of Kharkov where police took down a costly billboard of unclaimed sponsorship, which depicted Escobar wishing the locals a Happy New Year. 2  On the tenth anniversary of Escobar’s escape from La Catedral prison, El Colombiano from Medellín published a series of commemorative articles. 3  See L. J. Saldarriaga and “Pablo Escobar Refuses.” 4  Escobar’s brother, sister, and lieutenant deliver ghost-written stories, while his former lover, Virginia Vallejo, insists on the exclusive authorship of her book. 5  See Jácome, Lander, and L’Hoeste. 6  See Close, Polit Dueñas, Schultermandl, Skar, and Von der Walde. 7  See Benavides, Cabañas, and Pobutsky. 8  It should be noted, however, that Pablo Escobar plays a central role in José Libardo Porras’s Happy Birthday, Capo (2008) and that Juan Gabriel Vásquez’s novel and the winner of 2011 Premio Alfaguara, El ruido de las cosas al caer, develops in the shadow of Escobar’s nefarious influence on Colombian society. 9  I refer to the recent slew of memoirs written by members of the drug trafficking world, such as two volumes by Fernando Rodríguez Mondragón, El hijo del Ajedrecista, or the autobiography of Carlos Castaño, founder of the Peasant Self-Defense Forces of Córdoba and Urabá (ACCU), an extreme rightwing paramilitary organization.

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 In reaction to the biographies of Popeye and Roberto Escobar, as well as other life narratives by the excapos of the Cali cartel, as well as Mi confesión: Carlos Castaño revela sus secretos (see Aranguren), Héctor Abad Faciolince laments: “Y lo más grave es que el público devora esas patrañas con avidez, por esa vieja confianza ingenua en que aquello que se publica bajo forma de libro tiene que ser verdad, o que el que ya no tiene que perder lo dirá todo sin ambages, cuando lo cierto es que todas las personas buscan maquillar de moralidad incluso sus fechorías más abominables. . . . Todo forma parte de esa especie de veneración nacional a los violentos que han tenido éxito en su camino pavimentado con muertos. Hay que creerles a los ‘machos’ que mataron tanto.” 11  See “La exhumación de Pablo.” 12  His famous Hacienda Nápoles, located between Bogotá and Medellín, met a different fate. It was initially abandoned and ransacked by treasure hunters, and his impressive collection of exotic animals was mostly shot or left to starve. Purchased by a private company, it has been converted into a theme park with plans of bringing in more exotic animals. In other words, the history of the ranch is coming full circle. 13  Of Escobar’s five hundred hitmen, only three have survived to this day, namely Popeye, Carlos Alzate Urquijo (“Arete”), and Dandenys Muñoz (“La Quica”), who is serving a series of life sentences in the United States. This tally was written upon the death of Juan Diego Arcila Henao, alias “Tomate,” an Escobar’s sicario released from jail in 2002 and killed execution-style in Venezuela in 2007. “Arete” survived an attempt on his life as he was leaving prison (“Sicarios”). 14  Santofimio has been rumored to have ties with both the Medellín and Cali cartels. Recently, he served three years of a twenty-four-year sentence for allegedly instigating the assassination of Luis Carlos Galán. Yet, in 2008, a high court (Tribunal Superior de Cundinamarca) ruled that the evidence in the case was insufficient and Santofimio was released to the general disapproval of the public opinion and Galán’s family in particular. As reported in the newsweekly Semana, he had been previously imprisoned in the 1970s and 1990s for “falsification of identity cards, bank account problems, and the famous ‘8,000 trial,’ a campaign finance scandal during the administration of President Ernesto Samper” (“Not Guilty”). 15  Elsewhere Popeye changes his story, confessing that he was unable to kill his own lover and sent five of his minions to finish her off (“Popeye”). 16  By then, Lehder had outlived his usefulness to the Medellín cartel, since his Caribbean drugtrafficking route had been discovered and destroyed by the Colombian authorities. Yet Popeye claims that Escobar leaked his partner’s hideout to the police as a payback for killing Rollo: “Escobar tira a la presa Lehder a la jauría hambrienta de agentes de la DEA . . .” (Legarda 96). 17  Some critics scapegoat Vallejo as a spoiled socialite who cracked under the pressure of her own hunger for power, betting on the wrong horse and failing miserably. Óscar Collazos draws parallels between Vallejo’s downfall and the collapse of Colombian morality. Londoño Hoyos and Ortiz argue that Vallejo’s unbridled desire for power eventually led to her downfall. Hugo Mastrodoménico psychoanalyzes the diva, claiming that she, in fact, was ignored by her criminal companions. Another article combines the pop science of instincts with a cursory glance at the behavioral patterns of the narco women in order to reach spurious conclusions (“¿Cuál”). Commentaries address her looks, scrutinizing and taking apart her life and body. Antonio Caballero, for instance, states semijokingly that Virginia’s apparently naked photo from an old magazine cover conceals her chest in the same way her 2007 book obscures the details of her past. The title of his essay says it all: “Las tetas de Virginia.” Then there are cruel anecdotes about her multiple plastic surgeries, her histrionic tendencies, her arrogance, and an absurd vanity where no one, not even her own husband, could ever catch a glimpse of her without make-up, and her eventual downfall, marked by the loss of her earlier lucidity and dazzling looks (Ortiz). These comments objectify the star of yesteryear in a way that no public male figure would ever have to endure, showcasing pervading sexism. 18  Vallejo employs a patently melodramatic mode when, for example, she refers to Escobar after hearing about the horrors of the invasion of the Palace of Justice: “[M]e pregunto si aquel que yo creía el más valiente de los hombres ha pasado a convertirse sólo en el más cobarde de los monstrous. . . . De la noche a la mañana he dejado de amarlo” (251). 19  Roberto Escobar Gaviria confesses Pablo’s particular affection for the film characters Robin Hood and James Bond. Interestingly, the drug lord channeled both roles in the myth he created of himself (Mi hermano 20). Likewise, Salazar writes that Escobar lived according to the teachings of Don Vito Corleone, a behavior founded on utter calm and politeness, where even death orders were given in the most civil manner (162). 20  Jacqueline Rose suggests that celebrity worship “is often a ritual of public humiliation” (203). Feeling ultimately inferior to the stars’ glamour and achievements, the general public wallows in their foibles and loves to knock them down when their weaknesses come to light. 10

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 See Petro. Aside from conflict between Popeye and Roberto Escobar, there has surfaced another discord between Escobar’s son and Popeye, with Popeye accusing Marroquín of participating in his father’s crimes as a teenager. In response, Marroquín cites his legal innocence, accusing Popeye of money-grabbing and attention-seeking to secure his own starring role within Pablo Escobar’s legacy (J. P. Escobar). 22  In Mi hermano, Roberto Escobar calls Pablo “uno de los pioneros de la arborización de Medellín” (53), who wanted to purchase empty land in La Chinita in Urabá to reforest it and construct permanent houses for people who had set up squatter settlements there. 23  Allegedly financed by Escobar’s archnemesis, rival drug traffickers from the Cali cartel, and founded by the Castaño brothers (Carlos and Fidel), leaders the Peasant Self-Defense Forces and the godfathers of the new generation of narcotics-fueled paramilitary forces that afflict Colombia to this day. It has been rumored that Los Pepes cooperated with the Search Bloc of the Colombian National Police, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and US intelligence. Due to their violent methods of operation and the fact that their many members either evolved to become Escobar’s successors (e.g., Diego Murillo Bejarano, alias “Don Berna”) or became the heads of Colombia’s national paramilitary alliance, human rights groups raised concerns that national intelligence forces cooperated with criminal organizations, thereby empowering the latter and contributing to further violence under the cover of state-sanctioned antiterrorism (“Colombian Paramilitaries”). 24  Colombia’s police director, General Óscar Naranjo, accused Marroquín of direct involvement with the cartel business, including killings. A renowned Colombian reporter, María Jimena Duzán, who met with Marroquín in Argentina, states that she believes Marroquín’s desire to expiate his father’s faults yet suspects that he “hasn’t told us the whole truth” (Sequera and Bajak). 25  Cano Busquets’s father, Guillermo Cano, editor of the daily El Espectador, was murdered by Escobar’s sicarios in 1986 for attacking the capo in his newspaper. Juana Uribe’s aunt, Gloria Pachón, was kidnapped by Escobar’s gang between 1990–91. 26  See La viuda de la mafia (2004), El Cartel (2008), El Capo (2009), Las muñecas de la mafia (2009), Rosario Tijeras (2010), and Correo de inocentes (2011). 21

WORKS CITED Abad Faciolince, Héctor. “Los hampones literarios.” Semana 3 Nov. 2005. Web. 15 Nov. 2009. Aranguren Molina, Mauricio. Mi confesión: Carlos Castaño revela sus secretos. Bogotá: Oveja Negra, 2002. Print. Benavides, Hugo. Drugs, Thugs, and Divas: Telenovelas and Narco-Dramas in Latin America. Austin: U of Texas P, 2008. Print. Bowden, Mark. Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw. London: Penguin, 2001. Print. Caballero, Antonio. “Las tetas de Virginia.” Semana 9 Nov. 2007. Web. 12 Jan. 2010. Cabañas, Miguel. “Narcotelenovelas, Gender, and Globalization in Sin tetas no hay paraíso.” Latin American Perspectives 39.3 (2012): 74–87. Print. Close, Glen S. “Rosario Tijeras: Femme Fatale in Thrall.” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 43.2 (2009): 301–19. Print. Collazos, Óscar. “La vida ejemplar de una diva.” El Tiempo 27 Jul. 2006. Web. 5 Jan. 2008. “Colombian Paramilitaries and the United States: ‘Unraveling the Pepes Tangled Web.’” The National Security Archive. Ed. Michael Evans. 17 Feb. 2008. Web. 23 Aug. 2011. Correo de inocentes. Dir. Clara María Ochoa. RCN, 2011. DVD. “¿Cuál es el encanto que ejercen en las mujeres los hombres peligrosos?” El Tiempo 27 Aug. 2006. Web. 10 Sept. 2010. Durán Nuñez, Diana Carolina. “La parábola televisada de Pablo Escobar.” El Espectador 7 Nov. 2009. Web. 13 Aug. 2010. El capo. Dir. Riccardo Gabrielli R. Fox Telecolombia, 2009. DVD. El cartel de los sapos. Dir. Luis Alberto Restrepo. Caracol, 2008. DVD. Escobar, Alba Marina, with Catalina Guzmán. El otro Pablo: El retrato íntimo del narcotraficante que doblegó a Colombia. Bogotá: Semana, 2010. Print. Escobar Gaviria, Roberto. Mi hermano Pablo. Bogotá: Quintero, 2000. Print. Escobar Gaviria, Roberto, with David Fisher. The Accountant’s Story: Inside the Violent World of the Medellín Cartel. New York: Grand Central, 2009. Print. Escobar, Juan Pablo. Interview. “Asumo la responsabilidad de andar con esta ropa manchada de sangre.” El Espectador 9 Dec. 2009. Web. 10 Aug. 2011. “La exhumación de Pablo.” Semana 11 Nov. 2006. Web. 21 Jul. 2011.

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