2023-07-12 09:12:41
Colombia accumulates contradictions. President Gustavo Petro seeks, in fits and starts, to achieve “total peace” with the ELN guerrillas, the FARC dissidents, and the drug gangs who are offered reduced sentences, among other benefits, if they abandon their activities. The first left-wing government carries out its project in a country where criminal figures can still be object of glamorization That happens with Pablo Escobar Gaviria. His house in Medellín had become a museo Recommended by tourist apps. The authorities ordered its demolition, but, as if it were an imitation of what happened in the eighties, when drug trafficking anticipated their actions against the State, the brother of the drug trafficker killed in 1993 beat them to the punch and destroyed the property last Monday. .
The house was located in the town of Las Palmas, some 500 kilometers from Bogotá and was reason for pilgrimage of numerous foreigners interested in “the pattern of evil”. In fact, it was known as the museum of the former head of the Medellín cartel. The demolition was not due to the inappropriateness of an initiative that exalted his figure, but rather to the lack of official authorization. It was, as befits the capo’s own story, an illegal act, but, in this case, in full view of all. “We reject the use of the territory for those activities that promote drug tourism,” said Colonel Omar Rodríguez Aranda, announcing that the property was going to be demolished. When 50 officials from the Mayor’s Office and the Police arrived to turn it into rubble, they found that the task had already been done.
The house belonged to robert escobarthe older brother of the capo, known as the bear, 76 years old. “Pablo got some false witnesses who involved me in a fictitious drug business, and that was enough to turn me in. The government’s condition was that I had to confess to a crime. The proof that I had nothing to do with drug trafficking is that I was never requested in extradition by the United States”, he usually says. Those connoisseurs of the poster’s history do not doubt the role he played in the structure. He was considered the cartel’s accountant. His plea of innocence has not prevented him from building the “museum” that his son managed, Nicholas. The role of the progeny was vital in this case: they told the family adventures through the paternal eyes. Little Bear had lost his sight in the prison where a letter bomb exploded on him. That deficit did not prevent her from speaking and contributing to the romanticization of his brother’s activities.
theme park
conversion of Pablo Escobar In the theme park it dates from 2018. Not only a tour of the house but also the cemetery where he is buried was offered for about 30 euros. But it is the demolished building that stood in the exclusive sector of the Antioquia capital that staged the cult of the disastrous character. The advertisements invited us to enter his world “innermost”. The tourists were preparing for an immersion in the life of the capo on the basis of “true and first-source information.” Through images they could follow the process that led a young man from Antioquia to become the most wanted criminal in Colombia four decades ago.
In the house one could see fragments of a car with bullet holesa desk equipped with an internal mechanism that allowed it to hide weapons, emblematic photos of Pablo Escobar during his stay in Cathedralor with his Soviet fur cap, the jet ski that was used in one of the shootings of the saga of James Bond and a huge $500 bill that functioned as a symbol of the desire for exponential accumulation of money.
The desire for credibility included the presence of a “doble” of the extinct narco The lookalike would accompany the tourists, dressed in the accoutrements that used to characterize him, to give the excursion a greater sense of “reality.”
Past, present and future
The authorities believe that with the reduction to ashes of the museum an important step has been taken in the pulverization of the Escobar myth. It is in this context that the Petro government not only has to manage the past but also the present of drug trafficking in Colombia. Escobar is already part of a history of tears. The present is related to the Gulf Clan, the most powerful organization in the drug business, with an operational capacity capable of destabilizing the State in numerous municipalities.
The calls Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AGC), which were originally far-right paramilitary forces, came to have 9,000 men under arms, a statute and an anthem. They are the main exporters of cocaine to the United States. In the same Antioquia that “belonged” to Escobar, the Clan del Golfo displays some of its power.
Petro has suspended negotiations with that group, which had been offered reduced sentences if they turned themselves in voluntarily. The AGG have demanded guarantees of non-extradition to the United States, as was the case with their leader Dairo Antonio Úsuga, alias “Autumn”. Its ability to co-opt young people is so strong that the Government has decided to allocate a part of its budget to social plans that seek to discourage young people from entering the world of violence that continues to exalt Escobar, in exchange for studying. “We are going to pay them not to kill. We are going to give them help that has a commitment that has to be fulfilled”, explained the president.
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