“Don’t go there!” Valentina, a 27-year-old designer dwelling in Medellín, yelled after I instructed her that I deliberate on visiting the Casa Museo Pablo Escobar, a museum devoted to the Colombian drug lord.
A fast Google search made me change my thoughts. The doorway charge to the museum is $30 – a hefty sum in a rustic the place a full meal will usually price you lower than $5, and many of the museums are donation-based or free-of-charge. On high of that, on-line opinions have been making the place out to be a rip-off, a set of meaningless private possessions, shoddy reproductions, and revisionist historical past.
However that was not why Valentina instructed me to not go. A local Colombian, she felt it was disrespectful for vacationers like me to go and waste their time, vitality, and cash on a person who callously killed and intimidated so a lot of her countrymen.
Sadly, that’s precisely what vacationers are doing. For a lot of – though definitely not all – it’s considered one of their major causes for coming to Medellín within the first place. Colombia has been attracting vacationers with a perverse admiration for Pablo Escobar for many years, however the variety of narco-tourists elevated drastically following the discharge of Netflix’s Narcos, which has turned the kingpin from a fading reminiscence into an alive-and-well popular culture icon.
Whereas the Netflix sequence has boosted Colombia’s tourism business and by extension the Colombian financial system as a complete, Colombians are – understandably – upset that one of the hated characters of their historical past books has now develop into the nation’s de facto worldwide ambassador.
“To many people, Pablo is our Hitler,” one particular person from Medellín instructed me. “To a couple he was a hero, however principally he introduced a whole lot of evil to our metropolis, and we’ll in all probability by no means do away with the stigma, identical to the Germans won’t ever do away with their historical past. I actually despise individuals who purchase or promote Pablo T-shirts, mugs, and so on. It’s like me going to Berlin to promote T-shirts of Hitler. I’d get arrested earlier than I bought the primary one.”
“I’ve an uncle who I by no means met who died in considered one of his well-known bombings,” one other added. “I utterly despise any reference in the direction of that man.”
Personally, I’m tempted to carry Narcos partially chargeable for creating or on the very least reinvigorating this reference for Escobar. In basic Hollywood vogue, Netflix made him thinner, handsomer and extra charismatic than he was in actual life. (Additionally they forged a Brazilian actor as a substitute of a Colombian one, however that’s one other story). On high of all this, the main target of the present is on his success, on his energy. Viewers stroll away from Narcos ruminating on how, at his peak, he was the 7th richest man on this planet and managed 80% of all cocaine. What they don’t understand is that, for the time that he was lively, he just about held the entire nation hostage via a marketing campaign of home terrorism, blowing up residence buildings and business airplanes simply to kill a single particular person on his miles-long hitlist.
As a substitute of Casa Museo Pablo Escobar, Valentina urged me to go to Barrio 13. An enormous slum erected on the hills overlooking Medellín, Barrio 13 was once one of the harmful neighborhoods in all of South America, till the Colombian military swept in through the early 2000s. Issues have improved since then – considerably. It’s nonetheless a complete mess; there isn’t a city planning and no roads for automobiles, however as a substitute of public executions, there’s music, graffiti, and – often – these Purple Bull BMX challenges you could have seen on YouTube. Most significantly, nevertheless, the residents appear to be incomes an honest dwelling off tourism.
Whereas ordering an IPA I later realized contained copious quantities of THC, I requested the man who had introduced me there – an area referred to as Jason – how the individuals of Barrio 13 felt a few present like Narcos. The reply: not good. If I wished to “see the true Escobar,” Jason instructed me, I ought to try a Colombian present referred to as El Patron del Mal, or “The Boss of Evil.” It’s a Latin soap-opera, not a blockbuster, however as soon as I ignored the overly dramatic plot and music, I may see what he was getting at. Initially, Escobar, who was performed by a Colombian actor, appeared the half – obese and fewer enticing. Patron del Mal additionally struck me as extra genuine in its illustration of Colombia. The Medellín the characters lived in was the identical Medellín as I noticed after I appeared out of the window of my little Airbnb – filled with vitality and coloration. They drank aguardiente and gorged on paísa, a typical Antioquian dish of rice, beans, avocado, floor beef and fried pork, served with scorching arepas. Most significantly, nevertheless, the lifetime of crime didn’t appear almost as glamorous on this present because it did in Narcos. We see Escobar for what he actually was – a criminal and not using a conscience; it wasn’t his intelligence that allowed him to get so far as he did, however the truth that he was keen to do issues that others wouldn’t have been capable of reside with.
Navigating the maze that’s Barrio 13 is difficult sufficient if you’re sober, not to mention if you’ve unintentionally gotten excessive off craft beer. Standing in line for the one outside escalator within the nation, I started to note how Colombian society handled the scars of narco-terrorism. Buildings that was once painted with blood and bullet holes have since been lined up by beautiful graffiti artwork that serves to remind individuals of something apart from drug-related violence. One of many barrio’s latest murals, Jason confirmed me, depicts Pachamama, an Andean goddess representing the Earth itself, and a a lot older and highly effective image of Colombia’s cultural heritage than Escobar.
Whereas I by no means went to Casa Museo Pablo Escobar, I did go to Hacienda Napoles, one of many many houses he acquired along with his fortune. Situated close to the city of Puerto Triunfo, about midway between Medellín and Bogotá, the Hacienda had initially included a modest swimming pool, a touchdown strip for small airplanes, and a zoo full of animals bought on the black market. After Escobar’s demise, the property itself fell into disarray. The villa was ransacked and finally raised to the bottom. The animals, left to their destiny, died or – within the case of the hippos – escaped into the encircling wetlands, the place they flourished and have become invasive species.
For years, the Colombian state fought to confiscate the land from Escobar’s family. Once they succeeded, they turned the Hacienda Napoles right into a theme park. At first, I believed that this was accomplished in an try to money in on narco-tourism developments. Happily, this was not the case. Upon falling into public palms, the Hacienda – like Barrio 13 – was remodeled in order to take away all traces of its legal previous. To that finish, the Hacienda Napoles of right now is expounded to the Hacienda Napoles of Escobar in identify solely. The hilly terrain that had as soon as served to cover the kingpin’s dealings from the skin world now options rollercoasters and swimming swimming pools. The theme park’s theme is Africa, owing to the larger and higher zoo that has taken the place of the outdated one. Guests – principally Colombians holidaying in their very own nation – come to gawk at elephants, lions, tigers, flamingos, and a pair of completely monstrous boa constrictors. In distinction to Escobar’s personal zoo, the place zebras have been ridden by his henchmen and ostriches handfed cigarettes, the Hacienda’s present animals reside in spacious enclosures, having fun with a local weather that – no less than by way of temperature – isn’t far off from their native savannahs.
The one reference to Pablo Escobar inside Hacienda Napoles is a small museum tucked away within the very again nook of the park. The museum, a partial reconstruction of the unique villa, is devoted to the victims of narco-terrorism. Inside you study extra concerning the historical past of the Hacienda, Escobar’s inevitable downfall, and the barbaric lengths that he went to attempting to forestall that downfall. The white partitions are lined with the portraits of politicians and cops that he had killed, in addition to photos of blood-covered kids being pulled out of the rubble of collapsed buildings.
What shocked me greater than these pictures was that many of the guests round me had simply come out of the pool and have been strolling via the museum half-naked, dripping moist, ingesting beers and consuming slices of pizza. On the time their habits and look couldn’t assist however strike me as inappropriate, and even made me assume that they have been a bit hypocritical to complain about gringos smoking blunts on Escobar’s grave again in Medellín. Days later, I spotted how fallacious I used to be. Whereas I, a foreigner, had traveled to Puerto Triunfo particularly to see what had develop into of Escobar’s former residence, the common Colombian – it seems – comes right here to swim within the swimming swimming pools, journey the rollercoasters, and take a look at the animals. To them, Pablo Escobar shouldn’t be the principle occasion of their journey, however simply an afterthought. This, so far as I’m involved, is nearly as good an indication as any that the nation – after a long time of struggling – is properly on its approach to break away from the drug lord’s tightening grip.
