An Editorial Note: Medellin Civica; October, 3, 1989

 

     Our editorial board has decided to volunteer these words following the heated season of accusations and indictments volleyed at our charitable Doctor, as a reminder to citizens across the Republic on how Pablo Escobar has transformed our land in just a little more than a decade.

     At the ground breaking for the Jesus of Atocha chapel in Envigado, Paul Patron, an unemployed peasant whose land was seized by a Bogota mining firm, witnessed first hand Don Pablo’s generosity. Escobar financed the chapel’s construction and Patron delivered these remarks after his encounter with the benevolent Doctor, “He had the hands of a priest and I could feel his concern for our well being. He shares our plight and works only to alleviate our misfortunes. It was only a quick passing with Pablo, but afterwards I imagined a new era of prosperity across the land.”

     Pablo Escobar is dutiful citizen, devoted father, entrepreneur, and a former congressman whose charity has eclipsed the church in Rome, yet for months he has been targeted as the mastermind behind a series of heinous crimes that threaten to push the Republic once again into the maelstrom of civil war.

     How quick are those who posses an ancestry of wealth and privilege to shun and disregard the emergence of a new force that drives renewed life and hope throughout the veins of our society. Should we be expected to turn a blind eye to the origins of the throne commanded by our country’s elite 3%: slaving, tobacco, land seizures, quinine smuggling, emerald and gold smuggling. It was more than just insult that Pablo was denied admission to Club Campestre, the prestigious country club with members including Colombia’s despotic bosses of government and economics. Rather it was the shining star that has fully illuminated their mistrust and loathing for the vast Colombian public.

     There are those who have accused Don Pablo of manipulating every department and government corridor with his “techniques of extravagance.” Have they forgotten that Pablo was elected a substitute city councilmen by Medellin in 1978. Over the next two years it was Pablo who supported the formation of the New Liberal Party, and in a sign of respect and faith in the democratic process financed both campaigns for presidential candidates Julio Turbay and Belisario Betancur.

     In the next election Pablo himself was elected as substitute congressman to Jairo Ortega representing Envigado. For his political services Pablo enjoyed judicial immunity domestically and internationally, yet he remains the victim of investigations regarding money laundering, smuggling, and murder conspiracies.

     In his office at Hacienda Napoles, you’d see a photograph of Pablo and his son Juan Pablo taken at the gates of the White House in Washington DC. He’s been a celebrated guest in countries across the globe, but his life domestically remains burdened by the threat of extradition for crimes without evidence.

     After the assassination of congressman Rodrigo Lara, who had campaigned for the destruction of Pablo’s enterprises, fingers were turned towards Medellin but they bore no proof.

     It was Pablo who conscripted military forces to combat communist guerillas, but was forced to flee his own home like an enemy of the state when El Espectador newspaper published venomous allegations that Pablo coordinated the abduction and murder of a Bogota businessman and two police agents in the 1970s.

     Pablo fled to Panama, then to Nicaragua where he was nearly delivered into the hands of gringo agents. Still he escaped, returning home only when he learned that his father, Abel a common night watchman had been kidnaped, evidence that even our most powerful citizen is not free from the jealousy and turmoil that grips the land.

     When Pablo proposed paying off our country’s 10bn national debt, congress declined. Instead they preferred to accuse Don Pablo of adolescent appetites, pederasty, and ordering the assassination of presidential hopeful Galan. Just weeks after Galan’s death they continued by accusing Pablo of involvement in the bombing of an Avianca Airline flight, which killed 110 in an apparent but failed attempt on the life of Galan’s successor Cesar Gaviria, who’d changed his schedule just minutes before the doomed flight took off.

     Did Pablo point fingers and blame when Hacienda Napoles, home to his family, was attached by foreign mercenaries, in a botched attempt to drag Pablo by force before an international tribunal? No, but in the wake of these recent attacks on his family these hostilities may provoke unwanted force. Don Pablo can reward and Don Pablo can punish. His entire life’s work has been to act and to provide for a country whose government is too timid to confront its own inefficiencies. Defamation and unwarranted hostilities have been delivered upon a historic patriot. Be warned Colombia, there are storm clouds building at the peaks of the Cordillera. La Violencia is approaching.