Spring returns to former drug capital - Medellin Living

Spring returns to former drug capital

Jim Gill

January 8, 2016, 6:19 am

Medellin. Picture: Jim Gill

The ghost of Pablo Escobar has been exorcised in the Colombian city of Medellin, writes Jim Gill.

Strolling through the centre of Colombia’s second city, it’s hard to believe that just a few decades ago this was the most violent and dangerous metropolis in the world.
Set in the picturesque Aburra Valley, surrounded by green mountains, Medellin is fast shedding its notorious reputation — and this former drug capital of the world is now Latin America’s fastest-developing city and an increasingly sought-after travel destination.
“Twenty-five years ago I used to go to sleep to the sound of gunfire. And I would wake up to the sound of gunfire. It was a terrible, terrible place to grow up in.”
The person telling me this is Pablo, a Colombian guide who leads his own walking tours in Medellin.
Today, thankfully, it’s a different story. Like the rest of Colombia, Medellin has a sense of optimism and a genuine good vibe. There are still areas where you would be advised not to walk alone at night but the people by and large are wonderfully friendly and welcoming.
Pablo is a good example. “Colombia has been through some very dark times,” he says, referring to the days of the infamous drug baron Pablo Escobar, who until his death in 1993 virtually ruled the country with an iron fist. Police were almost powerless to stop Escobar and his vicious thugs who “blew away” any opponents, be they rival drug cartels, police and even politicians.

Botero Plaza, Medellin. Picture: Jim Gill

Pablo walks us through the city centre, which to be honest, is not the prettiest I have seen in this otherwise dazzling country. The undoubted highlight is Plaza Botero, a beautiful square filled with the distinctively pudgy bronze statues of dogs, people and horses created by Colombia’s best-known artist, Fernando Botero.
Pablo proves an excellent guide and is equally happy to show us the more unsavoury elements of his home town. At one point, as we amble through a shopping mall, three young locals approach us and ask if we would like to buy cocaine. Pablo pounces on them angrily: “You have no cocaine and you know it,” he yells. “You are dumping on our flag and should be ashamed.” He explains it is their idea of a joke and they are trading on Colombia’s recent, unwanted reputation.
He then takes us to the city’s main cathedral, outside which we are astonished to see prostitutes plying their trade and vendors selling pornographic DVDs. “This is one of the country’s paradoxes,” Pablo explains. “The men who buy these films or the ladies’ services think the proximity of the church somehow absolves them of their sins!” It’s certainly an eye-opener, as is so much of this city.
The following day I embark on a very different excursion, namely the Alternative Pablo Escobar tour. Ten of us cram into a small minibus and are greeted by Doris, our exuberant guide, who delivers a rapid-fire account of the rise and fall of the evil drug lord as we head off on this bizarre excursion.

The Escobar family plot. Picture: Jim Gill

Our first stop is Escobar’s final resting place, in a sprawling but well-tended cemetery. He was finally hunted down and killed by federal agents in 1993 and since then — and despite his terrible reputation — locals have placed fresh flowers on his grave every day. Doris tells us he is still revered by many as a kind of latter-day Robin Hood because he used some of his ill-gotten gains to build houses, schools and hospitals in the city’s poorest districts.
As we take our mandatory photographs, Doris and her driver set up their “shop” on a cemetery bench. DVDs, books and mug shots of Escobar are up for grabs. Then we are bundled back in the van and driven to a hillside suburb to visit the Escobar family home.
And it’s here that we meet the tour’s star attraction: Pablo’s surviving brother, Roberto.
Once a champion road cyclist, Roberto Escobar became the bookkeeper for the family business — no mean task, considering the mountains of cash he had to handle on a daily basis. Despite at one stage having a $10 million bounty on his head, Roberto avoided his brother’s fate, serving a lengthy prison term instead.

Pablo Escobar's first drug running car. Picture: Jim Gill

Today he claims to be a reformed character and when he greets us inside the family home it’s hard to believe this diminutive 63-year-old was once a key player in the world’s most infamous drug cartel. He is bespectacled and wearing a yellow baseball cap and his face is heavily scarred, the result of a letter bomb he received in prison that exploded in his face, leaving him partially deaf and blind.
We are shown Pablo Escobar’s first drug-smuggling car and a desk with a secret compartment in which he secreted $1 million in cash for “emergencies”. I ask what his opinion of his brother is now. “I loved him when he was alive and I still love him,” he says. He claims to give all the tour proceeds to an AIDS charity he founded so I ask how he provides for himself. At this point Doris quickly interjects and says it’s time for us to leave. There is just time, however, for her to tell us the most startling news we have heard all day. Roberto, she says, has developed a cure for AIDS. At this point I decide the old man has probably snorted a bit too much of the family product for his own good.

The new cable car soars above the Medellin slums. Picture: Jim Gill

Later in the day I take a ride on the city’s gleaming new metro system, before boarding the Metrocable — a public cable car system that soars up the side of the Aburra Valley, over the poorer suburbs crammed with tin-roofed houses, to the spectacular Santo Domingo viewpoint. Here it’s possible to take a second ride higher still, across a forest. Suddenly the city is gone and I am in the Parque Arvi, a beautiful 1600ha rural retreat with walking trails.
It’s another impressive demonstration of the dramatic renaissance under way in Medellin. The so-called City of Eternal Spring is moving forward and appears to have consigned its murky past firmly into history.