I consider myself a happy man.
Always been happy. Always been optimistic. Always had faith in life.
Pablo Escobar had an impact on the whole city.
What I saw was a father who was deeply loved by the people.
Do you consider yourself the Robin Hood of Antioquia?
The dark and criminal power of drug trafficking
has reached our country.
We have to create enormous chaos!
Then they'll beg for peace.
Escobar was killing magistrates,
journalists, policemen.
I'll kill each and every one of them from the jungle.
In the long run, they'll lose.
Colombian society's number one public enemy
is terrorist Pablo Escobar, who mercilessly and without contemplation
kills innocent children, women, and men.
I thought he was immortal.
This is Pablo Escobar from Medellín.
My national ID number is 8.345.766 from Envigado, write it down if you want.
Record my voice if you want.
Otherwise they'll say any clown could have called.
This way there'll be no doubt I called.
He used to say that if he didn't have one million pesos by the age of 30,
he would commit suicide because it wouldn't be worth existing
in this world without money.
My dad started smuggling home appliances.
But he soon realized that cocaine
was much more profitable, occupied less space,
and his business was more profitable when he exported to the US.
In those days, drug trafficking was not a sin in Colombia.
Everybody was complicit with drug trafficking.
Magazines even ran articles
about how glamorous cocaine consumption was
at big parties in the US.
My dad took advantage of that moment.
It allowed him to succeed and amass a fortune very quickly.
Pablo Escobar had an impact on the whole city.
He was my god.
When I met him face to face,
I thought he was going to be an arrogant, proud, and indifferent man.
But instead I met a great human being.
I remember that day he was eating roasted chicken.
He grabbed a piece with his hand and offered it to me.
I began to think drug trafficking was a bad thing
when 4 or 5 people began to say it was bad.
The press also started to dig, and they started to chase us. I frankly thought it was a good thing.
I really did. Really. It was in June of 1976
when they started associating his name to the drug trade
and he became known to the public.
He was captured with 19 kilos of cocaine.
He had...
...brought a few kilos of cocaine or coca paste from Ecuador.
He was freed a few months later.
People knew he was a mobster, a drug dealer,
but they viewed it in a positive way.
The violence hadn't even begun yet.
A magazine estimates your fortune at 5000 million dollars.
That would seem like a figure...
...like the ones you hear in the Arabian Nights.
How large is your fortune?
There's a popular saying that goes: "In wealth and saintliness,
only a half of a half."
His greatest extravagance was the Hacienda Nápoles. It was insane. The Hacienda Nápoles was astounding.
It was truly enormous.
He built 70 kms of roads to travel around the entire place.
Lakes, he built 20 big lakes, huge ones.
He built a landing strip to get around...
...more easily, with his family.
It was, let's say, a signed blank check for everyone.
Whatever you wanted, you had it.
One time we traveled to the United States.
A tourist trip with Sebas, the family.
We visited several zoos in Dallas.
When I least expected it,
he said he was going to buy a couple of rhinos, zebras, etc.
And I don't know what else, and I was like...
He built a zoo.
He smuggled it.
When we least expected it,
we had 12,000 people visiting it every weekend.
Pablo enjoyed it greatly...
to see the people from the working class coming
to see something they would never see in their lives, not even on television.
It was a life of opulence, of splurging.
The Hacienda Nápoles was a paradise of evil.
You could feel the presence of adventure and evil.
A lot of cocaine came out of there to the United States of America.
Many deaths occurred in the Hacienda Nápoles.
A lot of torturing took place there.
But the Boss never allowed us to bury the bodies there.
We were in the middle of a conversation
when they brought a man who I believe worked for him.
Apparently he had stolen
3 to 4 million pesos, I don't know.
He had his hands cuffed behind his back.
Escobar had his feet tied together.
When he was all tied up, he pushed him into the pool.
And the guy drowned.
As he pushed him into the pool, he yelled at him and told him:
"This happens to those who steal from Escobar."
As a young boy, I went with him to many places.
To car races, soccer field inaugurations
in poor neighborhoods,
to health center openings.
What I saw was a father who was deeply loved by the people.
In the neighborhood Las Flores in Envigado,
the lighting for field 12 was inaugurated.
Works donated by Civismo en Marcha and Pablo Escobar Gaviria.
In the year of 1983 we started
a replanting of trees program for every neighborhood in the municipality.
A very special greeting,
to all athletes and the youth
from the whole neighborhood. And my gratitude
to everyone
who cooperated with the actual construction work of this field.
Thanks a lot.
He gave the bleachers and gave the lighting.
There were about 7,000 people.
The soccer field was dark.
Escobar comes in, waves,
and 7,000 people chant: "Pablo, Pablo!"
The voice of the Americas and the new Radio Ritmo.
Pablo Escobar Gaviria gives the honor kick!
What a wonderful kick!
A huge round of applause for Mr. Pablo Escobar Gaviria,
after that wonderful honor kick.
Fabulous.
He was featured in an issue of Semana magazine,
labeling him as the new Robin Hood. And that was the first
sign of existence of that character.
Do you consider yourself the Robin Hood of Antioquia?
That's a very interesting description because...
...people know that he fought for,
and defended the humble masses.
I remember that one time he came to my house and said
that he had been at the Moravia landfill.
He said: "I'm going to build a neighborhood for those people,
I'll get them out of the slums."
I have very good friends in the Church.
Bishops, priests,
doctors, lawyers,
in humble neighborhoods.
But my best friends are in the slum community
of the municipal dump.
We have started the construction of a neighborhood
to solve the slum problem in the city of Medellín.
He brought all the people from the dump here and gave them houses.
Who does that? I ask you, as journalists.
Who does that? Nobody. Him. Only him.
A neighborhood he only promoted;
he neither created it nor sponsored it.
He called 150 or 200 people and forced them
to donate money so he could take all the credit.
He helped because he felt the pleasure of giving, of sharing.
HE BUILDS MORE THAN 1000 HOUSES IN THE CITY TO HELP ERADICATE THE SLUMS
I think those who venture to say
that he did it out of political clout and power
are wrong because they didn't truly know his heart.
One of his dreams was to do what politicians weren't doing.
And to dedicate his fortune in doing so.
One day he called me and said:
"Can you help me campaign?
I'm getting into politics."
I liked the idea of him getting into politics
when he told me that he wanted to fulfill his duty to society.
What is your political ideology?
Well, our movement...
the main ideology of our movement is...
...civic character, nationalism, social programs,
ecological, and sports programs.
Through our program
we want to call on all citizens
to practice their civic duty.
Really, the plazas...
were full of people. I didn't understand.
I wondered, how this did happen? How will this play politically?
It was quite impressive. That man…
moved masses.
My father learned about the existence of Pablo Escobar
in the campaign of 1982,
when he was running for President,
He found out that Jairo Ortega,
who was a politician from Antioquia,
who wanted to participate in the New Liberalism,
was inviting him to run on the New Liberalism ballot as the alternate
to Pablo Escobar.
And the coordinator of the New Liberalism
calls my father and tells him
that Mr. Escobar was an strange man,
because he was a man
who had a lot of money,
who gave gifts to the peasants,
and that no one knew where all the money came from.
Then my father, during a campaign trip to Medellín,
decides to make a public speech
in which he states that Pablo Escobar and Jairo Ortega are not
on the New Liberalism ballots for Congress.
Thus, he expels them publicly from the party.
I want to tell you that Galán's political movement and the aristocracy will tremble.
With your support
we will crush the puppets
and the political rag dolls created by the Colombian oligarchy.
Thank you very much.
A very important political leader
came up to him and said the following words:
"Pablo, with all the power you have,
and the amount of money you have,
and your capacity, you could be the president of this country."
Pablo wanted to be president.
What do they decide?
To get on the official ballots of the Liberal Party.
And it's through those official ballots,
that Pablo Escobar lands
in Congress.
Long live comrade Pablo Escobar!
Long live!
Long live the renovation of the Liberal Party!
Long live!
The people who voted for us,
and chose us to represent them in the nation's Congress.
Pablo Escobar was an ambitious man.
Real power is neither in guns nor money, but in politics.
Obviously, he enjoyed a quick ascent in politics.
He had a lot of money.
Justice Minister, Rodrigo Lara Bonilla.
After the appointment of Rodrigo Lara
as Justice Minister
in the presidency of Belisario Betancur,
Rodrigo Lara initiated heated debates,
over what was known during that period as "hot money."
A national debate is taking shape around the so-called
funds of dubious origin, "hot money."
Your name has been linked to that debate.
I wouldn't call it "hot money."
I'd call it "amnestied money."
The country must know the truth about certain powerful fortunes,
whose owners believe that the asset amnesty law meant
a pardon for crimes committed
in order to achieve their fantastic fortunes.
Can you assure that your money
has never had a connection to drug trafficking?
I've always assured that my money has no connection to drug trafficking.
Rodrigo Lara...
...initiates a confrontation with Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria
in Congress.
Because having a drug lord like Pablo Escobar in Congress
was a delicate matter for the Colombian democracy.
The chamber session is underway,
debating over funds of dubious origin
that have entered Colombian politics, generating enormous scandal.
Representative Ortega, whose alternate is Pablo Escobar
took part in the session.
I have a quite respectful question
for the Justice Minister.
The hardest part is when he starts to point fingers.
And suddenly, they set him up,
accusing Lara of receiving one million pesos to finance his campaign.
It was one million pesos
in a check in the name of Rodrigo Lara.
I will release the information about how this check was deposited,
and the reach it had.
The Justice Minister was trapped
by the evidence presented by my chamber colleague,
Jairo Ortega Ramírez.
Rodrigo Lara Bonilla's reaction
to that act, that debate,
was to intensify
his attack on drug traffickers.
I was the president of the chamber, and unexpectedly, during the debate,
several of Pablo Escobar's armed body guards
had infiltrated the chamber.
It was a very hard and tense day.
There are investigations...
...in the United States...
...that I cannot release here, tonight in the chamber...
...concerning...
...illegal activities...
...by Ortega's alternate.
By Ortega's alternate.
At that moment he adopted a suicidal behavior attitude.
That clearly was a declaration of war.
The Justice Minister
accused me, unfairly.
He lied to the country when he said
that Pablo Escobar had a criminal background with the US.
Right now, I will show you my official passport
that proves how the US government
granted me a visa to visit that country.
Besides, I am a frequent visitor of that country.
In the chambers of Congress, Pablo Escobar
wasn't a great public speaker,
so Justice Minister Lara Bonilla
and his party
crushed him verbally in congress.
And they revoked his parliamentary immunity.
My hopes are that there there will not be
a confrontation among the Colombian people.
I search for peace. I've always preached peace.
I've longed for peace.
One day Escobar told me,
commenting on his time in politics,
he said: "Man,
I ended up inside the real mafia, those people are the real mafia."
Lara is not convinced,
and he keeps digging, and digging, and digging.
Until, at last, he discovers Tranquilandia.
They find 13.8 metric tons of coca.
More than 6 labs. Who knows how many landing strips.
All those planes, propeller planes.
It had become an industry.
I interviewed Rodrigo Lara
for my television show,
and we talked about death.
I will remain protected in any case,
because somehow
they will try to get even
for what I've done to put criminals in their place.
We'll see what happens in the next few days.
In the evening of April 30th, 1984, at 7:30
a gunman pulled the trigger of an Ingram machine gun
and assassinated the Justice Minister, Rodrigo Lara.
I knew that something bad had happened.
And I kept asking, "Where is my dad?"
"You'll see him soon."
We got to Neiva.
There was a large crowd, lots of people.
And my question was:
"Who's inside the coffin? Who?"
I didn't understand.
Until a cousin, finally…
...he took me, he lifted me up.
That's when the crying began.
Endless crying…
Colombia will hand over felons
requested by the commission of criminal acts in other countries
so that they can be punished in an exemplary way
as part of this universal operation
against an attack that is also universal.
Belisario Betancur, the president at the time,
at Rodrigo Lara's funeral, at the wake,
announced that he was going to apply the extradition treaty.
But the mobsters traveled to Panama,
and had the support and protection of General Noriega,
who was in power.
I was living with my husband, and all of the sudden...
they told me: "You must leave the country now."
I knew that a Minister had died, a Justice Minister,
that it was a complex situation, but...
Why did I have to go? What was my situation?
I was just 15 days away from giving birth to Manuela.
On May 6th, 1984, the army went in, for the first time,
to what was known as Pablo Escobar's fortress:
the Hacienda Nápoles at Doradal.
Fine, brother, what's new?
-11 trucks have entered Nápoles. -Okay...
They've been ordered to stay.
Even better. Let them pay the huge payroll I owe,
it's quite huge, that motherfucker.
On May 6th, 1984,
Pablo Escobar, Jorge Luis Ochoa, and Rodriguez Gacha
tried to meet in Panama with former president, Alfonso Lopez Michelsen,
who was there as an observer of the Panamanian general elections.
The drug lords wanted to send a message
that they had nothing to do with the assassination of the Justice Minister.
The drug lords admitted that they have control over
70 to 80 percent of cocaine production in Colombia,
and proposed amnesty with the government.
In that opportunity,
the cartel offered the government of Belisario Betancur
the break down of their laboratories,
their withdrawal from the cocaine market,
repatriate their capitals and help pay the country's foreign debt.
They were willing to turn themselves in.
I told him that none of that could happen
without the collaboration, acceptance, or acquiescence,
of the US government and the DEA.
And he agreed that it was necessary for the U.S. to be aware of the existence of the agreement.
Betancur's government rejected the offer,
and publicly refused
to conduct any transactions with the drug lords.
There are incredible stories, like 50 Colombian mobsters
jogging in lycra suits
in the morning hours, through the avenues of Panama
with 50 Mercedes Benz driving behind them.
So at some point...
this all became a crazy mess, the DEA was there, the CIA.
And then Noriega tells them: "Please,
no more races in the avenues of Panama,
no more footing. Go away."
So Escobar goes to Nicaragua.
He proposes to the Nicaraguans,
to the Sandinistas,
to build a cocaine lab in Nicaragua.
Escobar listens to what Ortega, the president of Nicaragua, has to say.
And through his words,
between the lines he interprets that Ortega is going to turn him in
to the U.S. authorities.
Escobar didn't even finish listening
to the interview with Ortega. Instead he gets into a car
and drives quickly to the airport...
and flies back to Colombia in his plane.
When the Sandinistas come to capture him, he's already gone.
It is evident that the news continues and will continue for a long time.
The siege of the Palace of Justice.
Escobar helped finance the siege of the Palace of Justice.
What is he asking for? Why does he fund it?
To burn the files of all the cases against the extraditables.
And to kill as many supreme court magistrates as possible
so he wouldn't have to kill them on the streets.
The Minister of Defense released today
the victim count and the war material seized.
Twelve Magistrates assassinated, including one assistant.
Six dead cops.
Two officers, one noncommissioned officer, and three agents.
The Army lost one officer.
For your children's sake,
for you, for Colombia,
denounce drug dealers.
Wanted: Pablo Escobar Gaviria.
Cooperate, denounce, inform.
He started to appear on "Wanted" signs,
as the head of the world's most powerful drug cartel.
He became the most wanted criminal,
but despite all the operations,
intelligence actions, and hellish pursuits
they always end up with "We nearly caught him."
"How did he know, how did he find out,"
is all a mystery.
On many occasions there were operations
against Escobar.
We knew where he was and at the last minute, he...
...managed to escape.
Put together a group of four to five guys,
we'll give them some money if they call with misleading information.
Those phone numbers on the TV. That way we keep them real busy.
Yesterday we called and said we were at certain hotel,
and they almost tore it down.
We will drive them crazy with that.
At the time, Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria,
was a friend of the Medellín police.
-Hello. What's up? -Maza Márquez...
Yes.
...has sent 350, 400 men here to Medellín.
Yes.
They're ready for a large operation tomorrow
or the day after.
Have the pilots let us know.
They'll tell us immediately.
They won't shoot. They say that they won't shoot.
We will shoot.
But we shouldn't shoot them.
They'll turn their guns the other way.
That's their promise.
Colonel Valdemar Franklin Quintero arrived in Medellín. An incorruptible man.
An honest policeman.
I remember one time, when we were coming back
from Nápoles, we were being chased,
That's when we got arrested. I was seven years old.
My sister was practically a newborn.
They refused to feed my little sister.
The police commander in charge was Valdemar Franklin Quintero.
That event prompted a terrible rage from my father,
who finally ordered his assassination.
He would say, "Let them chase me, I am the bandit,
but don't come near my family. They're decent people,
they don't have anything to do with what I do."
The Boss gives us the order
to target Colonel Quintero with a car bomb.
We gave it to a kid to detonate it at 50 meters.
The kid sees a Mercedes 230 approaching,
sees the police escort,
arms the device and detonates the bomb.
And we go to check in with the Boss.
We say: "Done, Boss. Colonel Franklin Quintero is dead."
And the Boss says:
"Watch the news, hear the news, you just killed the Governor of Antioquia,
Antonio Roldán Betancur."
The Boss wasn't a guy who used to get mad.
The governor was a friend of the Boss.
He was politically close to Pablo Escobar,
and with a good amount of money he could have become the president.
At that point nothing could be done, the governor was dead.
Pablo, at the time, thought of himself
as the chief of all the criminal structures in Colombia.
We were friends and partners
in the fight against extradition
with the Rodríguez Orejuela brothers.
Escobar calls the Rodríguez Orejuela brothers
because we had run some errands for them here in Medellín.
What's up, bro? What's new?
All good?
I'm listening.
Negro has been telling me for a long time:
"Watch out, they're trying to get you out of there.
Because you're invading the New York squares,
and that those have been theirs for a long time."
Can you imagine, the owners of the city?
Let's see who are the smart ones and who are the handsome ones.
That is what we're going to demonstrate here.
Pablo tells him: "Sir, if you're not with me, you're my enemy.
You have 24 hours
to think it through and to come up with a decision."
And he hangs up.
Violence in Colombia claimed more victims last night.
The massacre occurred in a luxurious estate in Candelaria, near Cali.
Nineteen people were killed,
and ten more injured.
That was the beginning of the war between the Cali and Medellín cartels.
We were no longer fighting against one enemy, but two.
The State and another cartel.
Anyone from Cali who dared to come here had to die.
The same thing for anyone from Medellín who went there had to get killed.
The Cali cartel leaders
say that they won't accept such threats,
and within the 24 hours deadline
they hire these people from Medellín
to plant a bomb aimed at Escobar in his residence, the Monaco building.
The first car bomb in the history of Colombia
exploded in January 13th, 1988,
in the Monaco building in Medellín.
My little sister was… She was born in 1984.
She was 4 years old.
I was born in 1977.
I was 11 years old.
Seven hundred kilos of dynamite
shattered the glass of the surrounding buildings 1 km around the city.
An explosion intended to erase us from the map. It's a miracle that we're here.
The bomb was supposed to get to the building's garage,
knock the door over and get inside the building to...
...to knock it down completely.
From that moment on, my dad…
I think that...
any excuses he might have needed to use violence,
he already had them.
A single bomb attack directed to his family...
unleashed over 200 terrorist attacks.
Violence was mainly
carried out by the Medellín cartel,
under the title of "the Extraditables,"
which was a group of drug traffickers,
financed by all the cartels.
They generated corruption within the State
and terrorism.
They only thing they feared
was being extradited. The thing goes like this, bro.
I've just decided that every cent we get
will be used to burn the houses of the rich people, to affect politicians,
to the military and the cops who abuses us,
to the judges that bother us,
to the journalists.
And this turns up protesting, saying: "We are the Extraditables,
and we denounce this society for excluding us,
for persecuting us, for treating us unfairly,
for stigmatizing us, for not accepting our children into schools."
It's not only an issue of...
of police or judicial persecution, but they're also protesting
because they don't have space in society, despite being as rich as they are.
These motherfuckers chase us because we're alleged delinquents.
They think I am a fool because I've been calm, cause I'm not fighting right now.
Those sons of bitches are confusing nobleness with weakness.
Those fools. I'll show those sons of bitches.
As soon as I start a full blown war.
Escobar was a pretty violent person.
And, as he became more powerful,
he thought he could defy the State.
This infamous character accomplished what no one ever could accomplish before:
to soak the drug trafficking business in so much blood
that he turned it into narco-terrorism.
Escobar was killing judges,
he was killing magistrates,
journalists, police.
They turned this business into a business full of corpses,
revenge, abuse,
and the eccentricity that power brings.
In the assassination of Attorney General Carlos Hoyos,
Escobar is singled out as the mastermind, but he was never subpoenaed
even though a recording was found
where he allegedly orders the murder of Hoyos Jimenez.
Specialized judge Óscar Hernández
didn't consider the evidence.
Before killing him, the Boss tells me
to tell him why are we executing him.
So I tell him: "Dr. Hoyos, we are going to kill you
for the crime of betraying the country."
He yells and says, "Who the hell did I betray?"
I said, "You betrayed yourself when you received money from the DEA
and from the mafia."
"And also for authorizing the extradition of Colombians to the U.S."
Then we killed him right away.
Anyone who got in his way, if they refused to accept the money, well,
they would get bullets.
And they would get murdered.
Anyone who got in his way,
if they refused to accept the money, well, they would get bullets.
The only enemies are those who use
terror and violence
to silence the people of Colombia.
To intimidate or to assassinate
its most important protagonists.
Dr. Luis Carlos Galán
gets great visibility because he
stands against
Pablo Escobar and the drug traffickers,
and he is in favor of the extradition.
The dark and criminal power
of drug trafficking
has reached our homeland.
And, since 1982,
a year before Rodrigo Lara
took office as Justice Minister,
the New Liberalism has been
the only political force
in Colombia to stand up against
this terrible adversary
of society, of the institutional order.
Back then, politics were activities held in public squares,
out in the streets,
with the excitement of the people,
and campaigning.
People would stay at the public square,
five, six, seven hours,
waiting for my dad. They shot him!
They shot him!
We heard that they had taken him to the Kennedy hospital.
We got there and...
the doctor asked if we wanted to see my dad,
who was there laying down in a stretcher.
My mom and my siblings went in.
I didn't feel capable of going in...
at that moment.
I couldn't do it.
And, after that, everybody...
Many people arrived at the hospital later.
We couldn't breath.
If we dedicate to kill politicians, to burn down their houses
and wage a civil war, they'll have to call us for a peace dialogue,
and all our problems will be solved.
I don't see any other option.
But we must fight. We must put our hearts into this. And if we all have to die, then so be it.
I wanted to give a speech at the funeral,
and so I did.
And at the end I changed the final phrase I originally had which was:
"Always forward, not a step back, and whatever needs to be done, we'll do."
Which was the phrase...
I would like to ask Dr. César Gaviria,
in whose hands we entrust my father's mission..
...to be the president that Colombia wanted and needed.
Please save Colombia.
Always forward, not a step back,
and whatever needs to be done, we'll do.
We faced a quite difficult campaign because...
it was so threatening.
We had to run a campaign in the middle of terrorist attacks.
The campaign was horrible, because, for starters, whoever replaced Galán,
if that person kept his position against drug trafficking,
which Gaviria did,
became Escobar's main enemy and for the group known as the Extraditables.
They blew up a plane from Avianca with campaign staff onboard.
We had a campaign tour in Cali,
and they canceled events that were taking place in the morning, and the tour manager
made the decision to change the tickets for a later flight.
And the 7:00 flight was blown up by Escobar.
They're talking about the airplane.
You told me that you've paid for that already.
I have the order of 10 pesos in my power,
I will give it to you later.
In half an hour he'll have it.
The bomb was onboard. It was a contact bomb.
It had to blow.
And it was convenient for the Medellín cartel
to blow up a plane in flight.
It was terrorism. All with the purpose of cornering the country of Colombia.
Back in the day, the bombing of the DAS security agency
was the largest terrorist strike in the world.
The bus didn't get inside the DAS. If that were the case,
it would have wiped it off the planet.
The bomb on board a bus drove around this street a 7:15.
Three men left it here.
And three minutes later this is what was left.
For the time... It was 1989. It was the most grueling year
for Colombia, and the most beneficial for the mafia.
We were practically living in a permanent crisis.
Public order was a colossal problem.
This morning at 6:30 a car loaded with dynamite
blew up in front of the El Espectador newspaper's building.
The newspaper El Espectador has become, over the past 10 years,
a symbol of the crusade against drug trafficking in the country.
Today's attack further shows the audacity of the cartel heads.
Pablo Escobar understood...
He understood media pretty well.
What he didn't understand... he thought he could defeat them.
Let the El Tiempo people know that we have a surprise, a very huge one.
That they can't even imagine.
I'll talk to them. You'll see whether they change their attitude.
If they don't, then the decision is yours.
There's nothing else I can do, I do not own the newspaper.
At the newspaper El Tiempo, where I used to work,
there was an anti-aircraft machine gun on the roof,
as there was intelligence information reports
that they were going to crash a plane loaded with explosives.
In a climate of war, in which many have died,
but no one was captured,
president Gaviria took office.
A group of some of the most important journalists in the country were kidnapped,
with the purpose of repealing
the possibility of extradition to the United States.
We started to develop what, at that moment,
was considered a controversial policy,
and we called it "submission to justice" policy.
This policy, which is practiced in other countries of the world
such as the United States and Italy,
involves the reduction of sentences
for confessed crimes,
for those that submit themselves voluntarily to justice,
and it contemplates the guarantee
that they will be tried in the country.
Back in those days the longest prison sentence was 30 years.
Sentences were reduced like this: seven for submission,
seven for confessing,
so after mandatory work and study, we could end up doing only seven years.
It worked for a good number of them, but it didn't work for Escobar.
But Pablo Escobar didn't want to submit to justice
until extradition was revoked in the constituent assembly.
I knew we were gambling with the country's future.
So, my editorial columns were quite aggressive
against Pablo Escobar and the drug traffickers.
I put myself in the eye of the storm.
Last night a group of six men
with police badges
kidnapped the El Tiempo Editor-in-Chief Francisco Santos.
Right away, I asked the guy:
"In whose hands am I in? The guerrilla's or Pablo Escobar's?"
The guy had a Medellín accent and I said: "I'm in Escobar's hands?"
He said: "Yes, your in Escobar's hands." And I said... "I'm done, that's it."
This flame represents Colombia's hope for peace.
It will remain lit here in Plaza de Bolivar in the country's capital,
until the kidnapped return.
However, many expect it will be
a long wait.
I never thought I was getting out of there alive. Never.
I received a handwritten letter from him saying
he regretted the situation I was in.
That his guys were told to treat me well.
But that I had to understand that this was a war,
and that in any war there were casualties, and that...
he hoped I wasn't one of them.
The only message they allowed me to send
was quite clear, telling the president... And I repeated it twice.
"Do whatever you can to save our lives,
but do not forget that law comes first."
"And the Constitution comes first."
It was a real battle to preserve the democracy.
When he saw that he had the votes in the constituent assembly...
I think he bought a couple.
The Colombian people were sick of violence.
He let us go.
-Are you happy to be back home? -Yes, of course.
-Are you happy to be home? -You have no idea.
One of the guys who talked to me,
not one of the guys who were taking care of me, but one that came,
told me that Pablo Escobar was going to turn himself in.
All the candidates, with a few exceptions,
were in favor of banning extradition.
The extradition of Colombians by birth has been banned.
The constituent's decision
was something that Escobar was waiting for.
The voting result.
Total voters...
sixty nine.
In favor: 51.
Not in favor: 13.
Five abstentions.
Attention. Pablo Escobar Gaviria surrendered today to the authorities
a few hours after extradition was abolished
in the National Constituent Assembly.
Mr. President, how do you feel?
What does this mean for Colombia and for the government?
A deep satisfaction
to see how we are leaving behind
the narco-terrorism path,
how Pablo Escobar has surrendered to Colombian justice.
As a result of the peace policy and the justice strength
by the president and his governmental cabinet,
I will do as many years in jail as necessary
to contribute to the strengthening of democracy
of my beloved Colombian nation.
A helicopter is moving Escobar
to a special jail:
The Cathedral.
Escobar's helicopter has landed.
Obviously, the security scheme was ruined.
Because, right away, all eyes were on Mr. Pablo Escobar.
No?
In the middle of all the...
fantasy he had inspired, of all that evil,
he didn't stop being a legendary character.
With my surrender and submission to justice,
I will also like to pay a tribute to my parents,
to my irreplaceable and unmatchable wife,
to my pacifist 14 year old son,
my little seven year old toothless ballerina, and to all my family, who I love so much.
Pablo Escobar Gaviria.
Envigado, Colombia,
June 19th, 1991.
He looked pale.
You could see the fright, the fear.
He swore by the love he had for us
that he wasn't going to fail us this time.
Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria turned himself in
so his family could have peace,
because the Boss couldn't handle the idea of his family being pressured.
I really think that the Cathedral idea was a true intention
on my father's behalf,
after listening to the many demands from us, his family,
to find a negotiated way out of all the issues we were having.
What is the order of the President
to show that the man will now submit
to all the legal process he must face?
The conditions set by the lawyer
who represented Pablo Escobar in this case
were conditions concerning his security, exclusively.
Of no other nature.
What is Pablo Escobar doing? He is the one who built the Cathedral.
He built the wall that surrounded the Cathedral jail.
And the electric fence...
The electricity power switch was in his cell.
At that point, the Cathedral ended up being a place of luxury.
A place of excess.
A place of parties.
It was like an estate, which, in reality, it always was..
...ours. Not a prison.
And his personal guards...
were a joke. It wasn't...
When you went to visit the Cathedral
you saw my father's lifelong employees,
now wearing prison uniforms.
It was a joke.
It was an effort to find a legal solution.
And, obviously, having accepted some of those security conditions,
represented a challenge for the State,
that at some point we were unable to handle.
Escobar was no longer a drug trafficker,
he had become a great extortionist...
of his partners.
And with Escobar in jail, his partners took certain liberties.
And then they rise up, so he calls them to answer for their actions.
And then he murders them.
And that created a great divide within the mafia.
They were no longer our friends. They didn't fund us anymore.
They were closer to the Cali cartel than to us.
And the Boss considered that situation.
The Boss was a warrior, and warriors live off of war.
He made that tough decision because he always lived on the edge.
But there in the Cathedral prison,
Galeano died of a gunshot. Otto killed him.
I killed Kiko Moncada. We made a huge bonfire,
and we burned all the bodies throughout the night.
And the next day the bones were left, they're hard to burn.
We crushed them with a pot, with a hammer, and we threw acid.
That's how Kiko and Galeano disappeared.
When the Boss gave me the order to kill...
Kiko...
I followed through, but I couldn't sleep that night.
That day I killed my second father.
The only favor I was able to grant Kiko, was that he wouldn't suffer,
so I shot him in the head.
The government decides to transfer Escobar to a different jail.
And to transfer him from that cell in Medellín to a garrison in Bogota.
The government sent five trucks full of men
from the IV Brigade to occupy the prison.
When they said that the Army was taking over the jail, they told me:
"We must go to Medellín." We arrived to Medellín, to Envigado,
to the Cathedral, around 8:00 at night, perhaps.
It was fairly dark by then.
The prison guards greeted me.They told me that everything was under control.
They lined up.
And there was Escobar. He greeted me.
And he stood in front of me.
And said: "You can't leave. From now on you're my hostage."
"If the Army comes in or if you try to escape, I'll kill you."
If you get me out of here, it's because you're going to kill me.
I rather die fighting, than die locked up in undignified conditions.
My father feared something bigger than a simple transfer.
And when they take you to Bogotá, you're one step away
to being put on a plane to the United States.
They became entrenched, they kidnaped the Deputy Justice Minister
and the prison chief.
They called a radio network in Colombia.
Escobar describing how he was entrenched
inside the tunnel he himself built inside the jail.
And he was explaining that he was running out of air. All of this...
broadcasted live.
Later it was discovered that when he made that call,
Escobar had already escaped three hours before.
He calmly left through the door, the window or wherever.
And that unties a huge political controversy
because, evidently, it's a State failure.
Nobody can hide it.
The government, after Pablo Escobar's escape,
realizes that it is the world's laughing stock.
It is uniquely and solely at fault.
They don't want to capture Pablo alive again.
They want to kill him.
We need our public force
to search for Escobar, to capture him,
and to place him before our legal system.
When Escobar escaped, we created a Search Bloc,
commanded by an Army general and a Police general.
I contacted the U.S. Ambassador,
and I said: "Look, we need your support in this,
we need intelligence,
technical assistance, and training."
That's how the Search Bloc was created.
They used their most advanced equipment
to help us with Escobar's persecution.
During the first weeks that the Search Bloc was working,
while I was in charge,
he detonated two car bombs
that killed 34 policemen.
Two officers.
That motherfucker that was compromised for half million dollars
is the one in charge of the operations.
He thinks that because he is a cop, I'm afraid of that son of a bitch.
I wish that asshole was listening to this conversation
so he could hear how I am planning to kill him.
We would listen to his conversations all the time.
But, of course, coming from Pablo Escobar, it was frightening.
In that time, generally, a threat was always fulfilled.
When Pablo escaped from the Cathedral,
he once again became enemy of the public.
People that were linked to Escobar at certain a point
said: "Enough, we are going to fight against this man."
The Pepes, or Persecuted by Pablo Escobar,
through a public statement, informed Escobar
that they would strike back
to any future attacks in the city.
Someone said that,
from the president down, we were all Pepes.
The Pepes took credit for the car bomb explosions
where a sister, a brother-in-law, and Escobar's mother lived.
The Cali cartel grew.
They set the police, the army, the DEA,
and the DAS against us. And the Cali cartel cornered us.
Pablo Escobar had an Army Major
in his security. And they started to find out all of our hideouts.
So the Boss was strategic about it.
"They found this hideout this day.
The only person who knows about this is the Major."
The Boss give us the order to kidnap the Major. We find him,
we torture him and he confesses that he has been snitching
for the Medellín IV Brigade.
And the Major always brought his wife with him to the hideouts.
And the Major, through torture,
says that there is going to be an operation the next day,
and that the woman is going to show one of the hideouts.
We told the Boss that there was this woman who was always there,
pregnant, always showing the hideouts.
I got the phone number from the Major, I call the woman,
she goes to a gas station.
We see her there, and we kill her right away.
And out of humanity we shot the baby so he wouldn't suffer.
It was quite a harsh situation.
The problem when you militarize the subjects of...
delinquent hunts
is that it becomes something terribly cruel and savage.
And you end up with massacres and insane acts.
To the extent that they were getting rid of
his army forces and his financial means, he started to lose power.
And he understood that his family was way more vulnerable.
When I found out, through an intervention of the Attorney General,
Germany is going to provide asylum for..
Escobar's family
we started bidding with the German government.
We told them that was a complex problem for Colombia.
Because if terrorism increased
we would have to hold Germany responsible.
This is Pablo Escobar, calling from Medellín,
be advised that if the German government
rejects my innocent family,
I will retaliate
against citizens,
tourists,
businesses,
and the interests that Germany has in Colombia.
Escobar was in a desperate situation,
and he obviously could threaten Germany's interests, but...
But that blew over quickly.
He simply continued with his activities of...
creating terrorist acts where he could.
Not where he wanted, just where he could.
And, obviously, we brought Escobar's family
to a place where we could offer security.
Army and security operations
have been increased here in Bogotá's downtown
where the Tequendama Residencies are located.
And where the wife and two children
of the former Medellín cartel leader are staying.
The State claims that they were protecting us at that moment.
Really, they were performing intelligence.
We were part of a trap to hunt down my father.
There was no protection.
You can't be protected by someone that, while doing so,
the people around you start magically disappearing.
Your teachers, maids,
friends, everything.
I'm sorry, but... This is one of Pablo's brothers.
Pablo is quite offended because you're bothering his family.
Don't mess with his family. Whoever touches them or bothers them
is going to be in trouble, brother.
All of us who where living in that house...
They were offering a reward for us.
At that time, they were offering four million dollars for my head.
Him... maybe, to help out his family
thought about surrender, and requested protection by the United Nations.
And he uses some well known journalists
to try to establish certain conditions
for his surrender.
The journalists called me.
But the surrender had certain conditions, that implicate, again...
give him certain privileges for his security, and that was unthinkable.
If he had turned himself in, we would have to accept him, but it was clear
that he never thought about turning himself in, and that he always thought
about destroying the State.
Never in my fucking life will they capture me,
and from the jungle I will give orders to kill each and every one of them.
In the long run, they are the ones who will end up loosing.
But, evidently, we were dealing with a combat situation.
The instructions were pretty clear: to capture or to kill.
Obviously, one day Escobar made the mistake and called his family directly.
And at that moment, due to the duration of the call,
the data triangulation was able to locate where he was.
How did you manage for the district's attorney's office to protect you?
There's a question here that asks how you achieved that.
Yes, calm down.
Did they talk to someone at the Attorney's general office
for your relocation abroad?
Okay, let's leave it here.
He says that he will call me back. He didn't call me back.
And five or ten minutes later a journalist called me
to tell me: "Pablo Escobar is dead."
Of course I reacted violently and I said...
We don't want to talk right now.
But one thing I'll say,
whoever killed him, I'm going to kill those sons of bitches.
I will kill those motherfuckers myself.
I took back my threats exactly ten minutes after I said them.
I started thinking, my God,
I am on the way
to experience everything I criticized my father for,
and how wrong it was.
My proposal to continue with the violence and to turn into Escobar 2.0
was not going to bring him back.
I want to personally clarify that I won't avenge, I won't avenge my father's death,
because the only thing that worries me now
is the future of my family who have suffered a lot.
Pablo Escobar was a man who loved his family.
His daughter Manuela, his son Juan Pablo, and Mrs. Tata.
He died for them.
I thought he was immortal.
When I realized it was him, on the roof of that house,
all chubby, with a beard... That was him.
My soul cried.
HOLY FATHER AND JESUS, HAVE MERCY ON PABLITO
Goodbye, Pablo.