The violent legacy of Pablo Escobar draws visitors to Medellín, now a transformed boomtown.
Three decades ago, this bustling metropolis was the world’s most dangerous city, an epicenter of assassinations, massacres and car bombs linked to the eponymous hometown cartel and its notorious boss, Pablo Escobar.here on a rooftop in 1993, the culmination of a massive manhunt by Colombian authorities aided by U.S. drug agents, levels of violence akin to open warfare continued to batter neighborhoodsToday, Medellin, home to 2.
Visitors seek out traces of Escobar’s sanguinary reign while also making the trek to Comuna 13 to hear stories of revolutionary mayhem. In addition, tourists frequent upscale cafes, bars and shopping venues in swanky zones like El Poblado and Laureles, and peruse galleries featuring the paintings of Fernando Botero, a Medellin native and perhapsEscobar, though, has become a commodity. He may have been best avoided in life, but in death a lot of people want a piece of the action.
“If you go to Berlin, you don’t buy a Hitler T-shirt,” noted Marcelo Jaramillo, whose tour company offers a “transformation of Medellin” itinerary, but not a specific “Pablo tour” that some guides offer. “You can’t say anything bad about Pablo Escobar around here,” said María Diocelina Guerra Willis, 85, a grandmother who still lives in a home in the Barrio Pablo Escobar that she says is hers thanks to the late trafficker’s generosity. “It is because of Pablo that we have this place.”
Alternately, some refuse to give credit to police for Escobar’s ultimate demise, insisting that the fatal shot to Escobar’s head as he was being chased was a case of suicide. With permission from the Escobar family, Perkonmäki said, he is planning to market in Europe a Nordic-style cocktail — gin and grapefruit juice — featuring Escobar’s face on the label of cans and bottles.Luis Emilio Cardona, 82, left, and Abelardo Ausergia, 78, have been friends for 40 years and reside in Comuna 13. They play at one of the higher points in the neighborhood.
Petty crime remains a problem, especially in rough precincts in and around downtown. Some tourists come for drugs and sex, mixing with criminal elements. Mafiashuman trafficking,“The Medellin Cartel is gone,” noted Pedro Piedrahita, a political scientist at the University of Medellin. “But Medellin remains one of the primary logistical centers for transnational organized crime.”
The transformation is especially evident in the sprawling hillside Comuna 13 neighborhood, home to some 150,000. Comuna 13 was largely a no-go area for police during the 1990s and early 2000s, when it was Colombia’s largest urban rebel stronghold. A series of military operations scattered the guerrillas, but also left many civilian casualties and lingering bitterness.
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