Niña y Pablo

I’m sitting in the warmest part of my house under christmas lights sharing a pot of tea with Sandra Ochoa. She is not only the most important woman in my life and a SuperMom, but also someone who spent her adolescence in a city full of drug, crime, prostitution and death.

My mother has always exuberated pride in handling the life she was dealt and the way she steered away from the fate of many young woman in her surroundings, but she has also experienced moments where they took hold over her life.

My mom grew up in a crime infested neighborhood in Medellin, Colombia during the worst time in the city and history. Growing up in the United States, I always heard grand tales about the 80’s, but my mother was living another life where scrunchies, leotards, cocaine and Pablo Escobar became her reality. It’s all too common for Americans to generalize Colombians to be “narcos” and poke fun of the horrors a small city endured, however it is not just the story of a very wealthy and powerful man who is idolized in film today, but of the people of Medellin and their hardships. This is one of those stories.

*The interview was conducted in Spanish as my mother does not speak English, the translation is a bit rough. Sorry if some parts do not make sense or are lacking in detail!*

When you were a child, drug lords had not taken over in Medellin, what was the city like?

The city was much more calm. You could go out, children could play out on the street, you could commute to to school and walk without fear, you could hang out with your friends and neighbors without fear, you could go downtown to do your shopping. It was normal, there was only fear of the common thief, getting your pocket picked, your watch stolen or money. But that was the maximum of what you were afraid of.

What is your earliest memory of crime or violence in Colombia? How old were you?

At 12 years old, I heard that girls were being kidnapped in Medellin. I heard speculations of girls disappearing from people, whispers of “she disappeared here, she disappeared there.” And that caused terror in families. That was the first time I felt afraid. But like I said, I always heard it, never saw it or no one I knew disappeared, no one from school. I always call it speculation, I never saw evidence of it. My grandparents and parents and elders always warned me every time I left the house to be careful, not take anything from anyone and not speak to anyone. I was afraid. They say there was a group that were taking girls, but I never experienced. it.

Now that you say groups, you remind me of communist groups in Colombia that abused of the word “communist,” groups like M-19. They were a group made up of college professors and intellectuals who were all communists but ended up inciting terror. At one point they even stole Simon Bolivar’s sword, right?

Yes, they came around much before the era of Pablo Escobar and drug crime. I was alive during [M-19’s] era, but very young. Around 8 years old. Your father probably remembers Medellin during M-19’s era much more accurately since he was a teenager. They sold an idea of communism that attracted a lot of people, even us. It caught everyone’s attention, they had an attractive ideology. Each and every single one of the members were genius’, they all had their doctorates or were university professors. Are they still alive? Some of them. Most of them were killed off or in jail. They began holding up historical buildings. It became social, political and criminal unrest. They got involved with drug crime and after a while narcos sent for those leaders to be killed.

What was your scariest encounter in Medellin? I don’t have one specific encounter, just several spine chilling situations. The most dramatic was not be able to take the bus or public transportation to go to school or leave the house calmly, because narcos placed bombs all over the city that buses would detonate. During this era, I was a student and I always lived with the fear of going on public transportation and driving over a bomb, I lived with the fear that I would lose a leg or an arm or even die. Not being able to go out to town and run an errand normally was awful. You felt safe in your barrio (neighborhood), but leaving it caused a sense of fear. The bombs were all over the city. I wanted to go to college, I’ve always loved school but my campus was so far away; so I would leave the house and I had to leave my mother and father and siblings in constant prayers for me since the commute was so long. I was the oldest from my siblings and the only one in college, so their commute was much shorter.

Did you ever go on the bus after it became this dangerous? I had to, you can only imagine my daily fear. I had no choice, it was the only means of transportation to go to school. I would say we [citizens] were all afraid. Even if you had a lot of money and didn’t rely on public transportation, they would place bombs everywhere: in hotels, in apartment buildings. There were 2 different wars, one was Carteles vs. Carteles and the other was Carteles vs. Government. Obviously none of these benefited the common citizen. There were more innocent and uninvolved casualties that were taken away from their families than the actual narcos; they would be taking a leisurely walk near a building where a bomb was detonated or they were staying in a hotel where a bomb went off or there’d be a nice pharmacist working during a drive-by and and they were suddenly ripped away from this Earth.

What was the scariest or most brutal thing that happened in general in your opinion?

When the narcos’ began their war with the government, they began paying people to kill police officers. The worst was paying the police officers to get killed, he [Escobar] started paying $500 USD to young people with little money and no education to kill these police officers. They were just trying to protect us and keep us safe. I no longer felt safe seeking out a police officer for help, no one called them in an emergency or would even approach them. The most unfortunate thing that occurred was also the new culture and generation of kids that came out of this era. During my generation we called them the No-Future Generation. They were teens and young adults of low resources that were paid little money to go do the dirty work of narcos’. And unfortunately, this culture still exists with the younger generation, not as strongly in comparison to my generation, but everyone wants the easy way out.

I know a lot of women from barrios-oftentimes unwillingly-would go into sex work. How did you manage to escape that fate? How did you manage to stay away from the drugs?

I definitely escaped that because of my parents, my parents served as my lifeboat during that time, they gave me a lot of guidance, love and talked to me. I knew that that world didn’t go anywhere, it didn’t lead me anywhere good. So my parents were definitely the ones that marked a difference. I did have a peer from school, he was a boy though. He lived in Envigado. (a higher to middle class neighborhood.) He didn’t need the money, but he dropped out of school and became one of Escobar’s right-hand man, or so I heard. But like always, their fate ends badly. The police found him and he is serving time in jail. Other than that, I don’t know anyone else that was involved with that.

Did the municipio ever enact a curfew? What about your mother and father?

I think that it was until 10 PM. How long did it last? This was mainly around the time when all the police officers were getting murdered. I don’t remember how long it lasted though. The government did EVERYTHING in its power, they tried to negotiate, end all that violence. But with him, nothing could be solved for the better. It began to get more difficult, he stopped killing police officers and began killing political candidates and political influencers. But for me, the worst damage he did was to the young.

Why do you think people idolize him? What do you think is in him that people admire?

Ignorance. Being poor and coming from low resources. I can say this because I come from that, I come from a barrio that was poor and I saw people from neighboring barrios go to that. That is what’s in the people that idolize drug crime and drug lords and Pablo Escobar. But I know that there is this idea--at least with the youth here in the U.S that know nothing about Colombia’s history--that this was a man that came from nothing and built an empire. Many people admire that, what do you think about this? Do you understand why people admire him in that sense? I will always insist that people idolize Pablo Escobar because they are ignorant, having lived through that era or not. They love that he gave them food and shelter and a home, but they never saw what was at stake: your son becoming a sicario (paid assassin) and your beautiful daughters becoming a mula (person that transports drugs). He costed hundreds of families. I can’t deny he was a very audacious man. But he converted his intelligence into evil, because he became obsessed with obtaining power. Sure, these kids that have always mocked you for being Colombian and ask you constant questions about Pablo Escobar have the right idea: he started an empire from nothing. But look what he costed families and the nation. The culture narcos implanted 30 years ago hasn’t left. The youth want to continue the easy and luxurious lifestyle.

I know there is a barrio called “Pablo Escobar” that he built from the ground up for Medellin’s poor and homeless. What do you wish for the families who live there and feel they owe their lives to him to think?

They aren’t there thanks to him, they’re there because of all the lost lives. All the people that live there owe their life to him and that’s what they did. They gave up a lot of things to him. After he provided, he came back and took what they owed him. He would come back and take their young boys and train to fight and kill, he would take their young and pretty daughters and teach them sex work or to transport drugs using their beauty as a distraction. They feel that they would have never had a home if he didn’t give it to them, but I insist, haven’t they lost more than what they have physically gotten? Many of them don’t know how to read or write but they still have their conscience, they know right from wrong. That’s why I say they’re ignorant.

When he died, did you feel peace? DEFINITELY.

What about Colombia? Were people more sad or happy? Half and half. It was the biggest news at the moment. There was a myth after his death that it was staged. They say it was a doll and it was staged and he isn’t dead. But I was there, I lived through all it. He is dead and in the ground. All the people he helped and his henchmen were really sad because their leader, protector and provider died. Those people were sad. But everyone else was happy. Everyone that was conscious about the new No-Future generation was happy. I personally was happy, of course not about his brutal death, but that this era was over. Narcos have always existed in Colombia before Pablo Escobar, but from ‘82 until his death in ‘95 there was a constant war never a worse time to live through.

Does it hurt to speak about this era in your country’s history? Definitely. It hurts me. I remember it with sadness. I feel sorrow seeing so many lives destroyed and so many families. Not only from the damage of drugs and massacre, but the amount of evil maliciousness. So much death. Do you and your friends still talk about it and how differently you guys experienced it? Sometimes the theme comes up. None of my friends here really have experiences with it.

I know a lot of people claimed he killed himself seconds before the police found him and shot him dead, do you believe he killed himself? The myth that he’s still alive is a lie, Pablo Escobar Gaviria is dead. But the myth that he killed himself, that I can believe. He was someone prideful. He always said “yo prefiero una tumba en Colombia que una cárcel en el exterior,” I prefer a tomb in Colombia than a jail cell in the exterior.

I know that you are a very spiritual person and like to believe in good overcoming all, do you think he and all his henchmen were good people? That’s a really difficult question. I think like, like all humans, they were good, they all had their weakness’; for example, Pablo Escobar’s was his family. It’s what got him killed. If he hadn’t called his son to wish him a happy birthday while he was in hiding and if the police hadn’t traced that call, maybe he would still be doing those horrible things. I think yes, these people are good. But I think that the need for power blinded their mind and blackened their soul.

If there is one thing that you wish foreigners to understand about Colombia, what would you tell them?

I would tell a foreigner about Colombia and it’s people… Colombia is not only the country you see on the news of violence and crime and drug and narcos. It’s not only the novelas, movies or Netflix TV Shows of Escobar. Colombia has nobility, generosity, solidarity, happiness, intelligence, capability, and intellectual people. Come to my country because its mere beauty enchants you, because we have two oceans, we have floral and fauna, we have countless emeralds, the best coffee in the world. We have groups of global influencers; nobel laureates like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, scientists like Manuel Patarroyo who discovered the vaccine against Malaria, artists like Fernando Botero, one of the most famous painters and sculptors in the world whose inspiration is grotesquely obese human physiques, Adriana Campo, one of the few women who work in NASA. Singers like Shakira who Americans love. We aren’t only the decade long brutal history but we have a lot more than that. Festivals and carnivals and celebrations of life. And much more than that, we have charismatic people.