Earlier this month President Alvaro Uribe, under pressure to crack down, questioned the army’s lack of progress against El Loco’s organization. “I ask is the army capable of capturing [him] or if it is protecting him.”
The scandals have cast a shadow over Colombia’s success in taming the violence that once made its cities synonymous with mayhem. Urban regeneration projects have transformed slums and won international plaudits. The turnaround is expressed in a tourism campaign slogan: “The only risk is that you’ll stay.”
Medellin, Escobar’s former fiefdom, is supposed to be the Renaissance jewel: a safe city with an impressive new cable-car system and daring architecture. “My God, things are so much quieter now. It’s a lovely place to live,” said Sonia Vargas, 34, who sells snacks in a once-notorious hillside slum.
But analysts said the violence subsided in recent years largely because a cocaine baron, Diego Murillo, won undisputed control through government-linked paramilitary groups.
Murillo was extradited to the US in May, leaving a vacuum which his rival, Don Mario, has tried to fill, triggering a renewed wave of violence. By September murders were up 35.5 percent to 735 from the same period last year, according to the mayor’s office. Rattled, the authorities have launched a media campaign with a slogan which sounds like a plea: “Violence will not return to my city.”
The city retains a sneaking regard for the one-time car thief who rose to became a charismatic, if psychotic, billionaire. It is not forgotten that Escobar built houses for the poor and distributed Christmas toys.
Taxi drivers display stickers with the familiar, chubby features and most people refer to him as Pablo. Flower-sellers do brisk business on the anniversary of his death, Dec. 2, when crowds visit the grave.
Out at Hacienda Napoles, his rural retreat, nostalgia is blossoming. At the entrance, Escobar used to display, on a pedestal, the single-engine Piper Cub plane that flew his first cocaine shipments. It disappeared long ago but earlier this month a replica took its place.
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