If history's most notorious drug trafficker was such a lowlife, how did he manage to seduce a sophisticated socialite who was a superstar model, actress and TV hostess?
That question has been obsessing Colombians ever since the late Pablo Escobar's former lover surfaced from obscurity in July and held up an unflattering mirror to Colombian society by detailing alleged ties between the elite and organized crime.
In an hour-long statement broadcast on Colombia's RCN network, Virginia Vallejo alleged Escobar had ties with prominent Colombians, including two former presidents. Having already named some names, she is reportedly planning to publish a book next month, and Colombians are excitedly waiting to see who else she will drag through the dirt.
She also supported allegations that veteran politician Alberto Santofimio had urged Escobar to kill Luis Carlos Galan, a presidential candidate crusading against the drug lords.
"This man is a killer, the only thing he didn't do was pulling the trigger," Vallejo was quoted as saying of Santofimio, who is on trial for his alleged role in the 1989 assassination of Galan, his political rival, by Escobar's hit men.
In this land that produces most of the world's cocaine, Vallejo's affair with Escobar is seen as a telling example of the establishment's cosy relationship with drug traffickers -- the legitimate businesses that launder drug earnings, the elite social clubs that open their doors to drug lords and the politicians who exchange favors for briefcases of cash.
"The political class, with few exceptions, also went to and continues to get in to bed with the mafia," Oscar Collazos said in a column on Vallejo in the El Tiempo newspaper.
In the statement, which she taped and delivered to RCN for broadcast after she left Colombia, Vallejo claimed that Escobar maintained close relations with former Colombian presidents Belisario Betancur and Alfonso Lopez and helped fund Lopez's political campaign.
Many Colombians wonder how the woman they saw on TV, beautiful and refined at 56, could love a pudgy drug baron with dead, shark-like eyes who was held responsible for the murder of thousands of Colombians in the 1990s drug wars.
"I fell in love with a philanthropist, a man loved by his people," she explained. "He was the only rich man in Colombia who was generous with the people in this country where the rich have never given a sandwich to the poor."
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