Pablo Escobar: Countdown to Death (2017) - full transcript

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.

HOW GREAT IS TO LIVE IN MEDELLÍN

WITHOUT PABLO'S BOMBS