Romancing Pablo Escobar

Chapter 3 focuses on Pablo Escobar’s former “trophy woman” (“mafia doll”), the 1980’s television celebrity Virginia Vallejo, whose autobiography details her tumultuous affair with the capo. It explores how Vallejo negotiates her own position vis-à-vis Colombia’s war on drugs, including the issue of culpability and her own victimhood once Escobar’s influences began to falter and how Vallejo became the subject of a multifold harassment that ended her career. Hers is the first melodramatic take on Escobar, an account that mobilizes the traditional tropes of female sentimentality wherein the Capo appears to be an alluring lover capable, nonetheless, of the most horrid acts. This chapter also examines Colombia’s infatuation with machismo and the figure of the classic Latin American strongman, whose brutality was part of their mass appeal. A substantial section of this chapter is devoted to the discourses born around Vallejo’s self-exposure as Escobar’s former lover, where public outrage, misogyny, sexism, and private interests reveal as much about Colombian society as about the memoirist.

Epilogue

My final thoughts in the epilogue extend beyond Colombia, observing how the Escobar brand has been putting down roots in much wider settings, with its historical referent often bearing little to almost no resemblance. From a Chilean variety show with an Escobar character whose endearing joviality portrays the drug baron as a likeable fatty to the Netflix television series Narcos and the film Escobar: Paradise Lost featuring Hollywood icon Benicio del Toro, Escobar is undeniably present at the core of the argument, albeit not in a true-to-life rendition. Thus the capo has become a postmodern simulacrum and a catalyst for dynamic storytelling, where each new tale affords its own ideology, merely bouncing off Escobar’s notorious traits and life story. This chapter also traces the rise of Escobar-themed establishments all over the globe, from restaurants and bars to strip clubs and ice-cream parlors. It examines how Escobar’s memory is branded in a variety of ways and by different subjects, including Escobar’s son Sebastian Marroquín. It explores the tensions inherent in the conflict between trauma of Escobar’s violence and the ongoing aggressive commodification of his persona.

Colombian Sicariato and Rosario Tijeras

This chapter turns to the other by-product of Colombia’s narco machine: the plague of sicarios recruited from that nation’s hardscrabble neighborhoods. It traces the rise of hitmen from its original press coverage, when Escobar ordered the assassination of Colombia’s Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla in 1984, to the present-day “baby sicarios,” whose disturbingly premature entry into delinquency has become the subject of several film documentaries. Though real-life sicarios have been associated with men, it is Jorge Franco’s female rendition of the phenomenon, the eponymous heroine of the novel Rosario Tijeras, which in a brief time moved to both the small and the big screens. This chapter explores the trajectory of the Rosario Tijeras franchise, where her multiple renditions turned the femme fatale into a household name. Albeit fictional, she grew to incarnate Colombia’s women who became hardened by the volatile circumstances of drug and guerrilla violence.

Introduction

The introduction lays out the theoretical framework for the exploration of narcocultura in Colombia. First, it establishes how the book’s interdisciplinary nature is the result of simultaneously tackling history, crime, media, and popular entertainment. It also explains how the inclusion of non-academic and “lowbrow” materials enriches our understanding of narco culture and aligns with the premises of New Historicism, postmodernism, cultural criminology, and tabloid studies. They attest with force to the process of continuous intertextual reinscription and constant debates between narratives (interpretations), thereby exposing contemporary cultural myths and beliefs surrounding Pablo Escobar, the Medellín Cartel, and Colombian narcocultura. Next, the initial chapter traces the trajectory of cocaine production, the pioneer traffickers and cocaine producers from Latin America, and how Colombians eventually entered and monopolized the business. It looks at the impact of Pablo Escobar on Colombian cultural production, with an emphasis on the years after 2000. The introduction also explains how the marketing concept of branding and its use of Jungian personality archetypes will serve as a tool to illuminate Escobar’s versatile and dynamic cultural legacy.

Pablo Escobar and Narco Nostalgia

Chapter 1 looks into discourses surrounding the Medellín cartel and the present-day value of the Escobar brand. It explores how the popular media in Colombia has reproduced one type of narco, whose flamboyance and caudillo-like attitudes reflect the behaviors associated with Escobar and his ilk, rather than the more discreet figureheads of today’s drug-trafficking. This take on Escobar’s history created a nostalgic version of the hedonistic capos and their conspicuous consumption, thereby strategically resurrecting and fetishizing Colombia’s arguably worst criminal. It also draws attention away from present-day narco alliances that still plague Colombia. The second half of the chapter focuses on narco aesthetics, which appear in every facet of popular culture, from architecture and music to media production, fashion, and the female body ideal. It explores the conflict between Escobar’s tangible legacy (properties, prison) vis-à-vis Medellín’s push toward rebranding itself as a peaceful site of incomparable physical beauty. While the state strives to erase his memory by either neglecting or destroying places of related to Escobar, the latest trends in global tourism are doing exactly the opposite; they promote the exploration of thrilling experiences, thereby reviving Escobar’s popularity worldwide through narco tourism, against the wishes of many locals.

Who’s the Real Boss?

This chapter explores the mediac rebirth of Colombia’s so-called Cocaine Queen of the 1970s, whose criminal reign extended from Medellín to New York and Miami. It argues that Blanco’s posthumous celebrity status in popular culture took place once the media’s interest in Escobar and narcocultura became a well-established trend. This is evidenced by the emergence of two biographies, the telenovela La viuda negra, and extensive press coverage, all of which invariably compare her notoriety to that of Escobar. Also worthy of note is the Colombian influence on cocaine trafficking in Miami, where extreme violence and cash flow changed the city’s character from a mecca for retirees to a refashioned Wild West. Informed on Billy Corben’s documentaries Cocaine Cowboys (two installments) and Max Marmelstein’s criminal autobiography The Man Who Made It Snow, this chapter examines Griselda Blanco’s brutality as a narca in the U.S., her relationship with Pablo Escobar, and her volatile marriages and partners’ suspicious deaths, as well as her position in the drug trade, where her extreme cruelty kept her hitmen both in check and in constant admiration.

Mad about Boobs

This chapter delves into Colombia’s so-called trash literature, particularly Gustavo Bolívar’s widely criticized bestseller novel Sin tetas no hay paraíso (2005), in order to explore the encounter between women and narco money. It examines how various narcos came to finance beauty pageants in Colombia, how they allured attractive women with promises of fame and wealth, and how they transformed the female beauty ideal, insisting on plastic surgery that exalted voluptuousness and excess. Of questionable literary value, Sin tetas nonetheless became a poignant social testimony on the destructive forces present in narco societies, where the least privileged pay the highest price. Its insight into corruption and ultimately the demise of working-class youth who sacrifice themselves in exchange for the short-lived intoxication of consumerism, immediately connected with Colombian (and worldwide) audiences, as confirmed by the popularity of the Sin tetas franchise (it appeared as a film and various telenovelas throughout the Hispanic world).