My coke-free visit to Escobar

“Don’t go there!” Valentina, a 27-year-old designer living in Medellín, screamed when I told her I was planning to visit the Casa Museo Pablo Escobar, a museum dedicated to the Colombian drug lord.

A quick Google search made me change my mind. Admission to the museum is $30—a hefty sum in a country where a full meal typically costs less than $5 and most museums are donation-based or free. Additionally, online reviews made the place a rip-off, a collection of meaningless personal belongings, shabby reproductions, and revisionist history.

But that wasn’t why Valentina told me not to go. As a native of Colombia, she found it disrespectful for tourists like me to waste their time, energy and money on a person who has ruthlessly killed and intimidated so many of their compatriots.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what tourists do. For many – though certainly not all – this is one of their main reasons for coming to Medellín in the first place. Colombia has drawn travelers with a perverse admiration for Pablo Escobar for decades, but the number of narco-tourists soared drastically after the release of Narcos on Netflix, which transformed the kingpin from a fading memory into a living pop culture icon.

While the Netflix series has boosted Colombia’s tourism industry and, in turn, the country’s economy as a whole, Colombians are understandably upset that one of the most hated characters in their history books has now become the country’s de facto international ambassador.

“For many of us, Pablo is our Hitler,” one person from Medellín told me. “He was a hero to some, but most of all he brought a lot of evil to our city and we’ll probably never get rid of the stigma, just like the Germans will never get rid of their history.” I really despise people who buy or sell Pablo t-shirts, mugs, etc. It’s like going to Berlin to sell Hitler t-shirts. I would be arrested before I sold the first one.”

“I have an uncle I never met who died in one of his famous bombings,” added another. “I detest any reference to this man.”

Personally, I’m tempted to blame Narcos in part for creating, or at least reviving, this reference to Escobar. In classic Hollywood fashion, Netflix made him thinner, prettier, and more charismatic than he was in real life. (They also cast a Brazilian actor instead of a Colombian, but that’s another story). On top of that, the focus of the show is on his success, on his power. Viewers walk away from Narcos and muse that at his peak he was the seventh richest man in the world and controlled 80% of all cocaine. What they don’t know is that during his playing days he has held the entire country hostage through a campaign of domestic terrorism, blowing up apartment buildings and airliners, only to kill a single person on his mile-long hit list.

Instead of Casa Museo Pablo Escobar, Valentina urged me to visit Barrio 13. Barrio 13, a massive slum built on the hills above Medellín, used to be one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in all of South America until the Colombian army during the early 2000s. Things have improved since then – somewhat. It’s still a total mess; there’s no city planning and no roads for cars, but instead of public executions there’s music, graffiti and – occasionally – those Red Bull BMX challenges you might have seen on YouTube. Above all, however, the residents seem to make a decent living from tourism.

Graffiti artists in Barrio 13 / Photo by Tim Brinkhof

While ordering an IPA, which I later learned was high in THC, I asked the guy who took me there—a local named Jason—how the people of Barrio 13 felt about a show like Narcos. The answer: not good. If I wanted to “see the real Escobar,” Jason said, I should watch a Colombian show called El Patron del Mal or The Boss of Evil. It’s a Latin soap opera, not a blockbuster, but once I ignored the overly dramatic plot and music, I could see what he was getting at. First and foremost, Escobar, played by a Colombian actor, looked like he was overweight and less attractive. Patron del Mal also struck me as more authentic in his portrayal of Colombia. The Medellín the characters lived in was the same Medellín I saw when I looked out the window of my little Airbnb—full of energy and color. They drank aguardiente and enjoyed paísa, a typical Antioquian dish of rice, beans, avocado, ground beef and roast pork, served with hot arepas. Most importantly, the life of crime on this show didn’t look nearly as glamorous as it did on Narcos. We see Escobar for what he really was – a crook without a conscience; it wasn’t his intelligence that allowed him to get this far, but the fact that he was willing to do things that others couldn’t live with.

Navigating Barrio 13’s maze is hard enough when you’re sober, let alone when you’ve accidentally gotten high on craft beer. As I queued in front of the country’s only outdoor escalator, I began to notice how Colombian society was dealing with the scars of drug terrorism. Buildings that were once painted in blood and bullet holes have since been obscured by gorgeous graffiti art, used to remind people of anything but drug-related violence. One of the barrio’s most recent murals that Jason showed me depicts Pachamama, an Andean goddess who represents the earth itself and a much older and powerful symbol of Colombia’s cultural heritage than Escobar.

While I’ve never been to the Casa Museo Pablo Escobar, I did visit the Hacienda Napoles, one of the many houses he bought with his fortune. The hacienda near the town of Puerto Triunfo, about halfway between Medellín and Bogotá, originally had a modest swimming pool, an airstrip for light aircraft, and a zoo full of black-market animals. After Escobar’s death, the estate itself fell into disrepair. The mansion was ransacked and eventually leveled. Left to their fate, they died or, in the case of hippos, fled to the surrounding wetlands, where they thrived and became invasive species.

Hippos at Hacienda Napoles Zoo / Photo by Tim Brinkhof

For years, the Colombian state fought to confiscate the land of Escobar’s relatives. When they succeeded, they turned the Hacienda Napoles into a theme park. At first I thought this was an attempt to capitalize on drug tourism trends. Fortunately this was not the case. When the hacienda fell into public hands, like Barrio 13, it was remodeled to erase all traces of its criminal past. Thus, today’s Hacienda Napoles is related to Escobar’s Hacienda Napoles only in name. The hilly terrain that once served to hide the Kingpin’s shops from the outside world now features roller coasters and swimming pools. The theme park’s theme is Africa, thanks to the bigger and better zoo that has taken the place of the old one. Visitors – mostly Colombians vacationing in their own country – come to see elephants, lions, tigers, flamingos and a pair of absolutely monstrous boa constrictors. Unlike Escobar’s own zoo, where zebras were ridden by his henchmen and ostriches fed cigarettes, today’s hacienda animals live in spacious enclosures and enjoy a climate that—at least in temperature—is not far removed from their native savannahs .

Cartel member riding one of Escobar’s zebras / Photo by Tim Brinkhof

The only reference to Pablo Escobar at Hacienda Napoles is a small museum tucked away at the back of the park. The museum, a partial reconstruction of the original mansion, is dedicated to the victims of drug terrorism. Inside, you’ll learn about the history of the hacienda, Escobar’s inevitable demise, and the barbaric efforts he made to prevent that demise. The white walls are covered with the portraits of politicians and police officers he had killed, as well as images of bloodied children who were being pulled from the rubble of collapsed buildings.

What shocked me more than these pictures was that most of the visitors around me had just come out of the pool and were walking around the museum half-naked, dripping wet, drinking beer and eating slices of pizza. At the time their behavior and appearance struck me as inappropriate and even made me think they were a bit hypocritical to complain about gringos smoking blunts at Escobar’s grave in Medellín. Days later I realized how wrong I was. While I traveled to Puerto Triunfo as a foreigner specifically to see what had become of Escobar’s former home, it seems the average Colombian comes here to swim in the pools, ride roller coasters and observe the animals. For them, Pablo Escobar is not the main event of their trip, but just a side effect. I see it as a good sign that, after decades of suffering, the country is well on its way to freeing itself from the drug lord’s ever-tightening grip.

Tourists visit the Drug Terrorism Museum / Photo by Tim Brinkhof