Escobar's 'pacifist' son revisits horrors of past

Juan Escobar was a teenager when he first challenged his father, the most notorious and brutal drug lord in Colombia's history.

"I confronted him about the deaths attributed to him on the TV news," he recalls now. "He started calling me 'my 14-year-old pacifist son'. But no one could stop my father. Not all of Colombia, together with the help of the CIA. So what could the son of Pablo Escobar do?"

Nearly two decades later, Pablo Escobar is long dead, gunned down in 1993 on a rooftop in Medellin, home of the drug cartel that made him one of the most feared men in Latin America. His son now lives in Buenos Aires and has changed his name to Sebastian Marroquin.

But the murders and horrors of the past have never ceased to haunt him. And in an act of immense emotional courage, the 32-year-old Marroquin has decided to revisit them, searching for a kind of forgiveness and a form of expiation.

Marroquin has revealed the motivation behind a documentary, Los Pecados de mi Padre (The Sins of my Father), which culminates in an attempt to make his peace with the sons of two prominent Colombian politicians, murdered at his father's behest.

"A great deal of young people want to live the life of Pablo Escobar," he said, "but if they knew what that really meant nobody would dare do that."

Rodrigo Lara, a former Colombian Minister of Justice, and Luis Galan, a charismatic presidential candidate, had both dared to take on Escobar at the height of his power, publicly opposing the drug baron's ambitions of becoming President of Colombia during the 1980s. Their bravery cost them their lives.

Escobar was making billions of dollars as his cartel pumped a never-ending supply of cocaine into the United States and ordering the assassinations of hundreds of opponents.

The Medellin drug cartel had cornered 80 per cent of the world cocaine market. In 1989, Escobar was rated the seventh-richest man in the world by Forbes magazine. "My father called the shots in Colombia," said Marroquin. "He was running the country."

Lara was shot by Escobar's henchmen in 1984, soon after setting fire to US$1.2 billion of seized cocaine; Galan was killed while campaigning in 1989.

"How do you write to the sons of families that your own father hurt so much?" said Marroquin.

It was remarkable in itself that he had come to the point of asking such a question.

For years after his father's death, Marroquin refused to look back. His last memory before leaving Colombia at the age of 16 is of sitting in an armoured car for his father's funeral. It was as close as he could get to his grave without tempting sharpshooters.

Marroquin left with his mother, sister and teenage sweetheart Maria, to whom he is still married.

"I was called to a meeting with enemies of my father and told I would be allowed to live on two conditions: that I leave Colombia permanently and that I promised never to get involved in drug trafficking."

The family settled in Argentina after entering a witness protection programme and changing their names. Marroquin's mother went into property; he became an architect. "Nobody realised I was the son of Pablo Escobar and I never told anyone."

Immersed in a new identity, Marroquin was left only with disturbing memories of a childhood lived in the shadow of a father who terrified almost everyone he met. "I was never scared of him. The only thing that scared me was that he never felt any fear in any situation."

Young Escobar had few friends. "At school, I had a bodyguard outside the classroom, next to me in recess or even when I went to the bathroom. My friends were these bodyguards."

Childhood included a visit to Disneyworld, a tourist trip to see the White House, and also baroque excess, such as the private zoo at their giant Napoles estate.

"Father picked out animals to buy from National Geographic. It was my backyard, a 3500ha backyard with elephants and giraffes. But the other parents at school were too terrified to let my classmates come to visit me."

The letter Marroquin eventually wrote to the sons of Galan and Lara astonished the recipients. "That very brave letter took us completely by surprise," says Juan Galan, now a Colombian senator himself. "He's searching for peace for himself and for those around him, in contrast with his father, who sowed violence and death."

After reading Marroquin's letter, Rodrigo Lara, the son of the murdered minister of justice, boarded a plane to Buenos Aires to meet him.

Both Lara and Marroquin had once vowed to avenge the death of their fathers. "I planned in my head at the age of 8 how I would shoot the men who had killed my father," Lara said. "Violence is inherited, hatred is inherited in Colombia."

In The Sins of My Father, Marroquin says to Lara, "It's very hard to separate these facts from our names. This involves our loved ones, our families, the terrible death of your father, but in the end we are all orphans."

The meeting ends in a guarded hug as Lara replies: "We can't keep feeding this circle of anger or we'll never get out."

To meet the three sons of Galan, Marroquin had to return to Colombia for the first time in 15 years. He told them: "I am here to ask for forgiveness and to look into the eyes of each of you."

One of the Galan brothers said: "Emotionally, it's not easy to talk to someone who is not guilty, but who is still the son of the man who killed our fathers." But then he added: "We are all the victims of drug trafficking. We have nothing to forgive you, because you are not Pablo Escobar."

For Marroquin, the moment was a breakthrough: "I felt the greatest freedom and joy and it lifted the greatest weight off me."

Finally, he is free to face the future.

COCAINE KING

Born: December 1, 1949 to a farmer father and schoolteacher mother in the suburbs of Medellin.

Early life: As an adolescent, Escobar becomes involved in local street crime, stealing headstones and smuggling cigarettes.

Criminal rise: In the early 1970s, becomes involved in smuggling coca paste from Bolivia and Peru. By decade's end, controls all crime in Medellin.

Timeline:

* 1982 - After spending millions on Medellin's poor, he is elected to Congress.
* 1984 - Colombian Justice Minister is assassinated on Escobar's orders.
* 1989 - Government offensive on cartels after Escobar orders killing of Liberal presidential candidate.
* Escobar's men plant a bomb on Avianca flight 203, killing all 107 passengers.
* 1991 - Surrenders on the proviso that he will be imprisoned in his own private jail.
* 1992 - On the run.
* December 2, 1993 - Police shoot Escobar dead as he flees across a rooftop in Medellin.

- OBSERVER