According to Juan Pablo Escobar, son of Colombian drug trafficker Pablo Escobar, as the strongest country in Latin America, Mexico should use its power to declare peace on drugs because, if not, we could be on the verge of a worse war there than the one Colombia lived through.

When asked specifically about the similarities – if any – between the drug trade in his native Colombia and what’s going on now in Mexico, he confirmed that there are, but “this is because the prohibitionist laws are exactly the same, they don’t distinguish between anyone, the main similarity is the exponential growth of corruption, arms dealing, violence and the emergence of new drugs”.

In an interview with the El Financiero newspaper, he recalled that “when my father taught me about drugs, there were nine or ten, now there are more than 460 substances and more than 244 million consumers and that’s something you won’t stop with machine guns”.


 

“The time has come for us to talk to our kids about drugs. How can we expect young people to do the right thing if they don’t have enough information?

They don’t know about and can’t identify the more than 400 different types there are”, stated Juan Pablo Escobar and/or Sebastián Marroquín during his “A story not to be repeated” conference yesterday night organised by the “Young hands. For you” association whose president is Odalis Gómez Millar.

Entire families; fathers, mothers accompanied by their children turned up at the Oasis Arena to listen to the son of the most powerful narcotrafficker in the world who showed them pictures and videos from the era of terror that lasted for many years in Colombia. The message was clear: love and honesty are the antidotes to indifference and exclusion.

Using simple words, Escobar - who changed his name for safety reasons and because, following the death of his father, no airline wanted to sell him, his sister or his mother tickets to escape from their country into exile – described moments of tenderness and understanding with the capo of the Medellín Cartel as well as the violence he suffered such as the bomb planted in his house from which they miraculously survived unscathed.

Again and again he insisted that none of the television serials ever told the truth about the life of his father. “They’ve managed to transform five minutes of fame, luxury cars, women and power into 200 chapters. I feel very sorry about this because this is what they sell the young children and it’s false. The drug trade is not a good business”, he added.

 

 

FORGIVENESS, THE ANTIDOTE

Juan Pablo Escobar also talked about forgiveness and reconciliation. And about the worthlessness of money.

“We were in a house with at least three million dollars but we didn’t have the freedom to go out and buy food. That’s when I realised that riches are useless and that the most important thing is to to be free. I feel more like a millionaire today than I did back then”, he added to emphasise the point.

He revealed that he’s met with the children of his father’s victims including Justice Minister, Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, former presidential candidate, Luis Carlos Galán; as well as the children of the Cali Cartel, who were the enemies of his father, to forgive each other for all the criminal acts they witnessed.

Escobar/Marroquín has been living in Argentina for the last twenty years and is married to a Mexican. Without excusing Pablo Escobar’s delinquent activities, he explained that the reason he decided to choose the path of peace thanks to the advice of his father, who always insisted that he shouldn’t follow in his footsteps. Now a respected architect, he also wrote the book “Pablo Escobar. My father”, which has been translated into several languages.

 

 

He showed the favourite photo of the man who placed two thousand bombs on Colombian soil, killing thousands of people. It’s of him and his father outside the White House in Washington D.C. and recalled how the DEA would charge the Medellin Cartel a “tax” for every kilo of cocaine that entered Miami airport in Florida during the Eighties.

He recounted the painful moment when his own paternal family, in alliance with his enemies in the Cali Cartel, decided to confiscate all his assets. He denied that his father had financed the campaign of former Peruvian president, Albert Fujimori, on the orders of the US government in exchange for four visas.

“The last time I was made to feel excluded was with a bank where I’d been a customer for 12 years and they sent me a letter asking me to close my account because they were afrtaid I would launder money. After a while, I sent them a letter asking them to reinstate my account. Fortunately they understood and now I’m a customer again but they were pushing me towards illegality,” he went on to explain.

 

 

After the conference he took questions from the floor. In answer to one question, he said that some drugs should be legalised, “because prohibition has caused violence and division between societies”. And he lamented the fact that all the profits are made by people from the first world.

At the end of the conference he was congratulated for his bravery in explaining what his life was like. He insisted that love is the basis for a different society.

Riches are worth nothing, the most important thing is to be free. Today I feel more of a millionaire than I did back then.

 

Source: //www.marcri9xnoticias.com