In 1983 Virginia Vallejo was Colombia’s number one television star. A sophisticated socialite, she had been courted by the country’s traditional billionaires when she met Pablo Escobar. The ambitious politician of humble origins, also thirty-three, introduced the elegant anchor-woman to a world in which never-ending floods of money poured into his charitable works and the campaign of the Presidential candidates of his choice, at a time when both Forbes and Fortune listed him as the seventh richest man in the world.

        In Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar the author describes the birth of the cocaine industry, a world of unbelievable new wealth, her former lover’s meteoric rise and fall and the evolution of one of the most powerful criminal minds of all times: his strengths and vulnerabilities, his fits of jealousy and methods of punishment, his addictions and fantasies, his legendary capacity for corruption and terror and the links of his trade to dictators, presidents and the Colombian Army and Secret Service. In the early stages of what later became a multi-faceted and stormy romantic relationship, the television journalist who inspired the drug lord's passion also witnessed the birth of the extreme-right paramilitary squads, her lover's relationship with extreme-left guerrillas, his role in historic tragedies like the 1985 Palace of Justice siege and his capacity to seduce the poorest of the poor, manipulate the Press and subdue anyone who crossed his path in what he considered a fight for a nationalistic cause: the elimination of the Extradition Treaty with the United States of America. The joy and happiness of their first years fastly turned into a story of unending suffering, horror and shame. After Vallejo and Escobar separated in late 1987, he went into a bloody war with the Colombian Government and the Cali Cartel.

        Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar is the intimate biography of the legendary drug baron and the only love story ever inspired by him. Besides his wife, Virginia Vallejo remains the only adult woman in Escobar’s romantic life. She was also the only prominent one and the witness of key events that parted in two the History of Colombia.

  

        The first person to read the manuscript of Amando a Pablo, Odiando a Escobar was Nobel prize-winner Gabriel García-Márquez. When Vallejo’s first book became an instant bestseller in every country where it was launched and the Venezuelan and Ecuadorean presidents praised it, Colombian President Uribe publicly called Virginia Vallejo “a liar” and accused a foreign correspondent of being her ghost-writer. The journalist angrily denied any cooperation with the author, but in the next two days he received twenty-four death threats and was forced into exile.

        In January 2007, Virginia Vallejo filed for political asylum in the United States and she now lives in Miami.

 
                                                   Update
 

        On July 11th 2008, Virginia Vallejo testified during five hours in the reopened case of the  Palace of Justice siege. Her five-hour long testimony, given under gag order in the Colombian Consulate in Miami, appeared a few weeks later in the newspaper belonging to the family of the Colombian Vice-President and the Defense Minister, Juan Manuel Santos. It had been completely adulterated to free the military involved in atrocities and Escobar's candidate, Alberto Santofimio. In August 2009, the author was asked to testify in the reopened case of the assassination of presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán in 1989. This time, the testimonial was sold by the Colombian Attorney General's Office to Canal RCN, owned by Uribe's staunchest supporter and a financier of paramilitary squads. Alvaro Uribe's presidential advisor is Pablo Escobar's cousin Jose Obdulio Gaviria, a partner of presidential candidate Juan Manuel Santos in their bid for the third television channel. After the links of four Colombian presidential candidates (2010-2014) with Pablo Escobar's family and former associates were exposed by Vallejo, the United States of America opened seven military bases in Colombia.

        During 18 months Amando a Pablo, odiando a Escobar became the #1 bestseller in Spanish in the United States of America. In Colombia and Peru, the pirate edition  has sold an estimate of a quarter million copies. In Mexico it was forbidden after selling 29,000 units on the first trimester. In the recent Buenos Aires Book Fair the book was completely sold out.

        All major movie projects on Pablo Escobar have been cancelled. Virginia Vallejo-Garcia has received several offers to take her story to the screen, once Loving Pablo Hating Escobar is released in 2010. 

 
                                                    Virginia Vallejo-Garcia in

                                                    Virginia Vallejo-Garcia in

                                                                                                                                            

                                                                                              Contact Address

	Virginia Vallejo-Garcia                           247 SW 8th Street #161                           Miami, FL 33130                              Copyright Dora Franco 2009

                                           We invite you to virginiavallejo.com and amandoapablo.com


                    
                     US Air Force F-15 pilot Pedro Gonzalez and his fiance Angeliki, fans of Amando a Pablo, odiando a Escobar