|
Loving
Pablo, Hating Escobar
The # 1 bestseller in Spanish in the United States, coming in English in 2010
“As Jerry McMillan, Attaché of
the Department of Justice, stretches out his hand and says
that I am now under the protection of the Federal Government
of the United States of America, I say a silent prayer for
him, Ambassador William Wood and every single one of their
children. Unbeknownst to them, the USA has just saved me
from death under torture at the hands of one dozen butchers.
Unbeknownst to me, I am the American Government’s secret
weapon in a 2.1 billion dollar criminal case.”
American Edition, 2007.
Spanish and Argentinian Edition, 2008
Loving
Pablo, Hating Escobar
Synopsis
|
|
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. |
 |
Pablo Escobar and Virginia
Vallejo campaigning in 1983 |
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. |
Recent
Events |
|
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. |
 
It's complicated! Carolyn Castano, Walter Maciel Gallery,
Los
Angeles, April - May 2009 |
|
|
|
|
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 Hollywood, once Loving
Pablo Hating Escobar is released in 2010.
President Correa of Ecuador shows Amando a Pablo,
odiando a Escobar to the Press in 2008 and 2009.
 
Contact
Virginia Vallejo
We
invite you to
VirginiaVallejo.com and
AmandoaPablo.com
|
|
_small.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg)