Pablo Escobar: Tourist Attraction

[Julian2]

Crowds flock to Pablo Escobar's ranch

 

SIXTEEN years after Pablo Escobar died in a hail of bullets, crowds of tourists are descending on his luxurious ranch to celebrate the tacky taste and violent times of South America's most notorious drug lord.

 

The unexpected success of Hacienda Napoles as an attraction has disturbed the government of Colombia, where Escobar's foot soldiers were paid $US1000 for every official and policeman they shot.

 

The ranch is presented as an "anti-crime museum" but many visitors maintain that Escobar, once named by Forbes magazine as the world's seventh-richest man, was a Robin Hood figure who shared his $US25 billion fortune with the Colombian poor.

 

So popular has the hacienda become that lawyers for some of the victims of his reign of terror in the 1980s are seeking a share of the profits it generates from souvenirs - including replica guns, fake Escobar moustaches and 30cm plaster statues that croak his final words: "They kill me."

 

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Visitors enter the 2000ha estate near Medellin under an arch topped with a replica of the light aircraft in which Escobar's gang flew its first two-tonne consignment of cocaine to the US.

 

Inside his mansion are fading Versace fittings and furniture Escobar's family picked up on trips to Miami before the clan became too infamous to travel.

 

Associates said he adapted his "narco-deco" style from the 1983 gangster movie Scarface, including a taste for collecting big cats, giraffes and elephants. Escobar imported the first herd of hippos into South America. The original four have now become 27 beasts.

 

The drug baron was especially proud of his Jurassico Park, a group of life-sized dinosaur statues and a golden pterodactyl made up from authentic bones. Guests can also race go-karts around his track. The ranch has retained his collection of classic cars, a bullring where he staged executions and a landing strip.

 

Escobar said aircraft allowed him to "industrialise the distribution" of Colombian cocaine and turn it into the most fashionable drug of the 1980s. At one point he controlled 80 per cent of the world's cocaine trade.

 

In 1991, when the Medellin cartel was killing more than 7000 people a year with guns, bombs and chainsaws, he gave himself up.

 

He escaped from his lavishly appointed cell when real prison beckoned and went into hiding in the slums of Medellin. US-trained police finally tracked him down in 1993 and, as he scrambled to escape across rooftops, they shot dead.the 44-year-old gangster.

 

The Sunday Times