Nordic Geographers Meeting

Stockholm 2017
20th June
N3 Cities, geopolitical and everyday sensitivities: Towards affective and emotional
urban Geopolitics

The fantasy of Pablo Escobar through an intertextual zoo

Catalina Maria Jaramillo

This talk will present a section of my PhD, which explores the 'narco city' of the
Columbian drug lord Pablo Escobar – the self-styled 'king of cocaine', who saw himself as
‘a king of magician’, the master of an illusion built upon the fragmentation of ordinary life.
In this presentation I will explore the violence of the reality-fiction that Escobar
constructed, examining how the perception of daily life changed because of the ‘magic’ of
the narco city.

Using theorisations of the baroque, in particular using the baroque skepticism questioning
the appearance of reality, I will examine Escobar’s extraordinary zoo, ‘Napoles’, one of the
most fantastic and paradoxical displays of wealth, in order to unpack issues of how display,
expenditure and hyper-reality were used to sublimate and produce social violence.

Escobar’s son, Juan Pablo Escobar, described Napoles as a place where everything was an
adventure from the beginning to the end. Napoles was specifically meant to be a “tourism
emporium,”1 the best zoo in the world2 and it was the best zoo in South America.3 For this
reason, Escobar and his partner and cousin, Gonzalo Gaviria, were described in the media
as “dos Colombianos marabilloso” (two wonderful Colombians).4

1(Villa,1980, p. 3C
2(Mora, 1984, p. D4)

3(Mora, 1984, p. D4).
4(Torres, 1995, p. 134).

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In the case of Escobar, his love for animals initially started when he used to buy sticker
albums of animals. His brother said that he also liked to watch Animalandia.5

This Colombian television programme focused on human interactions with domestic

animals. At that time there was another programme called Naturalia. Gloria de Castaño,
the host, used to say that “television allows us to visit places we might never be able to
visit”. 6

Escobar said that while he was alive, everybody would be able to visit Napoles for free
because he wanted poor people to enjoy nature.7 A local newspaper, El Otro Horizonte,
confirmed the popularity of the zoo when it reported it as the place that most visitors were
attracted to in Puerto Triunfo in 1982.8 On the weekends, Napoles could be visited by
25,000 vehicles. 9 The zoo was even the setting for a famous 1983 Colombian commercial
for Naranja Postobon, a Colombian company producing drinks, about kids enjoying a
safari.10

Escobar did not know of Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch in California, but his son
thinks that it is probably comparable to his father’s zoo.11 Napoles was an exciting,
interactive place with touchable, exotic animals. It was the ‘treasure island’ of the narco-
Colombian Walt Disney because of the sense of excitement, fragmentation and fantasy;
accordingly, it had a cluster of meanings: “Like Disneyland, it blended the reality of trade
with the play of fiction.”12

5 Mark De Beufort, "Los Archivos Ocultos De Pablo Escobar,"(Colombia: Dolby, 2004).

6 Rafael Poveda television, "La Magia Del Niño Grande, Todo Lo Que Vimos,"(Bogota: Señal Colombia, 2014).
7 (J. P. Escobar, 2014, p.144).
8 (El Colombiano, 1983, p. 12C).
9 (Escobar, 2014, p. 144).
10 (J. P. Escobar, 2014, p.146).
11 (J. P. Escobar, 2014, p.214)
12 (Eco, 1998, p. 41)

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We can observe in this documentary from the next slide how Napoles was initially
perceived.13 The zoo was a fantastic reality because Colombia was a prosperous centre of
the cocaine imperium in the 1980s and a creative and “magical” place which legalized
illegal fortunes estimated at three billion dollars per year.14

This legalization involved having a “good cover”. Money needed to be invested in

something persuasive that appeared to be legal and would not arouse suspicion – in other
words, a credible fantasy. These unreal worlds within the real world were one of the
characteristics of cocaine traffickers and Escobar, who were locally called magicos, or
magicians.

In this way, the king of cocaine once told a journalist, who was making insinuations about
his illegal business and questioning his fortune, that his money was from exporting
flowers. Then the journalist asked him if they were very exotic flowers and he responded
that, yes, they were very exotic; that people were killing to have them.15

Escobar also liked to pretend to be an oil tycoon from the ‘Fredonian Petroleum
Company’, like the American programme, Dallas, when he visited America.16 Fredonia is
known for agriculture, principally dominated by coffee culture, but it is not rich in oil and
only has coalmines.17 This hyperbolic neo baroque is defined by d’Ors as “exaggerated and
amplified, an ever bloated-culture”18 of new social relations, environment and new
aesthetic ideas.19

Umberto Eco describes hyperreality as the desire of copying an idealistic reality, which
was perceived apparently as an “everyday unreality”.20 He also mentions a saying of
Jephcott that “they open up a phantasmagoria that people enter to be amused”. Moreover,

13 Baquero, El Patron Los Archivos Pivados de Pablo Escobar.
14 (Michaels, 1987, 154)
15 Mora, "El Negocio Rinde de $1 a 500."
16 Marroquín, Pablo Escobar, Mi Padre, 200–201.
17 "Alcaldía De Fredonia - Antioquia," http://www.fredonia-antioquia.gov.co/informacion_general.shtml#economia.
18 (as cited in Lambert, 2004, p 45).
19Edward Dimendberg, "Capture," in Speed Limits, ed. Jeffrey T Schnapp (Milan: Skira, 2009), 78.
20 Humberto Eco, Faith in Fakes Travel in Hyperreality, trans. William Weaver(London: Vintage, 1998), 168.

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Eco also says that the entertainment industry facilitates it “by elevating [it] to the level of
commodities.”21

One example of this phantasmagorical metamorphosis was when Escobar changed a horse
into a unicorn to please Manuela, his daughter. To make it ‘real’, he ordered his employers
to find a doctor to perform an operation on a white horse and give it magical wings and a
bull horn.22

Money also elevated commodities in Napoles, On the weekends, it was possible to observe
twelve private jets parked at its airport.23 Marina, Escobar’s sister, said that the idea to
arrive by helicopter or airplane came from the American television programme Fantasy
Island.24 Everyone screamed, as the character Tattoo did on the programme when an
airplane arrived, “The plane, the plane!”25 Moreover, Juan Pablo’s cousin once wanted a
burger from a place which was exclusive to Oviedo in Medellin when 190 kilometres away,
so the helicopter was used to get an express delivery of one burger and chips to Napoles.26

Escobar liked to watch Fantasy Island. In this sense, Napoles was about granting magical
wishes at a capitalist heaven. Marina, Escobar’s sister, wrote that the king of cocaine was
like a genie outside his magic lamp, wanting to grant every desire that money could buy. 27

Nevertheless, these wishes were sometimes very dangerous. It was a case of being careful
what you wish for, because, ironically, the programme aimed to teach that fantasy can
have the consequence of there being a price to pay, and so there could be a dark side to the
“capitalist paradise”.

21 Ibid., 294.

22 "Aparece Por Primera Vez La Hija De Pablo Escobar," Semana(2015), accessed October 14, 2016
http://www.semana.com/nacion/articulo/aparece-por-primera-vez-la-hija-de-pablo-escobar/438950-3.
23 (J. P. Escobar, 2014, p.144).
24 (Sony Picture Television, 1977-1984).
25 (Escobar & Guzman, 2011, p. 95).
26 Ibid.
27 Escobar and Guzman, El Otro Pablo, 72.

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The narco Walt Disney had consequently a very high price attached, as underneath
‘reality’, Colombia was an extremely dangerous place to live in. Escobar’s secret lover, the
celebrity Virginia Vallejo, sees Escobar’s world as a painting of an illusion from idealistic
Alice in Wonderland, which is also reflected in the repetitions of fragmentation of Edvard
Munch’s painting The Scream. Foucault saw the fragmentation as a ‘fragment that isolates
man from himself, but above all from reality; fragments which, by detaching themselves,
have formed the unreal unity of hallucination, and by very virtue of this autonomy
imposes it upon truth’.28

In similar context, Empresas Politicas, Political Maxims written by Diego Saavedra, cites the
snake twisting in a way whereby cannot predict the intention of the direction.29 Popeye, ex
sicario of Escobar, describes Escobar thus, in a sentence from the Bible: Manso como una
Paloma, astuto como una cerpiente or ‘meek as a dove, astute as a snake.’30 Perhaps, we could
interpret Napoles in this way, as a place of unpredictable turns, an ingenious place that can
compare with a plausible metaphor of the improbable,31 and that needs a deep
reflection.32

Calabrase describes this as “marvellous,” like hiding a mysterious teleology. 33 Napoles like
El Mundo de adentro or “Word inside” of Quevedo, questioned deeply the interior
appearance and what is certainly real. 34 In return, the baroque dilemma of engaño and
desengaño, or ser and parecer 35 is defined by Jeremy Robbins as a vision of either deception

28 Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization, a History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, trans. Richard Howard(New York:
Routledge, 2001), 87.
29 Diego Saavedra, Empresas Políticas(Madrid: Catedra, 1999).
30 John Jairo Velasquez, "¡¡ Respuestas (Ii) !! Respuestas a Preguntas En Video. ¡¡ Popeye !!," Youtube,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61i8NkXLMhc.

31 Raimondi, Ezio, "El Museo Del Discreto," in Ensayos sobre la Curiosidad y la Experiencias en Literatura(Madrid: Akal, 2002), 63.
32 Ibid., 61.
33
Calabrese 91
34 Francisco De Quevedo, "El Mundo po De Dentro," (2003), http://www.biblioteca.org.ar/libros/897.pdf.
35 Jeremy Robbins, Arts of Perception, the Epistemological Mentality of the Spanish Baroque, 1580-1720(New York: Routledge,
2007), 1.

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or disillusionment, either truth or falsehood,36 like the theatre of Shakespeare’s “to be or
not to be.”37

In some way, Napoles was an enigmatic place that hypnotized, similar to the text of the
Colombian Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Escobar did not want anyone to
awaken from the magic realism; he wanted to make eternal the mysterious ‘fantasy island’.
The narco-Colombian Walt Disney could be the Raimondi’s magic machine, which
manipulated the imaginary psychology.38

The king of cocaine once asked a visitor to Napoles how he could import a giraffe. Virginia
Vallejo, his future girlfriend, answered by describing an illegal and complicated route.
Ironically, Escobar said that he was absolutely outraged because of Virginia’s ability to
plan an international crime. He told her that the animals were imported legally and had all
the proper papers. Moreover, he mentioned that a giraffe cannot be imported illegally
because its neck is very delicate and is not a spring. Finally, he said to her, “Do I look like a
smuggler to you?”39

Escobar’s Habracadabra zoo was seen ironically as an indefinable fantastic enigma.

Nevertheless, Escobar’s privatised Ark was obviously illegal because of the Colombian
restriction in relation to importing exotic animals. Escobar covered up the illegality when
he gave orders for a monkey to be painted to look like a zebra so that the government did
not confiscate the illegally obtained African animal. 40 Besides, the local government did
not consider there to be a need for another zoo because Medellin already had one: ‘Santa
Fe.’

Napoles gave him a reputation for illegality: “if he is willing to hide an illegal rhinoceros
there is no question that he would hide cocaine.”41 In that sense, the reality of Napoles was

36 Ibid., 8.

37William Shakeaspeare, "Hamlet, and as You Like It: A Specimen of an Edition of Shakespeare,"(London: William Nicol,

1832), 71.
38 Raimondi, "El Museo Del Discreto," 18.

39 (Vallejo, 2007, p.34).
40 (Castro Caycedo, 1996, p.248).

41 (Escobar & Fisher, 2009, p. 136).

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similar to Escobar’s exporting cowboy jeans invisibly covered with cocaine.42 The narco-
Colombian Walt Disney was part of this illegal network because “the exotic kingdom of
the Colombian traffickers” 43was also used for illegal activities, such as the transport of this
drug using Napoles’s airport. For example, El Profe said that around three or four flights
per day left full of it.44 Escobar even used animals’ manure for cocaine packaging.45

When he placed an airplane above the gate in Napoles, Escobar ironically provided an
obvious clue about how technology participated in the success of the cocaine imperium,
even if only as an allegory. Moreover, his brother Roberto wrote that Escobar saw it as a
symbol of freedom:46 a laissez faire approach which can be interpreted as a violent liberty
of “travelling beyond the limits.” 47

Escobar confessed innocently in his anonymous book that drug trafficking is simply a
manifestation of the illegal trade and he also stated that Colombia needed a new
Rousseauian social contract to discuss it. 48 The king of cocaine also mentioned that he
admired Al Capone because he understood that the free market is a form of power, and
Napoles’s name came consequently from Al Capone’s father who was from Naples in
Italy.49

Liberty allows fantasy to travel illegally beyond limits of reality, and Foucault describes it
as the desire to escape ‘the rigours of the law.’Eco thinks that “Foucault would say, that the
single subject does not resolve”- in this case the illegality of the narco city- “unless he
confines to literary fiction”.50 Benjamin calls this individual cause “a desired goal.” 51

42 (J. P. Escobar, 2014, p.202)
43 (El Tiempo, 2013)
44 (Mollison and Nelson, 2007, p.39).
45 (Salazar, 2012, p.96).
46 (R. Escobar, 2000, p.II).
47 (Lambert, 2004, p.132),
48 Un Narco Se Confiesa Y Acusa, (Editorial Colombia Nuestra), 5.

49 Juan Pablo Escobar, Pablo Escobar Mi Padre(Bogota: Planeta Colombia, 2014), 135.

50 Eco, Faith in Fakes Travel in Hyperreality, 255.

51 Walter Benjamin, "Critique of Violence," in Reflections Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical, Writings(New York: Schocken
Books), 277.

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The narco Walt Disney can be considered consequently as an example of what Lambert
describe as Borges’ interpretation of neo-Baroque. It is “a mirror that reflects the ‘no-place’
of a structure that is common to both fiction and reality: on one side of this mirror’s
surface, there is an incongruous clarity one often associates with myth and fantasy; on the
other, one finds a list of quotidian objects that seem to belong to the light of day.”52

Napoles shows finally how difficult it is to understand what is a platonic shadow or, in this
case, a representation of violence. In many ways, knowledge doesn’t seem to allow us to
identify its nature because, as Foucault says, madness understands the contrast between
light and dark, but none what is light? How can we find the knowledge to understand
something that is only a desire of the individual psyche if we only know its appearance?
Even if we think that we know it, how do we know that it is what we think it is, if Napoles is
only a fantasy of a magnificent or demonic zoo?

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Benjamin, Walter. "Critique of Violence." Translated by Edmund Jephcott. In Reflections
Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical, Writings. New York: Schocken Books.
De Beufort, Mark. "Los Archivos Ocultos De Pablo Escobar." 70 minutes. Colombia: Dolby,
2004.
De Quevedo, Francisco. "El Mundo po De Dentro." (2003).
http://www.biblioteca.org.ar/libros/897.pdf.
Eco, Humberto. Faith in Fakes Travel in Hyperreality. Translated by William Weaver.
London: Vintage, 1998.
Escobar, Alba Marina, and Catalina Guzman. El Otro Pablo. Florida: Editorial pelicano, 2011.
Escobar, Juan Pablo Pablo Escobar Mi Padre [in Spanish]. Bogota: Planeta Colombia, 2014.
Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization, a History of Insanity in the Age of Reason.
Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Routledge, 2001.
Raimondi, Ezio. "El Museo Del Discreto." In Ensayos sobre la Curiosidad y la Experiencias en
Literatura. Madrid: Akal, 2002.
Robbins, Jeremy. Arts of Perception, the Epistemological Mentality of the Spanish Baroque,
1580-1720. New York: Routledge, 2007.
Saavedra, Diego. Empresas Políticas. Madrid: Catedra, 1999.
Shakeaspeare, William. "Hamlet, and as You Like It: A Specimen of an Edition of
Shakespeare." London: William Nicol, 1832.
Un Narco Se Confiesa Y Acusa. Editorial Colombia Nuestra.
Velasquez, John Jairo. "¡¡ Respuestas (Ii) !! Respuestas a Preguntas En Video. ¡¡ Popeye !!"
Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61i8NkXLMhc.

52 (Lambert, 2004, p.3).