"Amando
a Pablo, Odiando a Escobar", the bestseller in Spanish, soon in English.
The love story between the Colombian television diva and Pablo
Escobar, head of
the cocaine Medellin Cartel and, at 33, the seventh wealthiest man
in the world, lasted from 1982 to 1987.
With a language both exquisite and powerful, Vallejo guides the
reader through the psyche of the most powerful and ruthless criminal
of recent times, unveils the commercial and political links
of the cocaine trade with Colombian Presidents, Caribbean
dictators, congressmen, the military, her country's secret
service and enforcement agencies, leftist guerrillas, extreme-right paramilitaries and the
media, and explains the meteoric rise, success and fall of the
lover who saw her as his
future biographer.
In "Loving Pablo, hating Escobar", the author paints a world of unbeliavable new wealth and corruption.
The joy and happiness of the first years, and Escobar's
generosity towards her and the poor, fastly turn into a story
of unending suffering, horror and shame. After Vallejo and
Escobar separate in late 1987, he goes into a bloody war with the Cali
Cartel, whose boss had briefly courted Virginia during one of their
separations. In the next twenty years, the anchor woman would pay her relationship with
the drug lord and her knowledge of the political corruption
which supported the drug trade with her career, her place in society and a
vicious defamation campaign in the Press controled by Colombian
presidential families, one which lasts until this day.
In 1993, eight thousand men, the Navy Seals and the Delta Force were
needed to hunt down Escobar and cooperate with a especially trained squad
of the Colombian Police to end his life and six years of
narcoterrorism.
On July 18th 2006, the
American Government saved Virginia Vallejo's life when she was
brought to Miami as a protected witness on an airplane belonging
to the DEA. A new stage of her life, this time as an author,
began when her book became the #1 bestseller in the Hispanic
market in November 2007.
"Loving Pablo, hating Escobar" is the only possible intimate -
and, definitely, the most organic - vision of the legendary drug
lord: the lover, the criminal, the billionaire, the warrior, the
enemy, the monster and the myth.
in
Spanish:
