knowing that they might become sympathetic. It’s accurate to say that some of the most successful people in the legal business world in Spain today made their first fortune with Pablo. From Madrid, Pablo visited other countries in Europe, including the small principality of Monaco. Monaco impressed Pablo, with its freedom and fun. So eventually when he decided to build a lovely modern building for himself in Medellín, he named it Monaco.

Under the law of my country, our president must give several cabinet posts to members of the opposition parties. President Belisario Betancur awarded the Ministry of Justice to the New Liberals, who named Senator Rodrigo Lara Bonilla to the position in 1983. Lara was one of the strongest speakers in the government against the influence of the drug mafias, against the hot money.

During the political debate about hot money in August 1983, Jairo Ortega held up for everyone to see a photocopy of a check for one million pesos, about $12,000, to the campaign for the Senate of Lara Bonilla signed by the chief of a drug group in Leticia, the capital of the Colombian Amazon, who was known for bringing in paste and other chemicals from Peru. He had once served a sentence in Peru for smuggling. Pablo knew this drug chief and some people accused him of getting this copy of the check. It is possible that this money had been donated to Lara’s campaign with this accusation in mind. It was an amazing moment—Lara was being accused of taking hot money!

In response, he denounced the drug chief and Pablo. This was the first time that Pablo had been accused in public of being a drug trafficker. A few days later a newspaper in Bogotá reported, also for the first time, that Pablo Escobar had been arrested for smuggling thirty-nine kilos in 1976. Pablo told me he was not surprised at any of this. “The people running this country don’t want me to succeed. I’m a threat to the same politics. They’re going to be against me because they’re used to robbing and I’m going to transform the system. Everybody in Medellín knows that I have real estate businesses and that’s how I get my money for politics. I love my country, and we want to make this country beautiful. I admire the United States, but I don’t agree with the way they are doing politics here in Colombia.”

Lara, the justice minister, told the newspapers that the United States had made charges against Pablo accusing him of being a drug trafficker. Pablo had a response for everything. “That’s not true,” he replied. “As a matter of fact, here is the visa I got three days ago from the American embassy.”

Within a few days, however, the U.S. canceled that visa. Two months later Lara requested that the Congress take back Pablo’s immunity from extradition. Pablo never returned to the Congress. His political career was over.

At first President Betancur was against extradition. This was a very controversial issue. Many agreed with Pablo and the other leaders of the cartel that our country should not allow the Americans to enforce their law on our territory.

Pablo remained calm throughout and denied all of Lara’s charges, continuing to proclaim that he was a real estate man. But this was what Gustavo and myself had most feared. The attention being paid to Pablo Escobar had shone a bright light on the business. Now people were asking hard questions and the police were looking around.

For many of the Colombian people the facts were simple: Pablo and the other business leaders provided more to them than did the government. Even if they believed the stories, the drugs were not hurting them as much as ending the drug trade would hurt them. Later, when we were trying to make peace with the government, an important drug trafficker of Medellín explained this to a representative: “This is a business like any other business. The cocaine that leaves from Colombia is not being used in Colombia. The cocaine that leaves is giving many peasants a source of work. People who have no other means to survive. Right now there are more than 200,000 people in the plantation.”

So naturally there was very mixed reaction to Lara Bonilla’s call. But the justice minister continued his campaign mainly against the drug traffickers. He named thirty politicians he claimed had accepted hot money. He insisted that Aerocivil, the government’s aviation agency, take back the licenses for three hundred small planes owned by