Skvaller om Olof Gustafsson och närstående till Escobar Inc

Roberto Escobar is a short, hunched man. He’s old now and nearly blind and deaf from a letter bomb blowing up in his face years ago. His eye sockets sink into his skull leaving two golf-ball-sized craters in his face. His gaze is lifeless. It passes through you, as if you were some sort of hologram.

Meeting Pablo Escobar’s brother turned out to be one of the more disappointing moments of my life. In Medellin, Colombia, you can go to Roberto’s house. In fact, there’s a whole tourism industry that’s sprouted up around Escobar and the old cartel. Much of this tourism is promoted and encouraged by the Escobar family themselves, as it’s (ostensibly) the only way they have to make much money these days.

The other visitors and I listen as Roberto dishes out stories about him and Pablo and the cartel, stories that he’s undoubtedly recited hundreds of times before. There’s an emptiness when he speaks. His Spanish tumbles out of his mouth in a monotonous slur, sometimes indecipherable. Sometimes when he speaks to you he reaches out and puts his hand on you, in the way a politician would, except the way he does it, there’s no emotion to it, no charisma. It’s as if he’s making sure you’re still there—that he’s still there.

There’s a small table on his porch stacked with assorted DVDs, postcards, and, of course, his book. You can purchase them and then pay double for an autographed copy.

He reminds us of this multiple times.