LOVING PABLO, HATING ESCOBAR - Canongate

In 1983 Virginia Vallejo was, at thirty three, Colombia's number one television star. A sophisticated socialite, the multilingual professional beauty had been courted by the country's traditional billionaires when she met and fell in love with a man named Pablo Escobar. The ambitious politician of humble origins -also thirty-three - introduced the elegant anchor-woman to a new world of unbelievable wealth in which never-ending floods of money poured into his charitable works and the campaign of the Presidential candidate of his choice, at a time when both Forbes and Fortune listed him as the seventh richest man in the world.

This book describes the birth of the cocaine industry and the evolution of one of the most powerful criminal minds of all times, Escobar's legendary capacity for corruption and terror, and the links between his trade and the Caribbean dictators, the Colombian Governments of the past quarter of the century, and the U.S. Secret Service. In the early stages of what later became a multi-faceted and stormy romantic relationship, the television journalist who inspired the drug baron's passion also became his witness of choice for his capacity to subdue presidents and dictators, the extreme right and the extreme left, and everyone who crossed his path in what he considered a fight for a nationalistic cause.

The love story of five years between the screen diva and 'the Colombian Robin Hood? is one of glamour and joy, but also one of enduring suffering and shame. It goes from her luxurious suites at the most elegant hotels in the world, New York and Beverly Hills, Venice and Z?rich, Mexico and Rio, the Hamptons mansions and the Park Avenue penthouses, to Escobar's ranch, a 6,200 acre spread, a tiny island in the Colombian Caribbean and the Berlin Wall in 1989.

After her relationship with Escobar ended in 1987 -and especially after his death in 1993- Virginia Vallejo became a social pariah: she was blacklisted, threatened, scorned and humiliated in every possible way by the media and allies of presidential families supported by Escobar and his rivals, the Rodr?guez-Orejuela brothers. Journalists on the payroll of both drug cartels were used by them to publicly warn her that her face would be cut with razors and she would be tortured to death if she ever opened her mouth.

Her twenty years of silence came to an end on July 18th 2006, when she fled Colombia for the USA on a chartered jet of the Drug Enforcement Agency after accusing Escobar's candidate -then on trial- of being the instigator of the death of Luis Carlos Gal?n, the honest political leader who would have become Colombia's President in 1990. The criminal case -which was supposed to take another two months- was closed the day before she could testify. In protest, the Colombian Ambassador to Washington resigned his post and a new Foreign Affairs Minister linked to the paramilitaries was appointed.

Virginia Vallejo's departure made front-page news on 42 newspapers worldwide and her only radio interview to The Voice of America was repeatedly aired in 36 countries. When she realized that if she returned to Colombia on a jet specially chartered for her by the American Government she would disappear or be tortured by the Secret Service or the drug cartels, so she chose to stay on American soil with half a ton of luggage and two dollar-quarters in her wallet, her only capital at the time. The Rodr?guez trial never took place: on September 26th 2006 both brothers pleaded guilty, after accepting to hand over $2.1 billion in assets to the American and Colombian Governments.

The readers will reach their own conclusions after reading this unique story which, in the author's words, she lived first-hand with the wide-open eyes of a fascinated child, then with her deep love and admiration for Pablo Escobar's courage and his generosity to the poorest and, in the final stages of their relationship, with her utter impotence to stop his upcoming war against their country and the increasingly powerful Cali Cartel.