VICTORIA EUGENIA HENAO. Palmira, Colombia, In 1961. After nearly 25 years in hiding in Argentina, and with her husband turned into a murky pop icon, the widow of Pablo Escobar, published her memoir: ‘Pablo Escobar, my life and my prison’.
Now that everything that has to do with your husband is trendy, has published a memoir. What a coincidence?Have had to spend 25 years that I was out doing a work of introspection that would allow me to face all this history, to understand everything that happened with the help of professionals in psychology and undertake this process of reconstruction. Before I had neither the strength nor the voice. I have 35 years in hiding all, seeking only the way in which my children and I could fairly live, and he had not found up to now is the time to face all that. In addition, to keep silent not helped me to nothing, my kids and I are still being discriminated against, so that I had the courage to say, “now I want you to listen to me.”Does it has served as a release?Yes. Is being a catharsis very strong, in a lot of pain. I have lived life without time to reflect on what he was doing, and at this time I’m giving you the opportunity to look at what happened with all the respect they deserve to the victims, with much pain and so much horror.How are you going to sleep next to a murderer?My role was always to be the mother of his children and a housewife and, to protect myself and the children, I locked myself in that world without realizing what was happening. Today I can look at those two realities as faced, but then was not able to. I married 15 years, had no malice and I fell in love with the enchanted prince, that is how you fall in love at that age. I had all the illusions that I was going to live in a castle full of peace, love and devotion for the children. And before I knew it I believed that story because the prince, when he came home, he was a normal person, loving, that we never said a bad word or abused and all the time he told us that we were most important to him and that he was doing what he was doing for his family.Q. and you believed that? Where he thought he left all that money?There was on my part a strong denial of reality. In addition, I had a lot of questions that never had answers and, as he lived in such a macho culture it was normal for the man to take his decisions and did not explain anything to your wife, I organized in my role of taking care of the children, devote myself to their education and to be the protective to survive 10 years of war. And yes, we live very well for many years, I’m not going to deny it.But it would be aware that I was leaving a trail of victims…I saw like all colombians: on television. Because during these almost 10 years of war, Pablo lived with us. We learned through the news or when every three months we saw him very little time for security. And he always lied to me with this: “I don’t have anything to do, all I blame myself…”. I never got to be honest and clear with me. And that is surely what made it possible that today we are alive and with a mind more or less whole. Have known everything that was Paul… I don’t know what I would have done. I am not sure if the thing that kept me next to Paul it was love or fear.Do not regret how you acted?Clear. To write the book, I have spoken with many victims, some even collaborate on it. Ask for forgiveness from the moral part that corresponds to me is the least I can do I for all this horror that lived in Colombia.
For me, Pablo Escobar was the enchanted prince. I was their victim and not the accomplice who shows ‘Narcos’
At what point he discovered that the prince was a criminal?From the death of the minister of Justice Lara Bonilla is when my life changed forever. She was pregnant eight and a half months of my second daughter and it was a before and an after. I realized that things would never be what I had dreamed of.And why he kept going?For the sake of my children and my own life. I had and still have a responsibility to my children for having brought to this world and this life. They have paid a terrible price for being born in this home and it is a conversation that I have pending with them. I am horrified of the life that they lived by our fault and only now I’ve noticed. During the madness that we had to live on, and I stopped thinking about it. And I owe them an apology.Have you seen ‘Narcos’?Very little because it connects me with violence again, and I suffered so much that I try to keep the distance of that. But I have seen parts because I can’t be blind to the reality in which we live, and there are plenty of inaccuracies to portray me. Show Me a person who I am not and that is another of the reasons why I decided to write this book. It has been said of all of me and I wanted to be able to give my version. Then, people can evaluate it, but at least know the truth. The series shows me as an accomplice of Pablo Escobar and was, mostly, another victim. I was never an accomplice of my husband. What I loved a lot within my innocence, but I was completely far removed from your reality. The only thing that I did all the times that I could is cuestionarle, but I never answered nor ignored me. What series and movies are banalizando the drug trafficking and the figure of Escobar?Yes, the series has been irresponsible frivolizando with this topic. That’s why I wanted to show the reality of this terrible story that doesn’t repeat. We have lived in an absolute hell. I am 58 years old and I wear 40 in a permanent challenge to survive. Until the moments of well-being were painful and lonely. It didn’t make sense. In the book faces another very exploited in films and tv shows: the lovers of Escobar…it Is a very painful. No woman should be treated so, it was violence to your feelings, your dignity… it Was very sad and still hurts me. I was exposing to journal my life and the lives of my children, was the target of that war, and yet his life was full of other women. It was a double violence: as a couple and as a family. Paul took advantage of his power to live in two worlds: one with his wife and their children and the other with her money and other women, in many cases, used as weapons in their war. I ended up in a submission all without realizing it. How could I handle so many people at the same time? What charisma, fear, or money?All together. Drove to all the world. He was a man very charismatic, he was a hero to many people. Somehow, we had to all those who, in one way or another, he wanted to. For me, writing this book has destroyed the myth of Paul.How he came to believe that it was that hero?It is believed. He always talked about it: helping, people, of his people… he Was a guy that the money will not obsessed over. Was never ostentatious. Even the best brands, or the best watches. Always saw himself as a benefactor who helped people: bought houses to the poor, helped to operate the sick… it Was two people in one. It is a madness. Now I’m analyzing with neuroscientists in his mind to try to understand his brain killer and terrorist. I remember those moments and I get chills. I don’t know if Paul was of this world without realizing what I had done, because the madness is so. An addict to the process you drag and does an amount of damage that can’t even begin to imagine.Does it match with his son in that Paul did not die as has been told?Yes. To Paul it was not murdered, he committed suicide. An hour before his death he said goodbye to us. He always told us that the phone was death, and yet, that day used it non-stop. He did it to attract those who were going to kill, to locate and finish off with that. I think that there could be more, that was too much pain. He realized that to us every time we were near more the death for their guilt and to die was his way of saving.What truth there was no money who had an empire?A portion of the money handed in the peace negotiations that I had with the cartels, because of the death of Paul he remained in the us. But, thank God, we were able to reach an agreement after nearly a year negotiating to go live in the country. So they were a good part of the fortune, and the rest, the colombian State which confiscated all goods.How many times have you dreamed of taking a different decision 13 years ago?A lot. I regret very loud and very late. But, as the human being learns from what others do before them, invite the young people to listen to the parents and look at each step very well, that will give, because at that age you have an unconscious absolute. My parents did everything possible to avoid my relationship with Paul and they didn’t make it through my unconsciousness. I fell in love with blindly and estropeé my life.Do you live with fear?Yes, I have not experienced is never quiet since I met Paul. I do many personal processes to overcome this. I meditate and read philosophy to be able to exist. It is very complicated to get up all the days in the focus of all the authorities of the world. To see what you do, where you’re going… But it is what touched me and will be so until the grave.
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