Escobar's son seeks atonement for father's sins
Dec 16, 2009
from Juan Forero's report on NPR:
Pablo Escobar, who led Colombia's Medellin cocaine cartel, was once the world's most wanted man. At the height of his power in the 1980s, he killed politicians and policemen and ordered an airliner blown out of the sky. With U.S. help, the Colombian police finally hunted him down.
Sixteen years after Escobar's death, the families of his victims haven't forgotten about him. And neither has Escobar's only son [Sebastian Marroquin], whose story is told in a new documentary film that opens Dec. 10 in Colombia and then in January at the Sundance Film Festival.
The son, who lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina, says that he wants to atone for the sins of his father.
....In fact, Marroquin says, he can't forget about his father's victims. And that made him want to do more — to meet the young men who lost their fathers to Escobar's henchmen. Entel's film provided him with the opportunity.
In the documentary, Marroquin is filmed writing a letter that went to the three sons of the presidential candidate, Galan, and to the oldest son of Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, who was murdered in 1984.
The letter asks how to make amends for so much violence; it struck a chord.
Rodrigo Lara Restrepo, the former minister's son, says of the letter: "It was an act of humanity … and we thought we had to respond with another act of humanity."
He and the Galans decided to receive Marroquin in Colombia last year. Marroquin broke the tension by apologizing for his father's murderous spree.
Lara saw it as an important act of peace.
"And after I met him and I gave him a hug, I thought to myself that I was a better person, because I was able to pardon," Lara says.
Lara said it also made him think beyond his own pain to the unsettled acrimony among his countrymen.
