Hispania 96.4 (2013): 684–99 AATSP Copyright © 2013 Peddling Pablo: Escobar’s Cultural Renaissance Aldona Bialowas Pobutsky Oakland University, USA [Pablo Escobar] es un personaje seductor porque su historia tiene todos los condimentos de las grandes historias pero, por supuesto, muy triste y muy dolorosa. —Nicolás Entel, director of Pecados de mi padre Abstract: Nearly two decades after his death, Pablo Escobar has reemerged in a number of autobiographical publications that revisit the era of the Medellín cartel and its most infamous capo. Rather than provid- ing strictly historical information, these texts adopt an anecdotal and intimate angle from the positions of Escobar’s hitman, his lover, his siblings, and his only son. The recent plethora of Escobar-themed bestsellers signals a collective need to confront the capo’s evil in order to bring closure to what can be considered his inner circle and the Colombian nation. It also underscores the tension between the state’s desire to curtail Escobar’s growing myth and the concomitant trends in popular culture and mass media that celebrate Escobar and the crass narcolifestyle. While the former strives to divorce the national image from narcoterrorism, the latter has found a new marketable commodity in Colombia and abroad. Keywords: Colombia, drug traficking/tráico de drogas, hitman/sicario, narcoculture/narcocultura, Pablo Escobar P ablo Escobar died on December 2, 1993, and with him, the heyday of Colombia’s populist drug lords came to an end. Drug traficking evolved and became less visible, as the subsequent generation learned its lesson from the fate of Medellín’s biggest, most daring capo. With Escobar gone, one would think that his igure would fade away, replaced by more recent characters from the present-day drug business, especially in Colombia, where many would prefer to forget Escobar’s imprint on the nation’s history. However, the capo’s inluence remains synonymous with murder and mayhem, but also known for staining the nation’s image on the international scene. Nearly two decades after his death, Pablo Escobar refuses to go away. His life continues to stir controversy, while his face does not cease to reappear in places both predictable (Medel- lín, Cartagena) and obscure (Ukraine), thereby converting his semblance into a timeless icon of notoriety. 1 Pablo Escobar continues to attract morbid curiosity, subsequently providing an opportunity for commercial exploitation. News items related in some way to the cocaine kingpin erupt with regularity in the national press, while more relective journalistic pieces revisit his era and the places that bear the imprint of his infamous legacy. 2 Next to traditional tourist souvenirs, popular markets in Colombia sell Escobar t-shirts, while the geographical spaces that bear the drug lord’s mark—his gravesite, the ruins of his properties around Medellín, his famous ranch Hacienda Nápoles, or the hide-out where he met his end—are magnets for a growing number of visitors. 3 Even museums, the storehouses of traditional culture, exhibit Escobar’s selling power. Fernando Botero’s 1999 painting “The Death of Pablo Escobar” has drawn so much attention from the visitors to the Museo de Antioquia that a decade later the artist bequeathed another painting of the capo’s death in response to the public’s Escobar mania (J. Saldarriaga).