Virginia Vallejo

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Virginia Vallejo, Colombian-born author and former celebrity, television anchorwoman and socialite who lost her career after her five-year romantic relationship with Pablo Escobar (1983 to 1987). In September 2007, she published “Amando a Pablo, Odiando a Escobar” (Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar 2009), which became an instant bestseller. [1]

Contents

[edit] Early life

Virginia Vallejo was born in Cartago, Valle del Cauca, Colombia on August 26th 1949. The granddaughter of Finance Minister Eduardo Vallejo, she attended the prestigious Anglo-Colombian School in Bogotá, founded by her great uncle, Ambassador to London Professor Jaime Jaramillo. In 1969 she married architect Fernando Borrero, whom she divorced two years later.

[edit] Career

  • 1972-1973. Weather girl and special section with political cartoonist Pepón in Oiga Colombia!, Revista del Sábado (Listen Colombia!, Saturday Night Review).
  • 1973-1975. Co-hosts Éxitos 73, Éxitos 74 and Éxitos 75, Saturday night musical. News reporter for TV Sucesos-A3, 11:30 pm edition.
  • 1974-1975 Reporter and film critic for Listen Colombia!, Saturday Night Review. Hosts The Children’s Hour.
  • 1975. Hosts TV Crucigrama (TV Crossword, a contest).
  • 1976. Co hosts Cocine de Primera con Segundo (Deluxe Cooking with Chef Segundo).
  • 1976-1977. International editor of TV Sucesos-A3, 12:00 pm edition.
  • 1978-1980. Co-anchor of 24 Hours (Noticiero 24 Horas, 7:00 pm news).
  • 1978. Elected Board Member of the Association of Colombian Announcers, ACL. Invited by the Taiwanese Government to cover the inauguration of Chiang Ching-kuo. Stars in Colombian Connection. Marries Argentinean director David Stivel, whom she divorces in 1981.
  • 1979. Wins the 1978 Best Television News Anchor award from the Association of Media Journalists, APE. Portrayed in The Beautiful Women of Eldorado, Town and Country, November.
  • 1979-1980. Cohosts Cuidado con las Mujeres!
  • 1979-1985. Covers the Miss Colombia beauty pageant for different radio stations.
  • 1980. Wins the 1979 Best Television News Anchor award of the APE for a second time.
  • 1980-1982. Cohosts Llegaron las Mujeres! in radio.
  • 1981. Founds TV Impacto with journalist Margot Ricci. Invited by the Government of Israel to present a special on the Holy Land and Massada. Only Colombian journalist present at the wedding of Charles and Diana, Prince of Wales, which she broadcasts for Caracol Radio during six hours).
  • 1982-1983. Directs and presents Al Ataque!
  • 1982-1984. Hosts Hoy por Hoy, Magazín del Lunes (Today, the Monday Night Magazine).
  • 1982-1987. Image and spokeswoman of Medias Di Lido for whom she makes television commercials in Venice, Rio de Janeiro, San Juan and Cartagena.
  • 1983-1984. Co hosts El Show de las Estrellas (The Stars’ Show, Saturday night musical).
  • 1984. International editor of Grupo Radial Colombiano,
  • 1985. Anchorwoman of Telediario. Appears on the covers of Bazaar and Cosmopolitan [2] Latin American editions. Elenco magazine names her “The Symbol of an Era”.
  • 1986. Blacklisted for her romantic relationship with drug lord Pablo Escobar.
  • 1988. Wins a scholarship from the German Government and studies economic journalism at the Internationales Institut für Journalismus in Berlin.
  • 1991. Returns to Colombia and stars in Sombra de tu Sombra (Shadow of Your Shadow, a soap opera).
  • 1992. Presents the series of interviews Indiscretísimo! with Colombian personalities.
  • 1992-1993. Co hosts Picantísimo (Super-Spicy!, in radio). International editor of Noticiero Todelar (evening radio news).
  • 1994. Completely blacklisted after Pablo Escobar’s death.
  • 1999. In December, magazine Hombre (Man) names Virginia Vallejo “One of the ten sexiest Colombian women of the 20th century”.

[edit] Romantic relationship with Pablo Escobar

Until 2006 Virginia Vallejo had always declined to talk about Pablo Escobar, the wealthiest and possibly the most ruthless criminal of recent times. They met in 1982, when the drug baron was a deputy congressman, and they became romantically involved in January 1983. After Escobar's first interview for national television in Virginia Vallejo's Al Ataque!, he began to be known as “the Colombian Robin Hood” for the charitable work of Medellín sin Tugurios (Medellín without Slums), his foundation with the leading members of what would be later known as the Medellín Cocaine Cartel. During five years Virginia Vallejo became Pablo Escobar's witness of choice for many key events of his life. Although the relationship ended in late 1987, when he told her that he would go into a full-blown war with the Cali Cartel and the Colombian State, he forced her to remain in Colombia. All her efforts to stop the war were useless.

[edit] Multilevel Marketing Diamond

After Pablo Escobar’s death in 1993, Virginia Vallejo was blacklisted. In late 1995 she began her activity in the multilevel marketing industry. As the founding distributor for the Colombian and South American operation of Neways International of Salem and Springville, Utah, she became the first Colombian multilevel marketing Diamond in 1997. In 1998, at the Opryland Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee, she was awarded the President’s Cup among almost one million Neways distributors worldwide, but four months later her contract was cancelled and her network of 30.000 Colombians rolled-up to the owners of the company in Utah. In the course of a lawsuit introduced in a Colombian court in January 1999, the defendants fled the country and judicial experts reported the incineration of 14.108 documents, massive adulteration of accounting evidence and the disappearance of 18 books from the court.

[edit] The trial of the century in Colombia

In July 2006, former senator Alberto Santofimio – Pablo Escobar’s link to the élite of the Colombian political class and his choice for president in 1986-1990 - was on trial for conspiracy in the assassination of presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán, committed by Escobar in 1989. Virginia Vallejo offered her testimony to the Colombian Attorney General, but the judge of the case closed it two days later. [3]Immediately, she asked the American Government for protection in exchange for her information on the links of the drug cartels with Colombian presidents and prominent political figures and her cooperation in USA vs. Mower (Thomas and Leslie DeeAnn, owners of Neways International, then on trial in Utah) and Gilberto and Miguel Rodríguez-Orejuela, bosses of the Cali Cartel and Pablo Escobar’s enemies, whose trial was scheduled to begin in September 2006 in Florida. On July 18th, 2006 Virginia Vallejo arrived in Miami in a special flight of the Drug Enforcement Administration. The official statement of the American Embassy in Bogotá read: “Today, for safety and security reasons, we have escorted Ms. Virginia Vallejo to the United States, where her cooperation is sought in ongoing drug investigations”.

[edit] Virginia Vallejo’s testimony against the Colombian political class

On July 24th, 2006, a video that Virginia Vallejo had taped on the event that she was killed for offering to testify against Santofimio was aired on television with a 58 per cent rating and a fourteen million audience. She claimed that, in the mid eighties and in her presence, Santofimio had instigated her lover to eliminate senator Galan at least in three ocassions. The polls gave her a 78% credibility.

In September 2006 the Rodríguez-Orejuela brothers pleaded guilty without going to trial; they were given thirty years and their frozen 2.1 billion dollar fortune was split fifty-fifty between the Governments of the United States and Colombia. In November 2006, Thomas and Leslie DeeAnn Mower were sentenced to serve time in Utah. In October 2007, Alberto Santofimio was found guilty and given twenty-four years.

[edit] Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar

In Amando a Pablo, odiando a Escobar (Random House Mondadori 2007, Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar 2009), the Colombian journalist describes her lover’s rise and downfall, the events that she witnessed during the five years that the stormy relationship lasted and Escobar’s role in Colombian historic tragedies like the 1985 Palace of Justice coup. Her memoir paints an intimate portrait of Escobar’s psyche and the reasons for his transformation from benefactor of the poor and billionaire politician to ruthless terrorist and number one public enemy of the United States of America. Her book mentions the links of the drug trade to Presidents Alfonso López Michelsen, Ernesto Samper and Álvaro Uribe, Caribbean dictators, the Sandinista Junta and the Cuban Government, and the Colombian military and enforcement agencies. Virginia Vallejo describes how, in her presence, Escobar seduced the poorest of the poor, bribed Heads of State, addressed the 400 founding members of Death to Kidnappers! - the origin of the present Colombian paramilitary squads - and the meeting that Escobar and she had with the commander of the M-19 rebel group, Ivan Marino Ospina, two weeks before he was killed and three months before the Palace of Justice coup financed by Escobar. In Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar, Vallejo explains how her former lover manipulated the criminal Justice system and the Press; the reasons behind the murders of one Colombian justice minister and four presidential candidates, among thousands of victims; the origins of Escobar’s feud with the Cali Cartel and the threats that she endured from them, from Escobar and from his enemies during the years of narco-terrorism that followed their separation, and the chain of events that led to her cooperation with Interpol and to Escobar’s death in 1993.

[edit] The Colombian president’s reaction to claims of ties to Escobar

In Loving Pablo, hating Escobar, the author claims that Escobar and his partners made substantial contributions to the Colombian presidential campaign of 1982, in which former President López Michelsen lost to Belisario Betancur. Vallejo also states that the explosive growth of the drug industry in the early 1980s - which turned Escobar and his partners into overnight billionaires - was based on the licenses for private landing strips, airplanes and helicopters granted by Alvaro Uribe to the drug lords when he headed the Colombian Civil Aviation Agency in 1980 -1982.

President Uribe denied Virginia Vallejo’s claims[4] and called her a liar, because she had referred to “his seminarist glasses” at a time when he din’t even wear them. Mr. Uribe also accused Gonzalo Guillén - the correspondent who had interviewed Virginia Vallejo for the front page article of El Nuevo Herald on July 16th 2006 - of being behind her book. Although the journalist vehemently denied any cooperation with the author, he was forced to flee Colombia after receiving two dozen threats from the Black Eagles, a paramilitary squad. [5] In a heated exchange with journalist Daniel Coronell on the radio a few days later, President Uribe acknowledged having seen Pablo Escobar “many times, due to his political visibility, but from afar”, and Virginia Vallejo “only once, in an airport”, and visiting Escobar’s wife in 1991 “only to plead for the surrender of her terrorist husband’. Coronell - who had also been forced into exile in 2005 - exhibited in his column in Semana magazine the front page of El Mundo of Medellín of June 15, 1983[6] which confirmed another of Virginia Vallejo’s claims: though it could not land due to bad weather, “a modern helicopter belonging to rancher Pablo Escobar had been sent to recover the body of Mr. Alberto Uribe-Sierra” - President Uribe’s father - from their ranch to Medellín after he was murdered in 1983 by the rebel FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) in an attempt to kidnap him and his son Santiago. Medellín without Slums, added Coronell, had also posted large ads on the front page of El Mundo inviting to Mr. Uribe’s funeral. [7] , [8]

A book by Gerardo Reyes of El Nuevo Herald published in late 2007 stated that the helicopter found in Tranquilandia, a complex of fourteen cocaine laboratories in the jungle confiscated to the Medellin Cartel in March 1984, had belonged to President Uribe’s family. Rodrigo Lara, the Colombian Anti-Corruption Czar and son of the Minister of Justice murdered by Escobar in April 1984, resigned his post. [9] [10]

[edit] Political asylum case

Two weeks after Virginia Vallejo's arrival in Miami, Revista Cambio, Agencia EFE of Spain, AFP of France and RCN Radio accused the former anchor woman of “fleeing to Cuba to escape the Colombian justice system after lying to the American Government”. El Nuevo Herald posted the story on its front page on September 5, 2006 and every station in Florida quoted the international news agencies. Virginia Vallejo had never been investigated for any crime and had not left the USA since her arrival in Miami, but the international agencies refused to correct the false information. Revista Cambio is owned by Casa Editorial El Tiempo. In the Introduction of Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar, Virginia Vallejo describes the Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos as “one of the principal stockholders of his family’s publishing conglomerate El Tiempo” and his cousin Juan Manuel Santos as “the Defense Minister in charge of the distribution of four billion dollars in American aid to Colombia and the renewal of the fleet of the Colombian Air Force.”

In October 2006, Virginia Vallejo filed for political asylum in the United States of America. In November 2007 Amando a Pablo, odiando a Escobar became the # 1 bestseller in Spanish in the USA. Immediately, the Colombian Inspector General, Edgardo Maya [11] and former Attorney General Alfonso Gómez demanded her extradition to be charged with the crimes committed by Pablo Escobar.

When Virginia Vallejo publicly offered her testimony to the families of the victims tortured and disappeared during and after the Palace of Justice coup, “because the Escobar family had the moral obligation to compensate the victims of narcoterrorism”, Pablo Escobar’s convicted brother Roberto attacked her on the radio and claimed that her brother had seen only three times, that the Colombian president was his brother’s enemy s and that Oliver Stone would take to the screen the only true story of Pablo Escobar, based on his book, which showed his brother as the benefactor of the poor and the family man he really was, and not the monster depicted in Vallejo’s book (Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar 2009). Immediately, Escobar’s son - now Juan Sebastián Marroquín - expressed his total support to the movie based on another book, written by an American author who never met Escobar.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Criticas Magazine Article
  2. ^ Bazaar and Cosmopolitan ]
  3. ^ Ex amante de Pablo Escobar implica a político colombiano en crimen de candidato presidencial
  4. ^ Virginia Vallejo’s claims
  5. ^ Journalist accused by Colombian President flees country following death threats
  6. ^ Article El Mundo of Medellín June 15, 1983
  7. ^ BBC Mundo, el presidente Uribe y el helicóptero de Pablo Escobar
  8. ^ Daniel Coronell confirma afirmaciones de Virginia Vallejo
  9. ^ Cabos sueltos en la muerte de Lara Bonilla
  10. ^ Expediente que vincula padre de Uribe con la muerte del mío: Zar Lara
  11. ^ Procurador pide extradición de Virginia Vallejo

[edit] External links