Roberto Escobar, the old narco who dreamed of winning the tour
El sol de mediodía baña su rostro sereno. Roberto Escobar, ciego y sin audición en uno de sus oídos, pasa la mañana sentado en una silla de jardín, a la espera de que un técnico venga a arreglarle el frigorífico. En los ochenta llegó a ser el número dos del cartel de Medellín que lideraba su hermano pequeño, Pablo. Era el ingeniero financiero de una organización brutal de sicarios y comerciantes de cocaína que regaron Colombia de sangre en los años ochenta. Aunque antes de dedicarse a pesar en una báscula el dinero que llegaba en camiones, fue un ciclista de mérito que compitió con los más grandes de su tiempo:
"Everything would change for having won the Tour of France."
Roberto lives at 74 at the top of a hill in Medellín, in an old hacienda of his brother.He opens the ex -wife of his, Claudia Escárraga, an ancient beauty queen of La Guajira who met him in jail.Roberto awaits in the draft patio with a red cap, fine square glasses and the shirt into the pants.He listens silently the noise of some birds that flutter in a nearby forest and his looks is lost in a vacuum.They tell him the bear because a radio announcer, during one of the races, failed to identify him when he reached the goal, he was covered with mud from head to toe."There comes a bear," he announced.The nickname has accompanied him until today.At that time, the sixties, he ran around Colombia.The roads were filled with fans who wanted to see his idols pass.Roberto was one of the most prominent athletes in Antioquia.
His brother two years younger, Pablo, was still at school.His companions began to call that unruly student who ended up repeating course.In the next two decades the popularity of the brothers turned.Paul became one of the richest men in the world thanks to drug trafficking and the number one enemy in Colombia when he began committing attacks to avoid extradition to the United States.Roberto stopped training in a cyclist team that he had mounted, closed the stores and the bicycle workshop he ran and got fully into the cartel.His cyclist legend was buried.He landed in the world of underworld, yes, with less vehemence.Faced with Paul's impetuous and volcanic character, he was always someone more calm, less blood.
"There is not a day that I do not miss it," he remembers excitedly.His house is an altar in his honor.Everywhere there are paintings, motorcycles, cars, photographs, books, sculptures that belonged to Paul.Roberto has space as a museum.The City of Medellín has come to close it for promoting the cult of violence.However, he still receives visits from foreign tourists who go around the place and at the end, as a final traca, they shake their hand."Welcome, welcome, this is his house," he greets everyone who arrives.
The portraits of the walls are full of violently dead men.Roberto is one of the few of his time who has reached old age.In 1993, 16 days after his brother at the hands of the authorities, who fought him on a roof in Medellín, he received a letter in prison.“I was in Holy Mass, my mother taught me the Catholic religion.When I returned to the cell I received that letter that had to go through seven police seals and an X -ray machine. In the envelope he said it was a judicial citation.When opening it, she exploded in my face.It was a letter-pump, ”he says.
He lost his eyes and the possibility of re -bicycle.Her blue eyes turned gray.A fine transparent movie covers them.Each little takes out an lubricant of artificial tears with which the basins are moistened.He has recovered a small percentage vision in one of the eyes that allows him to see shadows.Even so, he often confuses his interlocutor, he does not look at a specific place, he mistakenly points out of his own house.When suffering the adult attack, Roberto does not seem to have developed the instinct of a blind man.
He claims to have reached a moment of his life.He does not fear the reprisals that may arrive from the past for all the pain caused by the Escobar clan.He has stopped using wig to go unnoticed, although the cap that is not removed shows his vanity.In 2010, an armed command tried to kidnap him.The police avoided him and in the fray killed one of the assailants."Drug trafficking takes you to the clinic, to jail or the cemetery," he reflects from running.
Roberto chat animatedly in the patio, next to a real -size statue of his brother.He tells that he lived in Madrid, at number 7 of Miguel Ángel Street, and that at that time he spent in a hotel in Torremolinos, from where he to excursions to Marbella or Gibraltar.Roberto shuts up a moment because he listens to a few steps on his back.They are from his youngest daughter, who appears suddenly and takes it by the arm into the house.Father and daughter whisper behind a door.After a while, Roberto returns: He wants to talk about cycling.
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His history as a cyclist is detailed in the book Reyes de las Montañas, written by Matt Rendell, right now.“That gringo was here.If you find a copy, send it, ”he asks for.He began at the Mediafondo Club, sponsored by an electrical appliances.He competed in three laps to Colombia and two RCN classics, the most important in the country.He was gold at the Bolivarian and Bronze Games in national championships.He unsuccessfully disputed the throne to Martín Emilio Rodríguez, Cochise, a mythical corridor.On a wall, he hangs a press cut on the day when Roberto won a stage to Cochise."Cochise gift to R. Escobar," says El Periódico.Roberto is outraged: “It's a lie, I got him five minutes, he didn't give me anything.The journalists at that time were very loaded to Cochise. ”
Withdrawn in the thirties, he became a coach.Roberto names some of the best Colombian cyclists, who passed through his teams.He was technical director of the Antioquia and Caldas regions.In a return to Cuba he was second with the Cristóbal Pérez corridor.“All communist countries brought teams of 12 cyclists, such as Hungary or Russia.We only four.It was a success, ”he recalls.The Colombian Cycling Federation began to have news of his brother's handling and dismissed him as a regional federations coach.
Then he set up his own team, Ositto bicycles, with double T to give him an Italian touch.Two decades before, the great champion Fausto Coppi visited Colombia at the end of his career.The country received it as a hero.Roberto says that he was, next to Pablo, to see him roll through the top of Mines, one of the toughest mountain ports.They were aboard a Vespa Piaggo 61. Those two teenagers were recorded in their heads that elegance, distinction, good taste, had Italian name.
Ositto created his own bicycles.He still keeps one in the attic."Subme it, please," Roberto asks one of his attendees.The worker returns with an old racing bicycle, with the blue box and the red handlebar."It is a relic," the owner is congratulated.He delicately strokes the iron structure and at the end he checks the air of the tires with his fingers.Through touch he recovers the sensations of when he climbed into it.
There was always suspicion that his team was sponsored by drug trafficking money.Roberto denies him, like almost all accusations not contrasted with everything that has to do with him or with Paul.But different testimonies of that time confirm that, evidently, the club had more budget than the rest.He came to count on the best.The link between narco and cycling became more evident than ever.Some crossed the line.Cyclists, accustomed to suffering, were perfect for mules.Good athletes of that time, like the Marín Chalo, ended up for the cartel.Marín was brutally murdered in Medellín in a crime attributed to the Pepes, the paramilitary group that was created to persecute Escobar.
At one point, Roberto left the sport and entered fully into organized crime.There are those who minimize the importance of him inside the cartel.Gustavo Gaviria, Rodríguez Gacha or the Ochoa brothers had a more specific weight within the organization.The DEA, however, put the second highest reward for his capture, behind Paul's.They were dark years.His brother fired Colombia, he was next to the pyrómano.He was imprisoned in the cathedral, where he met his second wife, who opened the door, and then delivered a second time to fulfill justice.Otherwise he would have ended up underground, like Pablo.
It parked cycling, developed other rich hobbies, such as the horses of pure blood.His was Manizales earthquake, a beautiful brown copy that, according to its owner, was "the greatest fine passing horse in the world."Roberto sometimes tends to hyperbole.A giant portrait of the animal hangs from his living room.In the middle, a painted teddy bear.Actually, it is the memory of something that ended badly.The Pepes kidnapped earthquake and returned it in the bones and castrated.
In the restraint of his life, he has returned to worship for cycling.The diplomas of all the exploits of his hang from the walls.He feels a slight tingling on his legs when he speaks of those days.Without a view, radio is his best ally to follow the tour and turn, where Colombian cyclists have shone, a generation that has not been abandoned to easy money.Egan, Rigo, Nairo.Roberto identifies more with them than with the gangster that he actually was.
In the current photo that has a profile on WhatsApp wears a green jersey from the Colombian National Team.In one hand he holds a press cut of a day of glory and in the other a gold medal.He relies on a Ositto bicycle.It is clear that Roberto reached the top of the criminal world, but that he secretly dreamed of winning the tour."Now they realize that I was good," she farmlates, before moistening a little more eyes with artificial tears.
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