The Drug Lord's Dame

For more than a decade Virginia Vallejo held her tongue about her torrid love affair with Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. But when the former newscaster finally broke her silence last month, her sensational accusations became the talk of the nation. In an interview with the Miami Spanish-language newspaper El Nuevo Herald, the 56-year-old ex-model declared that Escobar plotted the 1989 assassination of presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán with Alberto Santofimio, a former cabinet minister and senator who at the time was contemplating his own run for Colombia's top job. Currently on trial in Bogotá for conspiring to murder Galán, Santofimio allegedly urged Escobar on three occasions in the mid-'80s to "neutralize" the popular politician, according to Vallejo. "Santofimio envisioned not only the killing of Galán but also the transformation of the country into a narco-state," said Vallejo. "Everything was aimed at making Santofimio president ... and ensuring that his successor would be Escobar."

However far-fetched that scenario might seem in hindsight, Vallejo's disclosures provided fresh evidence tying prominent Colombian politicians to the country's leading drug traffickers. And then some. Within 48 hours of the Nuevo Herald story, the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá announced it had "facilitated" the once glamorous--now indigent and nearly blind--anchor's flight to the United States; she had offered to provide information to authorities on several cases "of potential interest." That triggered speculation that Vallejo, who said she had also befriended Escobar's drug-trafficking rival Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela of the Cali cartel, could testify for U.S. prosecutors in the upcoming trial of the recently extradited Rodríguez Orejuela and his brother Miguel.

Why did Vallejo come forward with her allegations 13 years after her infamous lover died in a hail of bullets atop a building in Escobar's hometown of Medellín? She says she wanted to see justice done in the trial of Santofimio, who faces up to 40 years in prison if convicted. He has denied the charges. (It remains unclear whether the judge will grant a motion by prosecutors to introduce her press statements into the record.)

Vallejo's saga has focused attention anew on the tacit acceptance that some of the country's most notorious criminals enjoyed within mainstream Colombian society. The daughter of a well-to-do family who attended Bogotá's prestigious Anglo-Colombian high school and speaks five foreign languages, she was at the zenith of her career when she met Escobar in 1982. That same year the pudgy kingpin was elected to congress as a substitute legislator, and Vallejo admitted going to political rallies as Escobar's consort made her "feel like Evita Perón." She was hardly alone. "Like so many other celebrities, politicians and businessmen, Vallejo pretended she didn't know that Escobar was a Mafioso and a murderer," says Juan Vitta, a writer kidnapped by Escobar's henchmen in 1989. "Like much of the nation, she made a pact with the devil and we are paying the price today with the mafia still present in the highest spheres of government and society."

© 2006