The plane took off just after 7.10 of El Dorado, the airport of Bogota. Five minutes later, when flying over the municipality of Soacha, a bomb killed the lives of 107 people. The explosion caused a fire that, upon reaching the fuel tanks, broke into a thousand pieces the Boeing 727 of Avianca. The 101 passengers and six crew members of flight 203 was headed that November 27, 1989 to Cali. On a Monday most of the work that ended up nothing more to start in the horror, the attack most terrifying of Pablo Escobar, the criminal action that showed the dimension of the war of the drug against the colombian State. The capo of the Medellin cartel wanted to kill the future liberal president César Gaviria, then-candidate, who finally stopped the trip.
it’s Been 25 years since the day that Escobar died on the roof of his last refuge, a house in the neighborhood of The Olive trees, after being trapped by a squad of 17 agents. His fall is surrounded, as the entire trajectory of the czar of cocaine, of versions and legends that feed a false myth of hero pseudorromántico. Colombia seeks, however, to shake off this stigma, the deep wounds left in society and in the collective imaginary, because their memory only has to do with thousands of murders. “The greatest damage that made the mafia in our society was to have distorted our values: we removed the setting to life and in its place he put a price to each life,” he recalled yesterday, Federico Gutierrez, mayor of Medellin, a city of the struggle against this past, and in recent decades has experienced an important transformation.
“The life of Pablo Escobar has been very poorly told,” says Gonzalo Rojas, director of the Foundation Colombia with Memory, created in 2009 to serve the families of the victims of the Avianca flight. In his opinion, the movies and the series they run the risk of bleaching the figure of the drug trafficker. “It ends up being personified by actors very talented and charismatic that generate a lot of empathy with the audience. That is not your life, Escobar has left thousands of victims, orphans, widows, transformed life projects. You have to be very critical, to understand that we’re looking at a hero or a Robin Hood but a criminal, a thug. This may not be the life style that we want to share”, he emphasizes. Red is imprinted on the retina the images of the morning that he lost his father. “I was 10 years old, I was in high Milanobet school. I remember how I received the news, she was the director of the school pulled me into his office and told me what had happened. Since I was very small I was many reflections. In some ways it has directed my life,” he continues.
Enrique Ortiz recalls with his wife, Maria Cardona, the calvary for the post to have the certainty that his son Ramiro had died. “It was the greatest, I worked in previsora insurance. His trip was to Bucaramanga, but at the last minute a problem was introduced in Cali, so they called him and said: ‘Man has to go to Cali,'” he recounted. “When we follow the news we didn’t know if it was or was not your plane, because they had come out two at the same time. I went to the site of the tragedy, I met with the police, started to look at their identity cards and was the of he”, has before to attend a mass for the victims in the chapel of the Modern Gymnasium of Bogota. “But we spent three days of capsize, because to recognize it was tough, very tough. He was 25 years old”.
“I Wanted to enterrarme alive, but we have to go on living,” his mother recalls. “It was a trauma frightening, I could not understand how we had passed that. That man [Escobar] put on pumps throughout the country, did a lot of damage. It was a pump in each corner. Now to invent a few soap operas spectacular, rather they put it as if it were a hero, but he was the man more sinister, he was a madman, because only an insane person a few activities so violent and so gruesome,” says Maria Cardona.
family members of flight 203 were recognized a decade ago by the Prosecutor’s office as victims of a crime against humanity. Today every one is facing as can the pain of the absence. Yamile Charry found the courage to stand up to one of the cartel’s hit men in the social networks. “He came out of Medellín Jhon Jairo saying I have already paid for everything I do”, describes the purpose of Jhon Jairo Velasquez, alias Popeye, which in 2014 came out of prison and last may returned to be arrested for extortion and other charges. “No”, ditch. “I wrote him, because the guy turned out to be very popular. I wrote to Twitter of he. And I told him that I don’t know to what extent you think that paid. But you have not paid. In my heart you have not paid”.
His voice broke at the mention of his mother, Amparo Ortega of Charry. Yamile was 13 years old. “She was a certified public accountant, was an auditor of Colpatria and traveling for work, as almost all of them. Input, I accepted it first and my brother does not. It is not measured neither the severity nor the dimension of what happened, apart from that it was an attack very tough, besides that it was against humanity, losing a mom is very stubborn, is not measured,” he says. “I cannot forgive”.
