Last Monday Jai helped me locate Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s ‘News of a Kidnapping’, a hardcover Knopf/Borzoi books edition that I got for only fifty rupees. I had thought of reading it later when I had a lot of free time. But I couldn’t resist and began reading it that same evening until I finished it yesterday. It is an engrossing book about the kidnapping of ten people in Colombia by Pablo Escobar, the notorious and ruthless Colombian drug lord wanted by the US.
In the introduction Marquez writes that the book was written on the request of Maruja Panchon (one of the kidnapped hostages) and her husband, Alberto Villamizar who negotiates with Escobar for the hostages’ release. His wife, Maruja and his sister, Beatrice are two of the ten hostages kidnapped. The kidnapping of ten high ranking people was to pressurize the government of Colombia not to go ahead with a law allowing for extradition of certain criminals, to the US.
Marquez, a former journalist, writes beautifully about the ordeal of the hostages in captivity swinging between the hostages and the efforts of the government to secure their release. It is a sort of journalistic masterpiece that takes you to the scene. The book tells of the kidnapping and tales of the horror the drug lords of the Medellin cartel inflicted on the Colombian people. It is also an account of the brave people who stood up to Pablo Escobar, a merciless killer who was afraid of extradition to the US, a fear that led him to the kidnapping.
The saddest parts of the tale are the deaths of two of the hostages. Marina, a senior citizen is killed in cold blood by Escobar’s people and another Diana Turbay, a television journalist is killed during a police raid on a hideout. These deaths haunted me long after I finished reading the book. The book ends with the escape of Pablo Escobar from a prison where he is lodged after surrendering due to the intervention of a crazy priest.
It is a fantastic book that made me search for the rest of the story which I found on the net. I read that Escobar was killed on December 2, a day after his birthday, in 1993 by a police colonel, Hugo Martinez in a rooftop shooting in Medellin. Right from the day of his escape from a prison, the Delta Forces of the US and the Colombian team called ‘Search Party’ were closing in after him and ultimately killed ehim. Escobar is reported to have been the seventh richest man in the world in 1989 according to Forbes.
That isn't the end of a brutal druglord for his rival gang, the Cali cartel is said to have taken the place of the Medellin cartel in Colombia.
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