Who’s Telling the Story?

I read a travel article by Nomadic Matt. He stated in the article that when visiting Colombia, you shouldn’t take any tours having to do with Pablo Escobar. Be sensitive to the people of Colombia. I understood what he was saying. This man caused so many murders and so much pain and turmoil in Colombia. Don’t go there and fetishize the turmoil that took place there, insulting the citizens in the process.

Imagine my surprise when I took of tour of Comuna 13 and our tour guide kept pointing out houses that Pablo Escobar had built and talked about all the money he’d given away to the people. None of us that were on the tour asked him about it, he just kept telling us. It was like he was trying to change our minds about the persisting narrative about this man.

A few months earlier, I was hanging out at a beach side bar in Senegal with a few acquaintances. Somehow, we got on the subject of Gaddafi. I told them how Gaddafi had been painted as a villain by American media. I’d never paid much attention to the subject; I just knew that he was supposed to be a bad guy. They told me that that wasn’t true. He was painted that way by American and French media because he didn’t go along with either of their agendas. They told me he was Pan-African, and he wanted to unite all African countries and for African nations to reassert their power. Since this idea doesn’t follow American or French ideals, they didn’t like him.

These were two instances where I got alternative perspectives on men that clearly caused division in opinion. However, it did lead me to wonder about the suggestions in Matt’s article. If these Escobar tours were so terrible, then why did some Colombians give them? It’s usually locals or people that were directly involved with Escobar that orchestrate these tours.

It’s not a secret that Colombia is an inexpensive country to travel to. The dollar goes far there and many Colombians run businesses and hustle in order to live. Part of that hustle is tourism. If Colombians know that foreigners are interested in this aspect of their history, if they choose to create tours based on them to make money, then wouldn’t taking the tour help to support them economically?

Would I ever take an Escobar tour? Not really. Colombia is such a beautiful country and has so much to offer that that would be the last thing on my list to check out.

Listening to these men who offered different perspectives on these situations made me realize that the facts of the story change depending on who is telling the story, and when it comes to leadership, sometimes people can do the cruelest things in the world, but as long as some people benefit from it, people will turn a blind eye, if only because that person made their life easier just a little bit.