Standing on his boat, Alvaro Diaz scans the shore of the Island of Silence, at the confluence of the Rio Cocorna and the majestic Magdalena River. The fisherman spots tracks on the shore: “The hippos must have passed through here a short time ago. This island is their headquarters.” Incredible but true: a colony of pachyderms from Africa has taken up residence on this river island located 200 kilometers from Medellín, while this species is theoretically unknown in Colombia. Who is responsible for this “miracle”? Pablo Escobar.
In the mid-1980s, the drug trafficker fulfilled a dream: he made his ranch, the Hacienda Napoles, a replica of the Garden of Eden. Zebras, elephants, giraffes, antelopes, ostriches: the leader of the Medellín Cartel imports many species, including four hippopotamuses, to populate the 3,000 hectares of his estate. Mammals are perfectly acclimatized to this warm and humic region in the west of the country. A decade later, upon the death of capoin December 1993, they still wade in the artificial lakes of the hacienda.
Better, they reproduce and colonize the surrounding lands. In forty years, their number has multiplied by 37. “Their living conditions are better than in Africa. Here, food is abundant and no predator threatens them”, details David Echeverri, of the Cornare environmental agency, based in Medellín. Today, the biologist counts about 150 individuals, spread over a territory of 100 kilometers around Doradal, the neighboring town of Hacienda Napoles, in the municipality of Puerto Triunfo.
Nearly 500,000 tourists per year
Curiously, the presence of hippos hardly seems to disturb the residents of the Magdalena. In Africa, however, pachyderms kill 500 people a year, far more than any other mammal on the continent. Doradal does not deplore any deaths, but accidents do occur. “Last year, my nephew was fishing in a lake at the hacienda when one of them attacked him. He almost tore his arm off,” says a guide from the town. More recently, on April 12, a truck hit a hippopotamus on the highway between Bogota and Medellín. The driver escaped unscathed. “They can easily overturn fishing boats,” adds David Echeverri.
“We are told that they are aggressive animals, but in fact they are used to our presence, explains fisherman Alvaro Diaz. We have learned to live with them.” If he loves his gorditos (“petits gros”), it is because he draws a substantial income from it. At sunset, the fisherman organizes trips for 200,000 pesos, or about 40 euros: “Tourists prefer to observe them in the wild rather than in the park of Hacienda Napoles.” In Doradal, the whole town benefits from the curious legacy left by Pablo Escobar. Statues of hippopotamuses enthroned in the central square, while figurines take pride of place in the souvenir shops. Nothing compares, however, with the “golden age” of Escobar and its mountains of dollars. “The Hacienda employed more than 1,000 people from the region, says our tourist guide. When he died, everyone wondered what would become of us.”
Thirty years later, nearly 500,000 tourists pay the 110,000 pesos (22 euros) each year to visit the Hacienda Napoles with colonial architecture, transformed into a theme park since 2007. Owned and managed by the municipality of Puerto Triunfo, the site includes hotels, a zoo and water attractions. A memorial museum also exhibits the crimes of the former owner. Far from the romanticized image of the character portrayed by the series Narcosthe museum pays tribute to the approximately 5,500 victims attributed to the capo between 1989 and 1993, when fighting between his men and the authorities bloodied the country. On the walls, the portraits of murdered police officers, judges and political personalities follow the press clippings relating to his innumerable car bomb attacks.
The landscape of drug trafficking has changed
Since the death of “don Pablo”, the landscape of drug trafficking has changed. The Medellín Cartel was succeeded by the Cali Cartel. In 1996, the extradition to the United States of their leaders, the Rodriguez Orejuela brothers, marked the end of the cartels. “In Colombia, there are no longer large organizations that control this market, but a multitude of small structures”, explains Jeremy McDermott, co-director of InSight Crime [NDLR : ONG pour le journalisme d’investigation sur le crime organisé en Amérique latine et dans les Caraïbes]. Above all, the Mexican cartels succeeded those of Colombia. “There is an inversion of the balance of power between Colombians and Mexicans because those who control the most profitable stages of business [NDLR : la distribution] have changed,” says Kyle Johnson of the Conflict Responses Foundation.
In addition, Venezuela, long considered a mere transit country, has become the world’s fourth largest producer of the alkaloid. In 2005, the late Hugo Chavez put an end to the collaboration between Caracas and the DEA, the American agency for the fight against drug trafficking. Since Nicolás Maduro came to power in 2013, the cocaine trade has flourished. And the DEA considers Venezuela a narco-state. “Maduro’s goal is not to capture the wealth from the cocaine trade for himself, but […] to use it as a reward mechanism for the political, military and criminal powers he needs to maintain his control over the government,” details an InSight Crime report from May 2022.
Colombia remains the first producer of cocaine in the world, with 1,400 tons in 2021 according to the UN. This sad record prompted Gustavo Petro to call for “an end to the irrational war on drugs” during his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on September 20. The left-wing president is betting on the legalization of certain uses of the coca leaf and the surrender, against reduced sentences, of drug traffickers. “What would Rodrigo Lara and Enrique Low Murtra think of these laws that smear the country?” Retorted in March the Attorney General of the Nation Francisco Barbosa, in reference to the two ministers assassinated on Escobar’s orders.
Meanwhile, hippos continue to punctuate the life of the inhabitants of Doradal. The pachyderms even come to graze on the patch of grass which serves as a football pitch for the pupils of the primary school. “I knocked on several doors to put up barriers around the school, but here the hippos are considered pets”, regrets Professor Jorlin Cuesta. If nothing is done, their number could reach a thousand in 2035, according to a study by the National University! Last solution considered: send them abroad. Sixty of them should go to India and ten to Mexico, but no date has been set. “Let them control the herd, of course, but I hope they will leave us some!” comments the fisherman Alvaro Diaz, at sunset, while waiting firmly for the next group of tourists who will bring him 40 euros.