March 18, 2008

Latin America | Colombia | Medellin

Cocaine Vacation

By Mark Jolly

Medellin’s makeover marks one of the most extraordinary city transformations in South America. And now Hollywood wants in.

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Once dubbed “the murder capital of the world,” Medellin has long been a byword for cocaine, kidnappings and killing: in 1991, the annual homicide rate was 381 per 100,000 people. But last year it fell below 30 — making it safer than Baltimore. Now Colombia’s second city, cradled in the Aburra Valley of the Andes, is looking toward Hollywood and tourism to complete its dramatic turnaround. Medellin’s most infamous son, Pablo Escobar, is soon to be the subject of two competing movies about the druglord’s rise to power (not only was he listed among the CIA’s top-10 most-wanted, he was also ranked by Forbes as the seventh-richest man in the world): Oliver Stone — who wrote the two seminal drug movies, Scarface and Midnight Express — is set to produce Escobar, while Oscar winner Javier Bardem will play the lead in Killing Pablo.

Mentioning Escobar’s name in Medellin — even 15 years after he was gunned down — may still be taboo, but the two biopics couldn’t come at a better time (so long as they’re not the dud that was Mike Newell’s Love in the Time of Cholera). With crime down and visitors up, the City of Eternal Spring is helping to promote a $100-million tourism project in nearby Puerto Triunfo that, ironically, is rooted in Escobar’s life. His old ranch, Hacienda Napoles has been transformed into a “Jurassic Park”-themed resort, originally conceived by Escobar himself and featuring camels, giraffes, hippos, and stone dinosaurs. Nine times larger than Central Park, the restored compound even includes an international-size runway — from which Escobar used to shuttle his own coke-packed 727s, and which will now be available for visitors to land directly.