Much has been said and written about Virginia Vallejo, the Colombian journalist known worldwide for her relationship with Pablo Escobar, the country’s most infamous drug kingpin and leader of the Medellín Cartel, a connection that led her to be considered the muse of drug trafficking in Colombia for nearly two decades.
After living in asylum in Miami (USA) for the past 19 years, she now releases her new book El alucinante país dorado (The Astonishing Golden Country; Windsong Press), the first installment of her Canderaria Trilogy—a revelatory work of fiction that portrays harsh moments from Colombian history and reaffirms her status as a complex figure at the intersection of media, power, and crime in the country’s recent past.
The life journey of Virginia Vallejo
Virginia Vallejo was born in exile to parents from Bogota who fled the violence that devastated much of the capital following the assassination of political leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán. Her parents moved to a family hacienda in Cartago, in the south of the country, where she was born. Later, however, the family returned to the capital of a nation that, during those years, was undergoing an accelerated transformation marked by violence and preparing for its subsequent descent into the hell of drug trafficking—and ultimately, her own personal hell.
Before that, Vallejo was an influential and respected television presenter, recognized for her beauty and her relationships with billionaires and high-society figures. In 1982, her life took a turn when she met Pablo Escobar at Hacienda Nápoles. What began as an interview soon transformed into a romantic relationship that lasted until 1987.
Escobar became the turning point that changed her life and the reason her career as one of the most prominent figures in Colombian television during the 1970s and 1980s abruptly ended. During those years, Vallejo witnessed Escobar’s evolution from an emerging politician to the leader of the Medellín Cartel.
In 2007, she published her autobiography, Amando a Pablo, odiando a Escobar (Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar), in which she recounts her relationship with the drug lord and exposes the ties between drug trafficking and Colombian political figures. The book was a bestseller and sparked controversy due to its revelations.
After collaborating with U.S. and Colombian authorities on investigations related to drug trafficking, she secured asylum in the U.S. Her story inspired the film Loving Pablo (2017), starring Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem—a movie that Vallejo herself has hardly praised.
Virginia Vallejo speaks out against her portrayal as Pablo Escobar’s lover in film Loving Pablo
Vallejo shared her own perspective on her notorious love story in the bestselling memoir Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar (Random House Mondadori), which was translated into 15 languages following its reissue in 2017, timed with the release of the film Loving Pablo by Spanish director Fernando León de Aranoa.
However, Vallejo is highly critical of the cinematic adaptation, which stars Spanish actors Javier Bardem as Pablo Escobar and Penélope Cruz as Virginia Vallejo. “It’s a dreadful, repulsive film,” asserts the journalist, who also claims she was deceived by Bardem and Cruz “in the most vile way.”
“They [Bardem and Cruz, who also produced the film] only cared about getting Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos to refund 40% of their investment through a partnership they formed with the president’s cousin, Andrés Calderón [CEO of Dynamo Producciones],” Vallejo states.
This arrangement was made possible by a 2012 Colombian law that offers a 40% fiscal rebate for productions filmed in the country.
Vallejo further criticizes the film for portraying her relationship with Escobar as “loveless and self-interested.” She also condemns its inaccuracies, such as a scene where “I went to La Catedral [the prison where Escobar was held in Medellín in 1991] to beg for money.”
“By the time Pablo was in La Catedral, I had left him years earlier and was living in Germany,” she clarifies.
‘I keep making the same mistakes, and that keeps me young’
Quoting Irish poet Oscar Wilde, Vallejo reflects, “I keep making the same mistakes, and that keeps me young.” She claims to regret almost nothing. “I regret marrying an Argentine man [David Stivel], but otherwise, I have no regrets—not even about Pablo, because he set me on the path to literature,” she says.
In this vein, Vallejo discusses her latest book, The Astonishing Golden Country, in which she claims to depict Colombia’s many realities under the guise of a “pure work of fiction.”
Despite nearly two decades in exile, Vallejo remains deeply engaged with Colombia’s social and political life. She is particularly critical of Pablo Escobar’s family: “Every time they open their mouths, they continue to slander me,” she says, while insisting she “treated them quite well” during the writing of Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar.
“They invent lies to please Álvaro Uribe [Colombian president from 2002–2010], the sons of Santofimio [a Colombian politician convicted for his role in the 1984 assassination of Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, ordered by Escobar], and Pilar Castaño [a veteran Colombian journalist and socialite],” Vallejo alleges.
She further claims, “Guillermo Uribe-Holguín [Pilar Castaño’s second husband] helped launder money for Escobar’s wife,” adding that she personally witnessed Escobar giving expensive gifts to Castaño.
Vallejo also alleges that Castaño’s first husband, Felipe López Caballero, son of former Colombian President Alfonso López Michelsen, was “the one who kept a good part of Escobar’s fortune.” She states that these real-life figures, whom she interacted with in Colombia, inspired characters in her novel.
Vallejo laments that in all TV dramas, Escobar’s wife is portrayed as “the saint,” despite being “her husband’s money launderer,” while she herself is cast as “the villain,” as seen in Bardem and Cruz’s film or Netflix’s Narcos.
She admits that when writing her book in 2007, she should have been “more rigorous in exposing the truth about Escobar’s family and their ties to Pilar Castaño and her second husband.”
Similarly, she regrets not delving deeper into “Colombia’s power structures and their alliances with political clans”—relationships she insists are rooted in corruption, with shady ties to organized crime and drug trafficking. To support this, she names Colombia’s three most powerful businessmen: Julio Mario Santo Domingo, Carlos Ardila Lülle, and Luis Carlos Sarmiento Angulo.
‘Netflix and its disgusting Narcos series launched me into writing novels’
A legal dispute with Netflix, the producer of the hit series Narcos, led Colombian journalist Virginia Vallejo to turn to writing novels. It began with Vallejo’s unsuccessful lawsuit accusing the streaming giant of intellectual property theft, claiming the series used scenes from her books.
A Miami judge dismissed the lawsuit, “despite the screenwriters admitting they had copied her story from the book,” and ordered Vallejo to pay the trial’s steep legal fees. This caused her to “lose everything she had earned over 10 years” and declare bankruptcy in 2022, as the case cost her over US$1 million.
Her mistake, she regrets, was “telling the judge that yes, everything I write in my books is based on real events.” The court ruled that the story was not Vallejo’s intellectual property, thereby validating Netflix’s series.
As a result, Vallejo abandoned plans for a second book with Random House, “which was meant to be the continuation of my life” after arriving in the U.S., where she claims to have survived an assassination attempt due to her cooperation with authorities investigating high-profile crimes in Colombia.
Her years alongside Pablo Escobar made her a key witness to some of the most infamous crimes during Colombia’s dark era of drug cartels. After receiving asylum in the U.S., Vallejo testified in prominent cases, including the murders of Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla (1984) and presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán (1989), as well as against members of the Cali Cartel.
However, her legal ordeal with the Narcos case pushed her toward fiction, as “what is fictional is more legally protected than what is autobiographical.”
She also reiterates her criticism of Andrés Calderón, cousin of former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos (2010–2018), “who was the commercial partner in Colombia for all those foreign projects [Narcos and Loving Pablo].”
Virginia Vallejo: ‘I tried unsuccessfully to stop Pablo Escobar’s plan to flood the country with bombs’
Though she avoids discussing her years with Pablo Escobar in detail, Virginia Vallejo admits she genuinely fell in love with him. Reflecting on the drug lord’s violent escalation, she recalls trying “unsuccessfully to stop Escobar’s idea of crippling the state and fighting the Cali Cartel by planting bombs across the country.”
“A week later, I discovered Escobar planned to use Cuba as a springboard to smuggle drugs into the Florida Keys. I was terrified because the FBI once searched all my suitcases during a trip to Miami, and I feared losing my U.S. visa.”
It was at that moment, in 1987, that she decided to end her relationship with the drug trafficker. “I told Pablo his plan was suicide, and he replied that if I dared to speak up, he’d kill me.”
She then accepted a scholarship to Germany and distanced herself from the cartel world, which—as she predicted—ended tragically for most Medellín Cartel members just years later.
“That’s when I began cooperating with U.S. anti-drug agencies, sharing what I knew,” she concludes, adding that in Europe she met “a German count. We were going to marry, but Pablo called and threatened to kill or kidnap him if I went through with it, accusing me of being his accomplice.”
Her television contracts in Colombia also dissolved in the late 1980s after her ties to Escobar became public.
From selling cosmetics to permanent asylum in the US
After returning to Colombia and surviving by selling cosmetics while staying out of the public eye, Vallejo moved to the U.S. in 2006. “I left my radio job in Colombia, where I earned peanuts, lured by promises of higher-paying work in the States,” she recalls.
Even her cosmetics venture ended in controversy, as she remains entangled in unresolved litigation.
Though her testimony proved crucial in major criminal investigations in Colombia, Vallejo holds no fondness for that chapter. Despite helping secure the first conviction against Alberto Santofimio for allegedly masterminding Luis Carlos Galán’s assassination, she criticizes the slain politician’s sons:
“They’re ungrateful, all to save their political careers in Colombia’s Liberal Party, because I spoke about Alfonso López Michelsen, the party’s leader at the time.” She notes that 23 of 25 witnesses against the Cali Cartel were killed. “They killed everyone except me and Popeye,” she says, referencing Popeye’s need for heavy police protection to survive.
Her escape from Colombia via a DEA plane reads like a movie. After a journey involving anti-drug agents, suitcases, and military airports, she settled in Miami, where she still lives.
“Alfonso López Michelsen, Alberto Santofimio, and the Medellín Cartel wanted me dead,” she states, describing the terror of her final days in Colombia. Today, she feels no nostalgia for the country she fled nearly two decades ago.
‘Colombia remains the same, even under Petro’s government’
Asked if President Gustavo Petro’s administration represents meaningful change amid widespread corruption, Vallejo remains pessimistic.
“Twenty-five percent of Petro’s government is made up of people from Santos’ administration,” she argues, acknowledging reform efforts but asserting that the state’s foundations remain unaltered.
“The right’s advantage is that they’re corrupt but get things done, while the left does nothing,” she laments. Still, she praises Petro’s push to expand trade ties with China.
Historically, she says, the U.S. has treated Latin America as its “backyard,” a theme explored on page two of her book El alucinante país dorado:
“Upon returning to New York, she began work at a publishing house releasing works by persecuted or exiled authors, starting with Latin Americans. She had always been fascinated by its history, citing a Mexican writer who described it as ‘the backyard of the U.S., abandoned by God, eternally at the mercy of petty men, ruthless militaries, insatiable corporations, and bankers enriched by cartel money laundering.’”
On her current ties to Colombia, she says she experiences the country “from a distance, without nostalgia.”
“I didn’t renew my Colombian passport, so I’m stateless now. I hope to finally obtain U.S. citizenship next year,” she confesses, closing a two-hour interview in which she recounts her perspective on the darkest corners of Colombian society, politics, and history over the past 45 years.
All this serves as a prelude to the first installment of her planned trilogy. After this debut, she promises a second—and even a third—book. Stay tuned.
This article presents the perspectives and claims of Virginia Vallejo based on her personal experiences and writings. The views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of ColombiaOne.com or any affiliated parties.
Related: Colombia Plans Handing Pablo Escobar’s Hacienda Napoles to Armed Conflict Victims.