For those of you who haven’t caught the Netflix's hit show Narcos yet, let me fill you in: it charts the rise and fall of Pablo Escobar, a Colombian drug lord whose Medellín Cartel dominated cocaine smuggling during the 1980s. Nicknamed "The King of Cocaine", and notorious for ordering thousands of murders, at the height of his reign his group was making $70 million every single day. Yes, a day. By the early 1990s, he had amassed a personal fortune thought to be upwards of $30 billion, putting him firmly within Forbes’ Top 10 Rich List. And 24 years after his death in a shootout with police, the CIA are still looking for his secret stash.
So you’d imagine that being married to a man of such wealth and notoriety would be pretty cushy, right? An endless stream of money, everyone too scared to say no to your every whim and delight? Errrr, well, maybe not so much. Narcos might present Tata Escobar - real name Maria Victoria Henao as long-suffering, if calculating and devoted, but it’s time to separate the fact from the fiction. Without further ado, let's take a look at the life of Pablo Escobar's wife...
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When ya know, ya know
While Escobar was the son of a humble farmer and a schoolteacher, Maria actually came from a more prestigious background. She was just 13 when they met, and 15 when they married - a full 11 years younger than Escobar. As you can probably imagine, her family weren’t too thrilled about the union and tried to stop it taking place, seeing him as too common for their daughter. But Maria was unrepentant and eloped, with her son quoting her as saying: “I fell in love with his desire to help people and his compassion for their hardship. We['d] drive to places where he dreamed of building schools for the poor. From [the] beginning, he was always a gentleman.” Errrrr, okay then - maybe she wasn't quite as involved in the quest for world domination as Narcos would have you believe.
You get cheated on - a lot
They may have been in love, but that doesn’t mean Pablo Escobar wasn’t in lust with, well, just about anyone else. He was reported to have had numerous affairs, often with much younger women. Among those who were romanced by drug kingpin include journalist Virginia Vallejo, who had a five-year affair with Escobar and spoke of his charm, charisma, passion - and ruthlessness - in her 2007 memoir Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar.
You spend a lot of time on the run
So you may have a stonking huge pile of cash - Escobar reportedly had a private plane solely for the purpose of transporting all his notes about - but it turns out that money doesn't necessarily buy you freedom. After Pablo’s death, she and her children fled to Buenos Aires, Argentina fearing retribution from rival drug cartels; the country granted them asylum and allowed her to change her name to Maria Isabel Santos Caballero. Prior to this, they had travelled to Mozambique and even asked the Vatican to give them a helping hand, but both refused.
You can’t let him have all the glory
Even with the new identity, life in Argentina wasn’t to be so simple, however. In 1999, hours after a current affairs show publicly revealed their presence in the country, Maria and Juan Pablo were arrested on charges of money laundering. Not wanting to give up their life of luxury, they were thought to have amassed a fortune of $1 billion through dodgy dealings with drugs cartel, but they were released without charge. Detectives later said that they’d been watching the family for a while, but wouldn’t have swooped so soon if their identities hadn’t been revealed. Maria, on the other hand, claimed the investigation was politically motivated.
And at the end of it all, obscurity awaits
Since the whole “Argentina thing”, Maria seems to be a woman of mystery; no one seems to know exactly where she is today, which is probably a good thing considering all of the interest in her life since the release of Narcos. Given the fact that both of her children still live in Argentina, it’s thought she’s probably keeping a low-profile there, although there have also been suggestions that she's living under an alias in North Carolina, USA. She did appear in the 2009 documentary Sins of My Father, which saw Juan Pablo seeking redemption from those affected by his father’s actions.
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They say that behind every great man is a great woman, but given that they're still living under pseudonyms well over 20 years after this death, it's clear that Escobar's family paid a huge price for his criminal lifestyle. More than anything, however, Maria's life story tells us that life as a gangster's wife is a world away from the glamorous luxury of the movies. It's less throwing dollars around, more running and looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life. Devoted as she may have been, it's not a life many of us would choose ourselves.
