A bill has been passed in the Colombian congress to ban the selling of souvenirs portraying the infamous Pablo Escobar. The draft law is an attempt to evolve the country away from the association with the drug lord and a wider national image as a hub for mafia bosses.
If passed, a $170 fine will be instated to vendors who continue to sell products depicting Escobar, which typically include t-shirts, magnets and shot glasses. The bill also applies to any members of the police force found wearing clothing or accessories representing the cartel leader. The proposal has to go through four debates in order to be approved by congress.
These items are revictimising people who were victims of murderers.
Cristian Avendaño, member of Colombia’s Green Alliance party responsible for the drafting of the bill
A bill to ban souvenirs depicting drug lord Pablo Escobar has been introduced in Colombia's parliament – Associated Press. pic.twitter.com/YBkw3mzWw4
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“We cannot continue to praise these people, and act as if their crimes were acceptable. These items are revictimising people who were victims of murderers,” said Cristian Avendaño, a member of Colombia’s Green Alliance party responsible for the drafting of the bill, “we must protect the right of the victims to recover…and find other symbols for our country.”
Souvenir vendors in the La Candelaria area of Colombia’s capital, Bogotá, have contested the bill, stating that Escobar related merchandise generates a significant amount of their revenue. “Many people make a living from this,” commented a local seller, adding that many tourists from the US, Mexico and Costa Rica constantly ask for these souvenirs. “When you work as a vendor, you try to sell what is most popular. Everyone has their own personality, and if there are people who like a murderer, or a drug trafficker, well, that’s their choice,” another vendor noted.
Avendaño has remarked that the bill equally invokes the Colombian government to investigate the economic significance of this specific market and the number of street vendors affected. If the legislation is passed, a period of transition will be incited, subsequently bringing the government and souvenir sellers together to work on finding new ways of marketing the country.
Pablo Escobar became notorious due to his ordering of the murders of 4,000 people during the 1980’s into the early 1990’s and accumulating a fortune of $3 billion through the establishment of his hugely powerful Medellín based drug cartel. This made him one of the wealthiest people in the world at the time. His forceful criminal activity has made a lasting impression in Columbia and across the world, to the extent that in 2015 Netflix launched a three-season series about his life, portraying him as a merciless but highly astute character. A search block of 300 police officers was sent out by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to detain him for his crimes. Escobar was killed by police in 1993 in an exchange of gunfire atop a building in Medellín.
This is not the first time Escobar’s name has come up for legal claims in Colombia. Last year, the drug lord’s family filed a request to trademark the Pablo Escobar name on what they claimed to be leisure and educational products. A similar request was rejected by the European Union, reasoning that the trademarking would be against “public policy and accepted principles of morality”.
