FICTIONAL LETTER: Letter to a Friend

Dear Barbara,


I just finished Reading “The True Story of Pablo” by Astrid Legarda * in the confession of A.K.A. “POPEYE,” John Jairo Velásquez Vásquez, who was Pablo Escobar´s right hand and biggest lieutenant.

It took me around a month –a hard reading month—to finish the book. Although written in my native language, it was a tough reading, it went painfully slow. The evocation of so many images in my mind opened wounds I once thought were healed and even forgotten. How naïve I was and at the same time how unconsciously aware.

The book is a compilation of the words of a criminal, a serial-killer, a hunt-man, a bandit; who once more confirm the theories, ideas, and conceptions about human beings that I have held for quite some time.

I do not believe in the existence of bad or good people. No, bad people do not exist in the common usage of the word, not as excluding categories. Instead, I think we see deeply hurt people who did not have a good education, who ignored the possibilities of taking a good path or the right one—a difficult one—and, who mostly never learned about the Arts, any Art; the training and development of a human being’s sensibility. The paradox of the well educated criminal does not seduce me at all. A man able to kill another man was never educated. Education did not reach his/her heart or the core of his/her true being. What is Education if it does not motivate the harmonious coexistence among men?

A Professor in the Contemporary Pedagogy program I attended in my native country, used to insist on the importance of Education in the Sciences. He spent many classes talking about Science and Research. According to his point of view, our country lacked development because of scientific ignorance, and his point was shared by many others. The sole thought of a more “scientific” country just scrambled my guts. Scientific violence.

When you have a violent nation, you cannot give it more Science than the one it currently has, especially when Science goes to the wrong hands.
It surprised me while reading the book that I shared some of the views of the man giving testimony. The thoughts of a criminal matched, to some extent, mine. But I do not have the mind or the heart (or lack of it) of a criminal. This man expressed at the beginning how much he wanted to be someone, someone important, someone able to make a difference; and how after seeing his dreams frustrated, he partnered his destiny as to be one of the worst criminals our country has ever had.

When I see what he has done, I see the reduced opportunities he was given while growing up and his limited education.
The biggest difference between the best man on Earth and the worst of criminal is in how much hurt their hearts are, how much pain has been accumulated inside without giving it a proper channel such as Arts to release it. Both, the best and the worst, should be given the same opportunities in their childhoods, and make of Arts, a mandatory subject from the first grade to the last.

We know that the worst criminals or violent people do not lack talent, intelligence, intuition, strategic thinking, leadership, courage, or even scientific methods’ but that they grow, out of resentment, in a society of extreme injustice and oppression.
I agree with the man. Legalizing the business will not lead it to an end. Alcoholic drinks, cigarettes, and legal drugs can be as lethal as the illegal ones. And for sure, secondary effects are much beyond the scope of immediate effects. Once they are legalized, the door will be open to promotion, advertisement, and more consumption.

Education should be as balanced as a healthy diet: Humanities, Arts, Science, Business, Physical Education, Civics, Ethics, and Religion.

The world spread practice of removing Religion from the curriculum has made students as ignorant of their own Religion as other students were from other Religions in the past. Students today seem not to have a G’d, a Country, nor a Government. This practice created bigger problems than the ones it intended to solve.

At the same time, I do not think that Religion Teachers should be tyrants, kings, experts, or gods. Bringing teachers from different religious backgrounds and itinerating them into the classes might give the kids tools to come up with their own beliefs and conclusions.
I do not think that atheism and agnosticism are born from the deepest of the soul, but instead as a negative reaction to what has produced so much nausea, misunderstanding, and despair. If some agnostics are truly agnostics, why do some of them seem to give too much importance to the title?

Those criminals from our country were religious too. They used to go praying before each “job”. They made the worst of caricatures of what a religion is or does.
Human beings who educate themselves in the Path of Truth never stop searching, and that might include where we come from, why we are here and where we are going.

Gifted and talented people should be spotted as soon as possible. Standard tests do not do the job for them, because they are, precisely, not standard people. Not standard criminals as the ones our country had. And please do not allow the unprepared, naïve, ignorant and unwise lead their paths in the wrong way. Sometimes these can earn as many credentials as the talented ones if they learn how to play the game. Seduced by power and the promise of dominating others make their visions blurred. Credentials are not necessarily equated to good educators.
The bad teacher “Popeye” mentioned in the book, made a great and negative impact in his life. Bad, too bad!
There are many gifted people who earn the same credentials making justice to their talents while the ones that do not get them, such as achieving a bachelor’s degree, are at risk of going the wrong way and producing a lot of destruction instead of creating better things and contributing to the development of a better world.

The confessant says that the worst damage his boss, Pablo Escobar, did was the killing of one of the leaders of our country. That was certainly terrible but it was not the worst thing he ever did. Killing so many people –even the ones who were not leaders, the life of a leader is not worthier than the lives of their followers, they are equal—. The worst damage was to grow the seed of fear, the seed that being a citizen in our country was an abominable thing, worthless, and making other people believe that other options were not simply available.
So far, I keep the spark of life that keeps me writing of the daily obstacles. We are all in the same boat. We cannot sink.
Pedro, a friend of mine, who also grew up in a Spanish speaking country told me he thinks the book is exaggerated. The book is not exaggerated and it becomes short in narrating the atrocities and the reality we lived.

The worst thing that can happen to the Truth is to be in the hands of criminals.

Well, you asked me. This is my answer. Let me know if you read the book.

M.

* “El Verdadero Pablo: Sangre, Traición y Muerte”. Astrid Legarda. Ediciones Gato Azul. August 2005. (The True Story of Pablo: Blood, Betrayal, and Death).