Pablo Escobar’s Terror in Colombia
A Review of The Sound of Things Falling by Juan Gabriel Vásquez
A story set in Bogota, Colombia. The narrator is a young man who was severely wounded when his companion was murdered in a motorcycle drive-by shooting. One theme of the book is how the violence of Pablo Escobar’s drug wars impacted not only the narrator’s life, but that of a whole generation growing up in Colombia, mostly during the 1980s. But rebel guerrillas and other drug lords besides Escobar created terror. The narrator is hospitalized for a long time and ends up with PTSD and agoraphobia, conditions that severely impact his relationship with his wife and infant.
The Story: The man becomes obsessed with wanting to know why his friend was killed. His dead friend was an older man who used to be an airplane pilot and who came from a family of pilots. The main character learns about a secret cassette tape. As he investigates, the story is interwoven with bits of true history involving recent Colombian air crashes in which his friend’s wife had been killed, and historical crashes such as one in 1938 where a daredevil pilot, performing for a national patriotic celebration, crashed into the stands, killing more than 30 spectators, and almost killing the President of Colombia. In 1989 Escobar bombed an airplane resulting in 110 deaths, hoping to kill a presidential candidate he didn’t like. Other…
