While on the phone with his son 16 years ago, Pablo Escobar stayed on the line just long enough for Colombian police to trace the call. Minutes later, the world’s most violent and notorious drug lord was gunned down on a Medelln rooftop. Fearing for their lives, Escobar’s wife, son and daughter sought safety in exile, but most nations shut their doors. After stopovers in Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, South Africa and Mozambique — a whirlwind on par with the deposed Shah of Iran’s desperate 1979 world tour — the widow and her children finally entered Argentina as tourists on Christmas Eve 1994. They’ve lived relatively quiet lives in Buenos Aires ever since.
But the son on the phone on that fatal day is breaking his silence. Now an architect and industrial designer, Juan Pablo Escobar, 32, has changed his legal name to Sebastin Marroqun to avoid scrutiny and notoriety. He is, nevertheless, emerging as the central character in a documentary about his father’s brutal legacy, Los Pecados de mi Padre . The film shows Marroqun returning to Colombia to renounce Escobar’s violent legacy and apologize to the families of some of the victims. “I wanted to do something positive that would help Colombian society,” Marroqun told TIME in a telephone interview. “I wanted to show the errors of getting involved in drug trafficking.”
