Word: colombian
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Fredys Villanueva has abandoned his native Colombia for neighboring Venezuela. But he's not quite like the hundreds of thousands of Colombians who have fled their country's bloody 44-year civil war for the safety of the land of Hugo Chávez. Instead, he's like the 2 million or more Colombians who have moved to Venezuela because it offers greater employment opportunities and a more secure social-safety network. Perched on a sofa on the porch of his home in El Aguacate, a barrio outside Caracas, Villanueva is more than happy to be caught in the ideological...
...father's brutal legacy, Los Pecados de mi Padre (The Sins of My Father). The film shows Marroquín 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," Marroquín told TIME in a telephone interview. "I wanted to show the errors of getting involved in drug trafficking." (See the tale of Pablo Escobar...
Among the documentary's highlights are emotional meetings between Marroquín and the son of one of his father's most famous victims: Colombian Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara, who was killed in 1984. Lara's son, also named Rodrigo Lara, is a Colombian senator. He was just 8 years old when he helped bodyguards bring his bullet-riddled father to the hospital. Still bitter about the assassination, he was skeptical about Marroquín. But after receiving a gracious letter from drug lord's son, he met Marroquín in a Buenos Aires suburb and the two ended...
After a seven-year legal battle, the charges were dropped against the family. Marroquín married his longtime Colombian girlfriend and now, along with an Ecuadorian partner, designs buildings in Buenos Aires. Still, his upbringing among fabulously wealthy criminals can show through in his blueprints. "He's a very good architect," say Entel, the filmmaker. "But sometimes you can see the way he grew up around Pablo Escobar reflected in his ideas. Because I would never think of designing furniture for inside a swimming pool...
...Pecados de mi Padre also delivers a poignant message from Marroquín to Colombian youths, some of whom still view his father as a romantic, Robin Hood-like figure and remain tempted by the wealth and power of a new generation of drug lords. "Marroquín knows his father was an evil man, and he doesn't want to be like his father," Lara says. "Coming from the son of the most important and violent drug trafficker ever ... He says, 'Hey, I'm the son of Pablo Escobar. Don't be like my father.' That's an important...