Home
Politics
Escobar, the ruthlessly ambitious head of the Medellin Cartel, created a private zoo on his luxurious estate in the late 1970s, importing exotic animals from all over the world.
Today, the estate, Hacienda Napoles, is a theme park that draws curious tourists to the countryside of Antioquia, the northern department whose capital is Medellin.
Escobar originally bought just two hippos, a male and a female, but today there are at least 36 -- 31 at Hacienda Napoles, the two that were sterilized and three others that have escaped to parts unknown.
The head of regional environmental authority Cornare, Carlos Zuluaga, said the sterilization was necessary to protect the surrounding community and avoid "the costs that (hippos) represent."
The hippos at Hacienda Napoles eat 300 kilograms (660 pounds) of food per day on average.
Joaco and Matildo are reportedly recovering well from surgery. It has not been decided whether they will be returned to Hacienda Napoles or given to a zoo outside Colombia.
Escobar, who was ranked the world's seventh-richest person at the height of his power in the 1980s, was killed in a rooftop gunfight with police in Medellin in 1993.
But his hippos still loom large in Colombia.
They have been at the center of various controversies -- from the repeated calls for them to be given to a zoo, to a 2009 scandal that erupted when one fugitive hippo was hunted down and killed with the Colombian army's help.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Today, the estate, Hacienda Napoles, is a theme park that draws curious tourists to the countryside of Antioquia, the northern department whose capital is Medellin.
Escobar originally bought just two hippos, a male and a female, but today there are at least 36 -- 31 at Hacienda Napoles, the two that were sterilized and three others that have escaped to parts unknown.
The head of regional environmental authority Cornare, Carlos Zuluaga, said the sterilization was necessary to protect the surrounding community and avoid "the costs that (hippos) represent."
The hippos at Hacienda Napoles eat 300 kilograms (660 pounds) of food per day on average.
Joaco and Matildo are reportedly recovering well from surgery. It has not been decided whether they will be returned to Hacienda Napoles or given to a zoo outside Colombia.
Escobar, who was ranked the world's seventh-richest person at the height of his power in the 1980s, was killed in a rooftop gunfight with police in Medellin in 1993.
But his hippos still loom large in Colombia.
They have been at the center of various controversies -- from the repeated calls for them to be given to a zoo, to a 2009 scandal that erupted when one fugitive hippo was hunted down and killed with the Colombian army's help.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
