Colombian President’s Daughter Urges Removal of ‘Insulting and Denigrating’ Pablo Escobar Painting in French Restaurant

A restaurant in France has come under fire for a mural of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.

The artwork in question depicts the smiling founder of the defunct Medellín cartel making a hand salute on a wall in Le Populo, a Marseille eatery.

Andrea Petro, the daughter of Colombian President Gustavo Petro who lives in France, criticized the mural’s existence during a recent visit to the restaurant.

She posted an image of it on her Instagram Stories and asked for the controversial painting to be removed.

“Out of respect for the Colombian community, we ask that this painting be removed, which is offensive and humiliating to us,” Andrea Petro’s caption read.

DailyMail.com contacted Andrea Petro and Le Populo for comment.

Andrea Petro says a mural by Pablo Escobar in a restaurant in Marseille, France, is not representative of the Colombian community and has called for its immediate removal

Her call for action comes after President Petro gave a speech at the New Global Financing Pact Summit in Paris in June and criticized the admiration shown to Escobar by people in Colombia and around the world following his death in December 1993.

“Colombia is not only famous because of Pablo Escobar, who should now eliminate those kinds of projections on television that do not talk about us,” he said. “Pablo Escobar is not the son of the Colombian people, he is the son of the Colombian oligarchy that produced and built him.”

Escobar has been portrayed in series such as Netflix’s Narcos, ‘Pablo Escobar: El Patrón del Mar’ (Pablo Escobar: The Drug Lord) which first aired on the Colombian television network Caracol before being picked up by Telemundo and in several other series.

Despite the president’s insistence on keeping narco-related shows off the screens, Caracol decided to rebroadcast the series as part of its primetime programming on weeknights.

Andrea Petro took to Instagram Stories this week to share the image of a Pablo Escobar mural at Le Populo, a restaurant in Marseille, France, and wants the eatery to remove it. “Out of respect for the Colombian community, we ask that this painting be removed, which to us is insulting and humiliating,” she wrote.

Andrea Petro is the daughter of Colombian President Gustavo Petro. She currently resides in France

Andrea Petro (center front) with her mother (second row left), father and Colombian President Gustavo Petro (second row right) and her family

Known as the ‘King of Cocaine’, Escobar amassed an estimated fortune of $30 billion.

He initiated the first cocaine smuggling with shipments originating from Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru, then smuggled them into Colombia before making their way to the United States.

At one point in the 1980s, the Medellín Cartel was smuggling an average of 70 to 80 tons of cocaine into the United States each month.

He played a role in Colombian politics and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1982 as a member of the Liberal Party, but was forced to resign after Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara accused him of drug trafficking.

Escobar sought revenge with the murder of Lara in a drive-by shooting on a motorcycle in 1984. He then had presidential candidate Luis Galan killed in 1989 after Galan’s campaign promise of extradition to the United States.

By 1991, Escobar’s fight against authorities trying to stop his illegal activities had cost the lives of 6,349 people. He reached an agreement to hand himself over to authorities after President César Gaviria promised he would not be extradited.

Escobar was imprisoned in La Catedral (the Cathedral), a prison he built for himself and accomplices, but escaped in 1992 when the government tried to transfer him to another prison.