When I started thinking about plans to avenge [my father], I realized I was only going to become someone worse than him, someone worse than the person I had so often criticized. I was going against my own principles. And yes, people tell me that it was a tremendous life decision in the span of 10 minutes but I just say, what else was there to think of?

It was very difficult to go farther than that in the arguments with my father because he would always have a story or a justification to tell you, which I never considered valid because there is not an excuse for violence.

I can understand how people would despise my image and my father's persona. My father's image amongst the poorest of people, those forgotten by the state, still remains a respected image. Whether we like it or not, my father was an important figure who filled a vacuum left by the state amongst the lower social classes.

What I criticize is the message that the United States is sending to the youth of the world - to those of us who invite people to leave the ways of violence and the drug trade, we are not given a visa but those that sell drugs and weapons, yes.

Sadly, [Pablo Escobar] ended up throwing away the one opportunity he had. I naively thought, as a son and as many other Colombians, that he would take this opportunity to make amends with the country.

My whole life I saw how the violence my father created had come back to my family and I thought that I would only make things worse for my mother and my sister if I sought to avenge my father. I had to dare to take a path of peace.

I am a good man and I behave well on an everyday basis. It was not a decision of waking up one day and saying "I will be a good person today, problem solved", no, it has to be an everyday thing.