We Love Pablo but We Hate Politicians
The TV show Narcos has been a resounding success around the world, which demonstrates that being a criminal pays off. And the fact is that Colombian society is more interested in learning about the bad people than learning about the good ones and their actions. Narcos was promoted as the story of Pablo Escobar elaborated from the good people’s perspective: Luis Carlos Galan and Rodrigo Lara (Politicians assassinated by Pablo Escobar), Guillermo Cano (the courageous journalist who fought against Escobar), and Cesar Gaviria (the president that hunted Pablo).
According to the show’s producers, Narcos was the voice of the victims, as well as a proof of the braveness demonstrated by the Colombian government when they confronted the “devil” impersonated by one of the most famous drug lords of all time. “Though most of our dramas fixate on characters' psychological makeup and inner motivations and go on to dramatize their personal salvation, Narcos focuses on how characters' actions affect those around them.” (Derakhshani) Paradoxically, the effect on the audience has been the opposite, Escobar is redeemed as the Colombian hero. Contrary, journalists, politicians and governing are being interpreted by the public as
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It was generated because in Colombia, in a certain way more symbolic than real, people think the “narco” problematic is not present anymore. For them, this problematic is now related to Mexico and the rest of Latin America than for their nation itself. This feeling appeared around 2002, during the government of President Alvaro Uribe who relatively ignored the “narco” problematic to focus on a national tragedy emerged from a way of terrorism initiated by the guerrilla of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Furthermore, since the drug trafficking issue was symbolically “overcome”, now it was possible for producers to show it on television (Fig.
In the Documentary “Mexico’s Drug Cartel War”, it displays a systematic approach of drugs and violence. The Drug War has been going on since the United States had a devastating impact on Mexico after the recession where it nearly doubled its interest payments. Mexico could not afford the interest payments but did have many agricultural imports. This created the trade between the United States and the land owned by the two million farmers. It spread the slums to Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez to work in maquiladoras (assembly plants just across the border) (Jacobin, 2015). This paper will focus on explaining how drugs are related to violence in Mexico, how drug enforcement policies influence the relationship between drugs and violence, and how battle for control in their own country.
For the 71 years that the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) was in power, Mexico saw great political, social and economic upheaval. This can be seen in the evolution of the PRI party, whose reign over Mexican society came at the expense of true democracy. “A party designed for power, the PRI's mechanisms for success involved a combination of repressive measures. The party professed no specific ideology, enabling it to adapt to changing social, economic and political forces over time. It attached itself virtually all aspects of civil society, and in this way, it become the political extension and tool of the government.” In 2000, however, the PRI’s loss of its monopoly on political power and institutional corruption gave rise to inter-cartel violence that was created in the political void left after the PAN won the national presidential election. These conditions gave rise to the Zetas: a new type of cartel that changed the operational structure of previous drug cartels. The Zetas operate in a new militant structure associated with a higher brand of violence, which has led it to branch out beyond a traditional drug smuggling enterprise common under the PRI government. Simply put, the electoral defeat of the PRI in 2000 was supposed to usher in a more democratic era in Mexican politics. Instead, the PRI party’s defeat created a state of chaos that gave rise to inter-cartel violence and the birth of the Zetas cartel.
This source is valuable to examine as it demonstrates how cocaine rendered the country more vulnerable to globalization when the nation was already engaged in a prolonged armed conflict. Taussig himself asserts how cocaine exposed the nation to other threats, claiming, “along with the cocaine come the guerrilla, and behind the guerrilla come the paramilitaries in a war without mercy for control of the coca fields and therefore of what little is left of the staggeringly incompetent Colombian state” (16). This source is also valuable as Taussig even mentions how the United States War on Drugs in the 1970s heightened conflict and corruption, doing nothing on an international scale and allowing for Colombian cartels to dominate the cocaine market throughout the 1980s. My Cocaine Museum analyzes Colombia’s transition to cocaine and a critique of world inaction and globalization, interweaving both fact and fiction through first-hand accounts of Colombia’s history. In this sense, it is a worthy source to examine due to the first-hand stories of the violence caused by cocaine trade. Yet, the novel shares a limited perspective as it only tells one side of the story of the arise of cocaine and gives little voice to those who took over the farms and turned them into profit machines for funding the war. Nonetheless, it sheds light on a very important reality in Colombian
The film makers are trying to depict Colombia as a town rather than a country. Despite the landscape views we get from Colombia’s most famous cities and mountains, in Narcos, the audience sees Colombia as a place that is dangerous, has no progress and it is politically unstable. This bothered me for the most part , because again its misrepresentation. Maybe it has to do with the fact that during this era all you heard from Colombia were Narco stories. According to fusion, “It's a helpless, stubborn nation, unwilling and unable to defend itself. This means basically that Colombia is being represented as a small town in a western movie. This can directly correlate with Native Americans because European Americans back in the day viewed Indian Reservations the same as Americans view Colombia, as shithole. The descriptions by Americans to these 2 places are almost
As the Medellín Cartel was the largest drug cartel in Colombia at the time, they had controlled 80% of all the cocaine supply that was entering the United States. Despite the fact that Escobar donated millions of dollars to the local people of Medellin and funded the construction of schools and sports centers to help create a good reputation for himself. But even if he did donate millions of dollars to the poor, it was still just a chip into the Medellín Cartel’s wealth. By looking at the statistics of the number of people who were affected by Escobar’s acts of terror it has become evident to me that the negative effects of the Medellín Cartel had heavily outweighed the benefits of how Escobar tried to give back to the local people of Colombia.
Narcoterrorism has a long past in the history of Colombia, focusing mainly on the market development of one drug: cocaine. Colombia, with its arid tropical climate and lush land, is an ideal place for the sowing and reaping of the coca plant whose extracts are synthesized into the powder cocaine drug. As Colombian cocaine production skyrocketed in the 1970’s and 1980’s thanks to booming demand for the product in Americas, drug kingpins in Colombia began to wield immense power in the country. ...
The prevalence of these drugs stoked popular fascination with the varying experiences of narcos and their exploits. There is a drastic difference in the way the narcocorrido is perceived on either side of the US-Mexico border. The American perception stereotypes narcocorridos as entertaining, while across the Mexican border the contents are taken more seriously and are a reflection of real-life events and serious problems throughout Mexico. The contents of narcocorridos are damaging and destructive to its audience; however, due to popular interest, narcocorridos maintains a varying perception in Mexico and America. A product of the corridos and the norteo styles of Mexico, Narcocorridos are a recent style of music in Latin America.
The cartels are now in control of most of the drug trades and are successful. The Mexican border gives them the power to go everywhere they desire, making them a relentless force. “To date operation Xcellrator has led the arrest of 755 individuals and the seizure of approximately 5 U.S. Currency more than 12,000 kilograms of cocaine, more than 16,000 pounds of marijuana, more than 11,000 of methamphetamine, more than 8 kilograms of heroin, approximately 1.3 million pills of ecstasy”(Doj 2). Mexican cartels extend to central and southern America. Columbia is the supply of much of the cocaine exported to the U.S. Colombia is under control of South American gangs, they do business with the Mexican cartels to transport drugs the north. The Northern Mexican gangs hold the most control because the territory is very important (Wagner1). They are many different types of cartel in Mexico it also signifies that there are killing each other so their cartel can expand an...
...any innocent people. The narcocorrido has only made the narcoculture more popular. The young generation that listen to this music gets influence easily and make them want to be like these drug lords. They want to live the exotic and luxury lives these drug lords live. They identify themselves more by changing their clothing and cruising the streets with expensive cars. This is affecting the social lives of many people. People do not want to travel the beautiful country of Mexico anymore because of this danger. Mexican citizens fear easy things like going grocery shopping because they do not want to be involve in a confrontation between cartels. The young generation gets manipulated by the narcocorrido lyrics. All they see are the riches, but what they do not see is the violence. They can be living in paradise or can simply be the ones suffering from decapitations.
The media does not report on the everyday lives of ordinary people living in drug trafficking communities because the media is concerned with coverage of famous drug lord who use violent tactics on innocent people to protect their drug trafficking endeavors. In order to study a particular culture like narco culture, it is important to understand that every individual has a distinct role within the culture and it cannot be examined solely on several individuals from one social class. After reading the ethnography, I realized that one of the reasons Muehlemann conducted research on narco culture was to focus specifically on the economic opportunities available in the drug trafficking industry based on gender differences. Women are not represented in narco culture as much as men in the media. However, it is important to understand that women in narco culture have important roles in the drug trafficking industry. Women associated with narco culture are more economically and emotionally vulnerable than men. This vulnerability is due to the high rates of incarceration and deaths of males. Coming from a traditional Mexican household, I learned that men are often the economic provider for their families. Women who lose their husbands or any male kin will lose their main source of income and
The film opens with a news program reporting Chávez’s consumption of coca and linking it to the alleged poor governance of Venezuela. He was called a dictator, together with Morales, who was not directly mentioned in the segment but was simply referred to as “the dictator from Bolivia” who supplied him with ...
middle of paper ... ... Rosas Perez survived.” This quote shows just how reckless and violent the cartel is. It also shows how they can have an effect on politics. The lengths the drug cartels go to are insane and radical.
“Mexicans smugglers have long trafficked homegrown heroin and marijuana to the U.S. But in the 1980’s, mexico also became the primary route for colombian cocaine bound for the U.S” (Bates). According to Bates, when Guadalajara’s leader was arrested in 1989, the groups remaining capos, including a young Guzman divided up its trafficking routes, creating the Sinaloa, Juarez, and Tijuana Cartels.
...l Narcotraficante: Narcocorridos & The Construction of a Cultural Persona on the U.S.-Mexican Border. Austin: University of Texas Press.
The paper traces Escobar's life from humble peasant beginnings to powerful cocaine drug dealer and kingpin. The paper discusses the sound financial decisions Escobar made as well as the way he invested in legitimate projects using the funds he gained illegally. The paper explores the influence Escobar had and the way he worked, ultimately unsuccessfully, to establish a no-extradition clause into the Colombian constitution.