Outlandish tales of shady drug bosses and glamorous women assassins are the staple of Colombian primetime TV. But the latest “narco-soaps” about the country’s drug gangs have sparked a debate about just how much of that dark reality should be broadcast into living rooms night after night.
The latest narco-show to air is Rosario Tijeras, a TV adaptation of a novel by the same name about a sexy hitwoman at the service of the drug mafia.
The show’s initial slogan, “It’s harder to love than to kill,” sparked such protests in the city of Medellin, where the story is set, that advertising posters were taken down.
The main Medellin newspaper El Colombiano said the show was a “gulp of absurdity, vulgarity, bad manners and a big dose of narco-culture.”
Medellin, Colombia’s second-largest city is best known for the cartel of the same name led in the 1980s and 1990s by Pablo Escobar.
Murder, betrayal, fast money and beautiful, buxom women may be vulgar, but fans of the show said it makes for riveting television and Rosario has been among the country’s top-rated programs since it began last month.
Rosario is the latest of the narco-soaps to raise a fracas. Over the past two years Colombians have seen The Cartel, about the powerful Norte del Valle Cartel and The Capo, which paints a wily drug boss as a sensitive anti-hero. There was also the smash hit Without Tits there is no Paradise that portrayed the lives of the women who surround the drug lords, as did Mafia Dolls, which ended last week.
The main complaint is that such series glamorize the life of criminals and incite young people to emulate that lifestyle. The argument over the narco-soaps has even reached neighboring Panama, where Panamian President Ricardo Martinelli complained about the Colombian shows that air on local television there.
“They exalt drug trafficking, theft, muggings,” he said, adding that the shows do “damage to our country” and corrupt “moral values.”
Others think that the central messages of such shows can be positive. In an editorial on Thursday, El Espectador newspaper said rather than being “apologists” for the narco lifestyle, the soaps may be seen as cautionary tales. The smalltown girl who thought heaven could only be reached with large breasts ended up dying a lonely alcoholic, drug bosses wind up in tiny jail cells in a foreign country, and Rosario dies the way she lived: by the gun.
German Yances, a media expert at Bogota’s Javeriana University, said some Colombians “don’t like to see their problems reflected on fictional TV because the daily drama of the country is on every night on the news.”
The high ratings, however, suggest that many viewers either see their lives reflected in or are fascinated by the shows, Yances said.
Despite the ratings, a powerful group of companies in Medellin has reportedly decided it would not advertise on the show and at least one cable operator is considering blocking it.
“If we don’t like the programs, then we should debate that, but we should not try to censor them,” Yances said. “What is painful is the reality they reflect and that’s what we should think about.”
Angela Camacho, an optometrist’s assistant in Bogota, has no connection to the narco culture but she doesn’t miss an episode of the narco-novelas: “I watched The Cartel and then Mafia Dolls and now Rosario Tijeras. It is violent some times and they exaggerate but I like it.”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS