scholarly journals “Narco-heritage” and the Touristification of the Drug Lord Pablo Escobar in Medellin, Colombia

2018 ◽  
Vol 74 (4) ◽  
pp. 485-502 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Naef
Keyword(s):  
Drug Lord

Violence and Hopelessness in the Colombian Novels La Virgen de Los Sicarios and Satanás

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 48-65
Author(s):  
Alan G. Hartman
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Gabriel Garcia Marquez ◽  
South American ◽  
Jose Asuncion Silva ◽  
Virgen De Los Sicarios ◽  
History Of ◽  
Drug Lord ◽  
History Of Violence ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
American Nation

Abstract Colombia is a South American nation that has captured the imagination of the world. It is a land of beautiful colonial cities and towns, famous for coffee production, rich emerald mines, and the literature of José Asunción Silva and Gabriel García Márquez. Colombia’s beauty and rich literary history, however, are often overshadowed by the memory of Pablo Escobar, a notorious drug lord, and numerous deadly guerilla groups. Their roles in the international drug trade made Colombia the top producer and exporter of cocaine, which resulted in terrorism and violence that left the country one of the world’s most dangerous.1 In this article, I will explore how violence in Colombia has perpetuated the theme of hopelessness in the nation’s literature beginning in the mid-twentieth century. I will show this in three parts. Firstly, I will trace the history of violence in Colombia through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and show that a literary genre of violence was absent in the nation until 1946, when the period known as “la Violencia” commenced. Secondly, I will explore how hopelessness resulted from violence in Colombia beginning in the period of “la Violencia.” Thirdly, I will show how violence is depicted as an evil that traps the protagonists of the contemporary Colombian novels La Virgen de Los Sicarios and Satanás in a state of hopelessness due to their powerlessness to truly change themselves because of the frustrated society in which they live.

The Drunken Drug Lord

2020 ◽  
pp. 83-90
Author(s):  
Jeremy R. Simon
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Law Enforcement Officers ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Ethical Principles ◽  
Blood Alcohol ◽  
Emergency Physicians ◽  
Drug Lord

This chapter discusses the appropriate response of emergency physicians to requests to collect evidence, in particular, blood alcohol tests and ingested drugs, from patients for police and other law enforcement officers. The relevant ethical principles, legislation, and case law are reviewed. Recommendations are made regarding when and how it may be ethically appropriate to respond to such requests.

English shop names in the retail landscape of Medellín, Colombia

English Today ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 8-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph R. Weyers
Keyword(s):  
Wall Street Journal ◽  
Shopping Malls ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Travel Agencies ◽  
Commercial Enterprise ◽  
Drug Lord ◽  
Socioeconomic Strata ◽  
The Wall Street Journal ◽  
The City ◽  
Business Technology

The city of Medellín, Colombia's second largest, impresses the visitor. What was once the most dangerous city in the world has gone through a metamorphosis since drug lord Pablo Escobar's death in 1993. Indeed, in 2013, Medellín was named the World's Most Innovative City by the Wall Street Journal and the Urban Land Institute (ULI). ‘Few cities have transformed the way that Medellín… has in the past 20 years' reads the ULI's explanation (Wall Street Journal, 2013, online). Medellín is now poised to move forward with its innovative infrastructure projects, and looks to position itself as a center of international business, technology, and education (Alexander, 2015). One of the ways in which this new international outlook manifests itself is in the ever-increasing use of English in various areas of public life, notably in advertising and in shop names. Accordingly, this study explores and describes the use of English in shop names in a cross section of commercial areas in Medellín. First, we consider the use of English shop names in four shopping malls that serve customers from a variety of socioeconomic strata. Note that our use of ‘shop’ refers not only to stores but also restaurants, bars, travel agencies, and any other commercial enterprise. Second, we look at four public commercial corridors (retail streets or demarcated zones) in metropolitan Medellín through a similar lens. From these two commercial venues, we find that English use is common in Medellín's retail landscape and that it increases as the socioeconomic status of the target consumers increases.

Colombian and Mexican extradition norms will diverge

2015 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Medium Term ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
National Pride ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Drug Lord ◽  
Prison Systems ◽  
High Level

Subject Sending high-level criminals to face incarceration in the United States is a perpetual source of controversy in both Colombia and Mexico. Significance The Colombian peace process has revived debate over extradition, raising questions of justice, sovereignty and national pride. Meanwhile, the escape of Sinaloa Cartel drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman from a Mexican high-security prison in July gave further weight to the arguments of those in Mexico advocating extradition to the United States. Impacts Prison systems and facilities are unlikely to improve significantly in the short-to-medium-term. Mexico will extradite more high-profile cartel members to the United States. Colombian paramilitaries are less likely to be extradited if implicated in human rights abuses. Colombian guerrillas will not be extradited.

Posthumanism in The House of the Scorpion and The Lord of Opium

2018 ◽  
pp. 135-156
Author(s):  
Donna R. White
Keyword(s):  
Drug Lord ◽  
The U.S

In her The House of the Scorpion and The Lord of Opium, Nancy Farmer narrates the story of Matt, a clone created to extend the life of El Patrón, ruler of the autonomous country of Opium between the U.S. and Mexico. Donna White explains how Farmer employs epigenetics to show that genes do not determine one’s destiny, and every clone of El Patrón is different. At first Matt learns to acknowledge himself as human, but eventually he learns to accept his multiple subjectivites of animal, monster, saint, drug lord, clone, human, and even El Patrón. Even though El Patrón uses posthumanist biotechnologies to maintain his position, he thrives on the power humanist beliefs give him. Matt, meanwhile, retains some of these humanist values while moving to embrace his multiplicity.

White People Ain’t Left Us Nothin’ But the Underworld: Historicity, Race and the American Dream in Ridley Scott’s American Gangster

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Sampson
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Task Force ◽  
White People ◽  
Economic Context ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Drug Lord ◽  
The 1960S

Released in 2007, Ridley Scott’s American Gangster tracks the career of Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington), who dominated the Harlem drug trade in the 1960s and 70s through his monopoly over heroin, which he imported directly from Vietnam and Thailand. The film follows the character of Detective Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe), who led the police task force ultimately responsible for toppling Lucas’ regime. This paper investigates the historical validity of the film, taking into consideration the consultant role Roberts and Lucas adopted during production alongside the political implications of Scott’s decision to cinematize (and so implicitly condone) the life of a convicted drug lord and accused murderer. It examines both filmic elements of music, casting and cinematography as well sociological concerns of race, space, masculinity and class in order to determine whether the film realistically portrays the lived experience of gang members and Harlem residents alike. Moreover, it considers the film’s political backdrop and its engagement with events like the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement and the 1970s recession. Ultimately, the paper concludes that despite Scott’s efforts to undermine traditional iconography by portraying Lucas as a complex, rational and respected outlaw-businessman, the narrative’s lack of critical engagement with the socio-economic context of its era ultimately render it presentist in style, content and intention.

Displacing Drug War Violence onto Nonhuman Imaginaries

2020 ◽  
pp. 103-124
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Nonhuman Animal ◽  
Drug War ◽  
Critical Animal Studies ◽  
Mexican State ◽  
American Literary History ◽  
Drug Lord ◽  
Organized Crime Groups

This chapter broaches the limits of the human from two entwined angles, examining the intersection of necropolitical violence and nonhuman animal tropes in Mexican author Juan Pablo Villalobos’s 2010 novella Fiesta en la madriguera. Villalobos’s novella is an influential text from the emerging narconarrative corpus in Mexico. The novella has received criticism from prominent critics and writers such as Oswaldo Zavala and Jorge Volpi who have charged that the text inflates the myths surrounding organized crime groups that have been perpetuated by the Mexican state. Drawing on previously unexplored influences from Latin American literary history, and marshalling theories of bio- and necropolitics, postcolonialism, and critical animal studies, this chapter advances a different reading of Villalobos’s text, averring that the author mobilizes the severed head of a highly symbolic animal (the hippopotamus) to launch a nuanced deconstruction of the figure of the drug lord and to recontextualize drug war violence by calling attention to the ways it is immanent to the drive of capitalism and (biopolitical) modernity (rather than outside of these broader processes).

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