Latin America: let's not be entertainment anti-narcotics police

The script is repeated again: a new series about drug trafficking and Colombia is announced, the production company launches a promotional campaign - in my opinion unoriginal, but which attracts attention -, and the wave of national indignation rises because it is considered that this new series is one more offense to our country.

Yesterday was a “White Christmas” in Puerta del Sol in Madrid, today it was a truck vacuuming a white line in Paris;

Tomorrow we'll see.

Don't we get tired of this dynamic?

At least it exhausts me.

I don't think that getting angry with every series, every program, every billboard, every joke that is made about our countries and the drug market will stop us from associating us with drug trafficking and the associated violence, corruption and culture.

I also don't understand why we feel the need to respond to these references or at what point we became the anti-narcotics police of entertainment.

All of this is exhausting, and has an effect between zero and counterproductive: attention generates attention.

It is possible that we have other alternatives to monitoring, denouncing and punishing or even naive options, such as the one mentioned by the Colombian ambassador to the United Kingdom who, quite indignant with this new series, asked better to talk about positive things that the country like orchids.

As if our national flower served to replace the fascination with the thousands of individual and family tragedies that accumulate to produce a national tragedy, analogous to the one that so many other countries in the region have suffered, are suffering or, if nothing changes, will continue to suffer.

The first step for me is that we change how we relate to that part of our vital and national histories: to face all those novels and series more calmly because, although they reflect a part of our reality, they do not define us either as people or as a country. .

Reconcile with our stories of drug trafficking without trivializing or romanticizing them, paying detailed and healing attention to the wounds caused, redefining that stain that apparently many Colombian, Mexican, Ecuadorian, Salvadoran, Honduran people... we will always carry for having been born where we were born.

As?

Talking about it among ourselves.

Opening dialogues.

Yes, it sounds confusing because in countries like Colombia coca crops and substances like cocaine appear in the news almost daily.

But I do not mean that.

I am referring to everyday, open and sincere conversations, within the family, or among friends.

Conversations about what happened and what is happening in our immediate surroundings.

A little over a decade ago, in the middle of an academic investigation on the prevention of youth violence in Medellín, a father shared with me, between shame and regret, how in the years when the cartels were most popular, he and other parents persuaded their daughters to go out with the so-called “traquetos”: out of aspiration for social advancement, fear of reprisals, or a combination of both.

And in those years, I dare to say, the majority of us were people who had a family member, friend or acquaintance who was a victim of drug trafficking, or knew someone whom we suspected of being involved in illegal businesses.

Of course, for fear of some type of violent response, many of us could not report it or even comment on it.

Suddenly, also out of shame.

Thus, for both, it seems, and by collective decision, we decided to remain silent, even though this touched many people and permeated many institutions.

The result was that drugs and drug trafficking became the Bruno of the country: the family member that no one talks about.

Is reconciling with this part of our history glorifying drug trafficking?

No. It is understanding what happened, how it has impacted our daily lives and, by accumulation and multiplication, our countries, and how we have responded to this phenomenon.

What we failed at and why, or what we got right and how.

This is a second step of more public conversation that would lead us to not remain stuck in taboo, shame and prohibition.

If we start approaching drug trafficking differently, at the level of narratives, but also at the level of policies, not only will we be more effective in how we are perceived from the outside, but we could be the ones leading this conversation.

Because precisely with that shame, inaction and silence, we have also allowed others to build the narrative about our countries: the violent ones, the guilty ones, those who poison the world.

We are the problem.

I even get the impression that with these outbursts of reproach against the drug series we take the opportunity to release some shame and to ask for forgiveness.

Forgive us, civilized world, for having coca crops and not doing enough!

But why doesn't this happen in consumer countries?

And it is not about shifting blame and doing an eye for an eye.

I am not suggesting that visas be imposed on people from the countries that consume the most cocaine or that they be treated like criminals or suspects at airports.

My question is why we end up being the center of the show.

At the very least, sharing the focus (and also the dialogue) would be a good third step.

Surely there will be more drug trafficking series and movies related to our countries, but at least I hope that we are the ones who begin to control the narrative, while continuing to seek better drug policies that will make us transform the way we relate to that part of our history.

And if we meet that foreigner again, let him give us the typical phrase of “Ah, you're Colombian.

Cocaine?

Narcos?

Griselda?",

instead of getting nervous and reciting the usual list without breathing - "but we also have coffee, Shakira, Karol G, frailejones, orchids, two oceans,

One Hundred Years of Solitude" -

we can calmly answer: "Yes Cocaine is produced in Colombia because the world wants to consume it.

Next question".

Subscribe here

to the EL PAÍS newsletter about Colombia and

here to the WhatsApp channel

, and receive all the key information on current events in the country.

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

Keep reading

I am already a subscriber

_