A Different Take on “El Chapo”

“Modern society has always had a secret love affair with the criminal.”

In a recent Merion West article, Dr. Gabriel Andrade offers a subtle rebuke to the glamorization of notorious drug lords such as Pablo Escobar—and more recently—El Chapo. Arguing that such adulation is both unsightly in sensationalizing bloodthirsty criminals and misguided in attempting to humanize those in Latin America profiting off the chaos of the War on Drugs, Dr. Andrade chides both Western thinkers on the Left and American popular culture for embracing such heinous figures. In his eyes, El Chapo represents more than just an edgy meme or a blot in the eyes of American imperialism; El Chapo is a twisted mirror into which the cultural and political sensitivities of modern society can be divined.

It’s clear that whatever the shortcomings of the War on Drugs, criminal drug lords such as El Chapo are beyond reprehensible for their crimes. One need only recall the grisly torture and murders ordered by El Chapo himself, as evidenced in a testimonial at his trial. Or one could look to the violent murders of several dozen students from a Mexican teaching college, who were arrested for their activism against government corruption and then handed over to a local gang to be butchered and left for the crows. Clearly, the perils of the drug trade have truly brought out the monster in man. But while Dr. Andrade correctly notes the complicity of criminals like El Chapo in the human tragedy that is the Drug War, he erroneously makes two vast and sweeping conclusions, one about the latent decadence of American popular culture and the other on the ethical conscience of Western leftists.

Andrade’s first error concerns the supposedly unprecedented nature of El Chapo’s popular stardom. He laments El Chapo’s popularity and compares it with the cult status of Charles Manson, though he qualifies it by admitting that Manson’s fandom was mostly confined to the mentally deranged. The unprecedented degree of fame attached to El Chapo’s persona represents—in Andrade’s view—a new low for American cultural decline.