Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice constitute the subjective opinions of individual end-user reviews, ratings, and data applied against a documented methodology they neither represent the views of, nor constitute an endorsement by, Gartner or its affiliates. Gartner and Magic Quadrant are registered trademarks of Gartner, Inc. Christopher Canaan (supervising producer)ĭrug Wars: The Camarena Story is a 1990 TV mini-series based on Elaine Shannon’s book Desperados and the Time magazine article of the same name.Īnd internationally and are used herein with permission. It was directed by Brian Gibson and starred Steven Bauer, Miguel Ferrer, Benicio del Toro, Treat Williams and Craig T. It was the second most watched NBC mini-series of the year following The Kennedys and was followed up in 1992 with Drug Wars: The Cocaine Cartel starring Dennis Farina. Plotįact-based story of undercover DEA agent Enrique Camarena (Bauer) who, while stationed in Guadalajara, uncovered a massive marijuana operation in Northern Mexico that led to his death and a remarkable investigation of corruption within the Mexican government.Īt least four of the principal actors in Drug Wars: The Camarena Story later starred in the Academy Award-winning film Traffic, a film that also deals with the subject of the ongoing drug trade between the United States and Mexico. In a somewhat interesting reversal of roles, in Drug Wars actors Miguel Ferrer and Steven Bauer both play DEA agents while Benicio del Toro and Eddie Velez play drug traffickers in Traffic, Ferrer and Bauer both play drug traffickers, while del Toro and Velez play a Mexican federal narcotics agent and a DEA agent. In his review for The New York Times, John J. O'Connor wrote, "Perhaps not surprisingly, these amoral entrepreneurs provide some of the film's juicier roles. In his review for USA Today, Matt Roush wrote, "For a Michael Mann production, there's surprisingly little flash to Drug Wars.Įspecially effective is Benicio del Toro as the young, illiterate and flaky Rafael Caro-Quintero". Some interesting camera work to be sure, including the video bits and some heightened use of slow motion, but the miniseries' chief strength is its grit, its anger". Craig MacInnis, in his review for the Toronto Star, wrote, "Interspersed with U.S. network news footage of the real Camarena incident in '85, the dramatic scenes in Drug Wars are never anything less than convincing - just as good propaganda should be". DVD releaseĪll three parts originally ran for four hours. The current DVD release features a heavily edited version that runs only 130 minutes.The Untold Story of the World’s Most Infamous Drug Lord by Noah Hurowitz. Simon & Schuster, 448 pages.Īt this moment, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán is likely sitting in a soundproof, eighty-four-square-foot cell. He spends twenty-three hours a day there, with nothing to look at but a black-and-white television and a four-inch window. Scoring one last favor, he might have gotten a room with a view out of the so-called “Alcatraz of the Rockies,” Colorado’s ADX supermax prison. He was whisked off to this icy stronghold in 2019, when the Eastern District court of New York sentenced him to life plus thirty years on murder and drug charges. The case was brought against him by the U.S. federal government and tried from November 2018 until February 2019.Įl Chapo will not escape from the ADX, which has housed illustrious jailmates such as Timothy McVeigh and Ted Kaczynski. There will be no mile-long tunnel dug under his room, like in 2015 at the Altiplano prison just west of Mexico City no laundry cart getaway, as in the 2001 jailbreak from Puente Grande prison in Jalisco. That the Americans can be trusted to hold El Chapo is precisely why the Mexican government agreed to extradite him in 2017, after years of grandstanding.Įven in his tiny cell, El Chapo looms large in the North American imagination, like Pablo Escobar once did. He has been the subject of derided Sean Penn profiles in Rolling Stone, was once an entry in Forbes wealthiest people lists, the namesake for podcasts from the scumbag left, and a character in a popular Netflix serial. He is also the subject of dozens of books, many stemming from his widely followed Brooklyn trial. But it also raises a deeper question: Why are we so obsessed with El Chapo in the first place? The latest, Noah Hurowitz’s El Chapo: The Untold Story of the World’s Most Infamous Drug Lord, dutifully recounts the kingpin’s rise and fall. The answer lies in the so-called War on Drugs and the narrative we build around it. We can think of the War on Drugs as an exchange of goods between the United States and countries such as Mexico and Colombia. Drugs flow north cash, arms, and violence flow south.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |