'Narcos' vs. narco novelas: In Latin America's cartel TV shows, a compelling complexity
Journalist Ana Maria Solozabal is investigating the jailhouse activities of a notorious trafficker inside a Bogota prison when she learns from an inmate that her father, a judge who was assassinated by the cartels when she was a young girl, may have been linked to those same cartels in unsavory ways.
As soon as she hears the news, her face tightens and she seems unable to decide where to cast her gaze. Was her father complicit in the system he was purportedly trying to take down? Within seconds, the moral certitude with which she's always carried herself - knowing which side of the drug war she stood upon - is destroyed.
This wrenching scene is from the 2017 Colombian series "Surviving Escobar: Alias J.J.," inspired by the tale of a notorious hit man who was once one of Pablo Escobar's most trusted henchmen. In the show, Solozabal, played by Natasha Klauss, is investigating the sicario's criminal doings when she stumbles into her own family's secret history.
"From one moment to the next," she says later, "the man I had loved and idolized was turned into a stranger."
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