Narco-Telenovelas and an Account of the Nation: Approaches to Colombian Culture and Politics through a Study of the Reception of Escobar, el Patrón del Mal by Brazilian Audiences

Abstract

This paper starts from the idea of the cultural relevance of television, according to which its narratives are central to knowing the history, politics, the stories about the nation and a recent memory of our Latin American countries. Here, I present the results of a research that illustrates, through development groups, how Brazilian viewers interpret Colombian narco-te- lenovela Escobar, el Patrón del Mal, with the aim of understanding how recent history was built, as well as the political and cultural conflicts of that society from a television product. My conclusion is that the meanings attributed by the participants of the groups revealed important aspects of this role of television in our societies. The narco-telenovela faced them with the intricacies of a problem that is deeply embedded in Colombian culture and politics; it also helped them to understand the phenomena and events of our own reality from a critical standpoint and showed them that our Latin American societies develop, for be er or worse, their own strategies of entry into modernity.