ABSTRACT
The recent proliferation of cultural products about the life and times of Pablo Escobar (1949–1993)—the infamous drug cartel leader and popular folk hero—is paradigmatic of the ways in which the Colombian condition is commodified by today’s publishing and media conglomerates. This cultural phenomenon is attested in stories about the drug trade ranging over best-selling Colombian fiction such as Fernando Vallejo’s La virgen de los sicarios or Juan Gabriel Vásquez’s El ruido de las cosas al caer, art by Fernando Botero and Medellín’s local muralists, television and film (e.g., Entourage, Pecados de mi padre), and narco-soap operas such as Sin tetas no hay paraíso. This chapter argues that those cultural products—which have defined the literary field in Colombia from the 1990s into the 2010s—exemplify the cultural market’s logic behind Escobar’s cocaine trade, anchored in what Michael Taussig has coined as an economy of delirious consumption and excess. By delving into the South by North market dynamics that link that economy with deeply rooted colonial practices, this analysis aims at articulating a cultural critique of the commodification of Latin American crime stories for global and excess consumption.
