Heroic Villainy of “El Señor de los Cielos” in the Fight against an Anomic State

Abstract

Amado Carillo Fuentes, a Mexican drug trafficker of the 90’s, has been shown as a dual individual: Transformed into a hero by his own town of origin and sentenced as villain by the Mexican State. His life has been narrated in several productions as “narcororridos,†films, soap operas, and more recently in telenovela “El Señor de los Cielos.†Although in the novel with the same title, published in 2013 by Andrés López, Carillo is described as a hero, the Telemundo telenovela shows him as a villain persecuted by police officer Marco Mejía. In both creations, however, drug trafficking is shown from an ethical code in opposition to the State corruption and impunity. As viewers of this telenovela, we tend to sympathize with the villain and not with the hero, which goes against the rules of the classic melodrama. In our opinion, this may be due to the fact that we recognize the villain’s vehemence to survive in an adverse environment and his fight against a government incapable of protecting its own heroes. The telenovela would then denounce the existence of an anomic State when the villain is transformed into the real leading protagonist.