From Man’s Man to Mama’s Boy

Chapter 2 centers on the construct of masculinity in crime narratives, from the 2012 telenovela Pablo Escobar, el patrón del mal and the 2010 memoir El verdadero Escobar by Jhon Jairo Vásquez Velázquez to James Mollison’s The Memory of Pablo Escobar. It focuses on the telenovela’s depiction of Escobar’s gendered performance as a leader, on how its protagonist negotiates his own masculinity vis-à-vis women, hitmen, narco associates, and the nation in general by imposing a wilful brutality as a way of asserting dominance. Though the telenovela inadvertently humanizes the national monster by affording him an in-depth story, it also disrupts the myth of a powerful and self-controlled caudillo. This subversion is exemplified by Escobar’s peculiar attachment to his mother, which sabotages his image as an independent thinker, to reveal instead a proverbial mama’s boy incapable of mature relationships. Vásquez Velázquez’s El verdadero Escobar on the other hand, as well his various interviews both in print and on YouTube, exalt Escobar’s warrior ethos, and the sicario’s own warrior cult, by extension.