South America, drug lords, serial kidnappings, assassinations, terrorist attacks, police hunting, negotiations, governments...
These elements are collaged not as a tense Hollywood blockbuster, but as a reality, the social reality of Colombia, the South American nation of the last century.
▲ Stills from "Narcos"
Pablo Escobar, the protagonist of the first season of the American drama "Narcos", the leader of the "Medellín" drug cartel, once controlled about 80% of the cocaine trade in the United States. In order to oppose the government's bill to extradite him to the United States for trial, he kidnapped nine journalists and relatives of dignitaries from the major families that controlled the situation in Colombia at the time, as a bargaining chip to get the government to withdraw the bill.
That's where the story begins.
Where will drug lords, hostages, and entire countries go?
▲ Drug lord Pablo Escobar
A brave and well-written journalist, through three years of visits and sorting, restored this complex event mixed with social and political background, and wrote "The News of a Serial Kidnapping Case", which can be called a journalistic model. And the famous journalist is Márquez, the author of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and the nobel laureate in literature.
He wrote the story clearly and in detail, with the thrill of a movie. In this story, one can really see the turbulent Colombia of the last century, the huge influence of the drug lord group and the deified drug lord leader, as well as the pain and struggle of those abducted and their relatives during the kidnapping.
Márquez said: "The News of a Serial Kidnapping" is even more bizarre than my most bizarre novel.
♯ Dangerous everyday
During those turbulent years, an average of twenty murders occurred every day, and there was a massacre every four days. Many of the teenagers in the slums worked for Escobar's life, hunting and killing policemen. In just a few months, nearly five hundred police officers were killed.
Terrorist attacks and dangerous elements hang over the country in general, and Medellín in particular, which is at the centre of urban action by all armed groups. Once the most beautiful, vibrant and hospitable city in all of Colombia, it has become one of the most dangerous cities in the world in those years. Bombs can detonate in schools, beans in the market can suddenly explode, anonymous threatening phone calls ring at any time, and daily life is full of uneasy factors.
▲ Medellín
But Colombians are born with a warm and optimistic personality trait, as Márquez says in his book: In Colombia, all gatherings of more than six people, no matter what type, no matter what time, are destined to turn into balls.
The Medellín also possessed this astonishing ability to accept, get used to, and recover quickly from it in the face of the horrors of the status quo, learning to live in an orderly manner with fear. It is generally believed that the economic downturn in a turbulent social context is different from what we expected, and statistics show that the economic situation in Medellín was not affected at that time.
♯ The hostages rebelled
"Before getting into the car, she glanced back to make sure no one was following her."
The story begins with the abduction of Maluha and her husband, Biamisar's sister, and the rest of the story unfolds as tense as it began. In addition to them, eight other hostages were kidnapped by Escobar, who also cunningly tried to dissociate himself from the kidnapping and tried to communicate with the government by borrowing his status as an "extraditable person".
Unlike ordinary hostages, they have important values related to the fate of drug lords, so they are ordered not to be harmed, but in essence, they are still hostages. As a result, a delicate way of getting along between the kidnapped and the kidnappers developed.
Kidnapped journalists can watch the news or listen to the radio, doctors come to see them if they are physically abnormal, and caregivers take them for a walk in the yard late at night. The expected release was postponed day by day, and they spent Christmas and New Year with the guards, and they also had parties, and the young guards would chat with them about their favorite movies and music. When faced with very unreasonable demands, they will raise objections, sometimes even deter or persuade the other party.
▲ Movie "Munich"
In these six months, however, they experienced more fear, restlessness, and anxiety.
The guards set strict rules for them, forbidding them to speak loudly or cough, so much so that When Maluha first came home, she communicated at the lowest volume.
The guards were mostly outlaws, but they all shared Escobar's absolute loyalty and love for their families. Their erratic, suspicious personalities inflict great torture on the abductees, such as waking up in the middle of the night with a gun against their temples, being subjected to rough scolding, and having to accept unreasonable demands.
The hostages experienced hopes of being released again and again, and they were even more disappointed when negotiations were hindered again and again, and when they learned that some of the hostages had been shot, they were completely defeated.
♯ A "deified" drug lord
Fierce, cruel, suspicious, alert, extremely intelligent, but occasionally seems to show a kind side, which is the image of the poisoned owl in most film and television works.
Indeed, Escobar has an unmistakable talent, and many times this intelligence comes from his distrust of anyone. Escobar never delegated anything important to anyone else, and was well versed in various communication technologies, wired jamming techniques, and signal tracking techniques.
This distrust was the reason why he initiated many bloody actions, and it was also the reason why he could survive the bloody storm.
Escobar instigated the youth to hunt down and pay the policemen, and in negotiations with the government, the punishment of high-ranking police officials became an important condition for his surrender.
He assassinated politicians and tried him by judges, and in the eyes of the government and police, Escobar was a heinous criminal.
To the poor, Escobar was a savior, building altars in the slums where his portrait was present and candles were placed.
In the eyes of the poor, he does have the "great benevolent" behavior, building schools, hospitals, parks in slums, building thousands of new houses in areas destroyed by fires, and sponsoring football training, which is also an important reason why the Colombian national team can now have a place in world football.
He also loves his family, especially his mother and children. When he was hunted down by a hostile group, wanted by the government and intervened by the United States, protecting his family became an important reason for his surrender, and the last phone call with his son announced the end of his death on the way to escape.
"I went first," he said to his son on the phone, "something strange happened." "This is his last conversation.
With his amazing journalistic literacy and literary style, Márquez tells such a huge and complex story clearly and thoroughly, and there are also shining points of human nature under the calm and objective description.
The abductees helped and supported each other, the guards sometimes acted in good faith, and the families of the abductees did not give up their efforts. The story as a whole seems to be heading for a happy ending, with most of the reporters released, Escobar walking into a luxurious prison tailored for him, and handing over his extraordinarily ornate pistol as a sign of good faith.
Shortly after her release, Maluha received an unsigned package, and she and her husband, in a mood that might be a bomb, carefully opened the package, only to find that it contained the ring that Maluha had lost, and the kidnapper leader promised to find the ring they had lost, and the promise was really fulfilled, but one diamond was missing.
But is the story really over?