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Video: Stephen Colbert Would Prefer Not to Have the Earth Blow Up

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Birth Control Works8/11/2017 11:25:53 am PDT

Like Bolaño, whom he met one day in Paris, Zavala thinks narcos are misunderstood. The charismatic anti-hero - like Netflix’s Pablo Escobar - a macho man who keeps the state under his thumb, is written to entertain. There are more powerful criminals than Pablo, and they’re being overlooked because they seem ordinary. These men don’t carry around gold-plated AKs. Instead of showing chest, they button up, trading in snake-skin cowboy boots for freshly-shined Oxfords. They’re not caricatures of evil portrayed in movies like Sicario. Instead, he argues, the true jefes, those responsible for all the violence and in charge of the drug trade, are the politicians and businessmen of Mexico, who corrupt from the inside. “The myth is to believe that El Chapo, an uneducated farmer from Sinaloa, rules the world,” he told me. “I want people who hold real power to be in the most critical light.”