AMC’s Emmy Award-winning show Breaking Bad tonight runs its course after five successful seasons. Created by Vince Gilligan, Breaking Bad follows the story of Walter White (played by Bryan Cranston), a gifted yet underachieved chemist who is diagnosed with lung cancer.
In the wake of his health condition, White is desperate to secure a future for his family so they wouldn’t grapple with high debt for his treatment, in addition to saving money for his children’s education. Once White discovered the high profitability of the meth business when his brother-in-law Hank (played by Dean Norris) appears on a TV footage surrounded by DEA-seized dollar rolls, White began to put his chemistry skills to create the purest crystal meth in the market, till he becomes his fearful alter ego: Heisenberg.
While some critics dispute the accuracy of some of Breaking Bad’s chemistry shenanigans, it greatly depicts the world of drugs – from popular culture to illicit trade to personal motivations – and the consequences of the War on Drugs. How has Breaking Bad managed to describe the 42-year-old War on Drugs and its foundation? Some of the following points and its accompanying Breaking Bad videos will tell you [WARNING: There will be some spoilers and gruesome images].
1. “I’m the one who knocks”
In a National Review article about Breaking Bad, Jonah Goldberg explained that once you step outside the borders of morality and the rule of law “self-interest becomes self-justifying,” leading to personal corruption. As Walter White gets too deep into the meth business, it is now Heisenberg who takes the reins of his actions without measuring the string of negative consequences it would bring to those around him, including the very own family he seeks to protect.
Pablo Escobar, the world’s richest drug kingpin (and mentioned in the show), was drawn to personal motivations with no regard to the chaos and death he brought to his native Colombia, be it by massive drug consumption or killing those who stood in his way. Escobar wanted to provide a better life for his family by earning millions at the expense of breaking the law and morality– and spreading cocaine trade in the Western Hemisphere and beyond. Nevertheless, his bad reputation brought a curse to the Escobar family, almost turning them into pariahs as many countries rejected their asylum request. Walter White’s children and his wife Skylar, portrayed by Anna Gunn, had to leave the house they were living in due to Heisenberg’s legendary status. To date, many Mexican cartel leaders, have followed in Escobar’s footsteps while wreaking havoc in their strongholds.
2. “The Ballad of Heisenberg”
Breaking Bad is characterized for its brilliant and creative cold opens that tell the story afterwards. Mexican band “Los Cuates De Sinaloa” dedicated a song titled “Negro y Azul,” which sings praises to Heisenberg but at the same time it describes how fateful his life will come down to. This cold open successfully espouses real popular culture from both sides of the U.S. Mexico border with Breaking Bad’s storyline, in this case describing the deeds of Heisenberg and his popularity.
This music genre is known as narcocorrido, whose lyrics refer to illegal criminal activities such as murder, torture, racketeering, drug smuggling, undocumented immigration, and government corruption. The content of its lyrics have also brought violence upon its musicians. Between 2006 and 2008, about a dozen Mexican narcocorrido artists were murdered, including Valentín Elizalde, Sergio Vega, and Sergio Gómez. It is believed many of these deaths were the result of the musicians’ alleged proximity with the drug cartels. An example of a real-life narcocorrido can be found here (in Spanish).
3. The “Legal” Businesses of Drug Cartels
This is yet another brilliant Breaking Bad cold open masqueraded as a TV commercial. It describes how the highly successful fried chicken restaurant chain “Pollos Hermanos” started, its secret recipes, and everlasting legacy. Gus Fring (played by Giancarlo Esposito), a Chilean-born Albuquerque philanthropist and business tycoon, owns “Pollos Hermanos,” but he’s also an important drug kingpin with connections to Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel. His anti-drug philanthropy has helped him hide in plain sight. Pollos Hermanos is part of a larger conglomerate, German-based Madrigal Electromotive GmbH, which also distributes large quantities of industrial chemicals. Lydia Rodarte-Quayle (portrayed by Laura Fraser) runs Madrigal’s logistics, as well as the supply of methylamine to Gus Fring, but after his death, she gets in contact with Heisenberg to produce blue meth to later be distributed in the Czech Republic.
The example of legal business run by drug cartels is best exemplified in Mexico and Colombia, respectively. The Sinaloa Cartel, run by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, has invested in bars, soccer fields, and scaffold businesses in Mexico City, San Luis Potosí, and the State of Mexico. In September 26, 2013, the U.S. Treasury Department revealed a series of business transactions by José Esparragoza “El Azu” Moreno, one of the Sinaloa Cartel leaders. The seven businesses—mostly gas stations—are located in Culiacán, Sinaloa. In Colombia, pharmacy chain “Drogas La Rebaja” had been property of the Cali Cartel at the helm of drug kingpins Miguel and Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela. In 1996, right after their arrest, the Rodriguez Family decided to sell Drogas La Rebaja to a competitor, however, Colombia’s Office of the District Attorney announced on September 3, 2013, that the purchase of goods were made effective with drug trade revenues.
Money laundering is an instrumental component of drug cartels’ businesses. In 2012, Mexican drug cartels laundered money in U.S. horsetrack races. Also, they transferred billions of dollars between U.S. and Mexico unites of UK-based banks HSBC and Standard Chartered in December 2012.
4. Crooked Lawmakers and Enforcers
Albuquerque’s most famous lawyer Saul Goodman (played by Bob Odenkirk) embodies what the loopholes in the criminal justice system can do for drug dealers and other outlaws. He’s the principal attorney for Walter White and his partner Jesse Pinkman (portrayed by Aaron Paul), and has the ability to get his clients out of difficult situations due to their drug business operations. Saul Goodman’s offices remained fully operational until the penultimate episode of Breaking Bad. Goodman had virtually had a long run as an attorney without being caught by the DEA, though the latter knew of his involvement with crooks and criminals but could not aparently find grounds for apprehension. Now, Goodman had to change his identity in order to flee New Mexico in exchange of a new life in Nebraska.
Historically, attorneys at law have played a vital role in the protection of big drug lords in Colombia and Mexico, for example. A version of Saul Goodman in real life is embodied in Gustavo Salazar, Pablo Escobar and Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha’s attorney, who became famous for the following quote: “Despite the gruesome and ghastly crimes perpetrated by the drug cartels, [President George H.W.] Bush committed worse crimes in Baghdad [during the Persian Gulf War in the 1990s], in the name of a fake anti-terrorist crusade.” In Mexico, a group of lawyers spearheaded by Osiel Cárdenas staunchly defended the Gulf Cartel in the last couple of years. Many of these lawyers in the aforementioned countries had been either gunned down or persecuted by their local authorities.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPR9ORpwBEU&feature=player_embedded#t=0
5. The Fight to Control the Market
We have seen throughout Breaking Bad how drug leaders want to seize the meth market. Walter White began to expand his empire, while Gus Fring poisoned an entire Mexican cartel, and Tuco Salamanca (played by Raymond Cruz) sought to hold his turf by notoriously saying: “Nobody moves crystal in the South Valley but me, b****.” One episode shows a turning point in Breaking Bad, as White tells a group of strangers to “stay out of his territory
Controlling the drug market and its operations has served as the battleground between rival drug cartels. In Mexico, for example, The Tijuana Cartel operates in the northeastern part of Mexico, entering in direct competition against the Sinaloa Cartel, which controls the northwest, the Cartel of Juárez, which controls the central part of Mexico, and the Gulf Cartel, which also controls the east. The dominance over the market, and the declared war against them by the Mexican government at the onset of the Felipe Calderón administration in 2006 have left a greater collateral damage: 60,000 fatalities ever since. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Cali and Medellin cartels also entered into a fierce competition and made use of terrorism against each other’s business and families, leaving behind thousands of innocent victims in the 1980s and early 90s.
Drug control is, precisely, what many drug policy experts claim to be the root cause of the futile war on drugs. By controlling the market, the theory goes, the government will take away the profits from the drug cartels that will in turn deteriorate their hierarchy and organization.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O47UY80VKfo&feature=player_embedded#t=0
6. The Influence of Drug Lords, even Behind Bars
One of the most brutal scenes of Breaking Bad, it shows how Walter White (or Heisenberg, in this case) patiently awaits a number of killings against Gus Fring’s employees in Albuquerque jails.
The influence of drug kingpins in prisons is nothing short of a novelty, particularly in Latin America. In 2012, 30 alleged members of the Zetas drug cartel escaped from the Monterrey-based Apodaca prison and killed 44 inmates who allegedly were part of the rival Gulf Cartel. Furthermore, wealthy inmates in Guatemala were able to acquire alcohol, satellite TV, drugs, and prostitutes. And back in the prime of his business, Pablo Escobar managed to rule the Cathedral Prison in the outskirts of Medellín, Colombia, in 1992. Rather than a normal prison, the Cathedral was Escobar’s fortress and lived surrounded by luxury. Rampant corruption of those guarding prison security, overcrowding of prisons beyond its capacities, and the in-prison operation of drug dealers and gang members have paved the way to keep carrying on the drug business.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2uLNioVW-M&feature=player_embedded#t=0
7. The Bloody Fight on the U.S. Mexico Border and the Use of Snitches
DEA Agent Hank Schrader is promoted to El Paso, Texas, to take on the Mexican cartels near the border. Schrader’s first order of business is to get information from a Juárez Cartel drug runner named Tortuga (Spanish for “tortoise” and played by Danny Trejo) about a deal that would be taking place in the desert. When Hank and other DEA agents showed up at the scene, they discovered a tortoise that carries the severed head of Tortuga on the back and the words “Hola DEA” written across its shell. When the agents tried to lift up Tortuga’s head, it triggered an explosive device that killed one agent and severely injured three others.
This is an example of the bloodbath across the U.S. Mexico border, as well as the antics federal agencies have used to infiltrate drug cartels. One of the most controversial ones is the “Operation Fast and the Furious,” ran by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) between 2006 and 2011. The ATF ordered “gun-walking” sting operations that allowed the purchase of licensed weapons so as to track the firearms once transferred to traffickers and key middlemen in Mexican cartels. Of the 2,000 weapons sold, only 700 were recovered, and most of the missing 1,300 firearms wound up in crimes scenes in Mexico. None of the key drug dealers were captured.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMMO4GRHJWw&feature=player_embedded#t=0
8. Ozymandias
The third-to-last episode of Breaking Bad was titled “Ozymandias,” in honor of the sonnet created by Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1818. Inspired by Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II, the sonnet describes the inevitable decline of all leaders and empires they have built. “Ozymandias” refers to Walter White’s foreseeable end when his brother-in-law Hank discovered the identity of Heisenberg, which led to a series of cataclysmic events that made White a terminally-ill fugitive, away from his family and the millions of dollars he lost to a band of white supremacists. His friends turned against him: Jesse Pinkman joined the DEA to unmask his identity, the gang of white supremacists and Todd (played by Jesse Plemmons) took away his money, and Saul Goodman decided to detach himself from White as he told him he’s “just another citizen. Not his lawyer.”
As the title suggests, no empire is meant to last for too long. This gruesome picture of Walter White resembles that of Pablo Escobar, a man who almost pushed Colombia to a failed state and who amassed a large fortune at the expense of his family’s well-being and serenity. Unlike White, Escobar was already considered an enemy of the state in a two-decade span, but the Colombian government’s military pressure, the rivalry of the Cali Cartel, and a group of gunmen called “Los Pepes” (or “People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar”) that waged a small-scale war against the Medellin Cartel drove Escobar to self-isolation, that is, being escorted by just one bodyguard, away from his family, and dealing with a ravaging ulcer. His end was virtually unavoidable. In a less dramatic way, Colombian forces also dismantled the Cali Cartel, with the Orejuela Brothers behind bars.
With regard to “Ozymandias,” it suggests that the decline is more from a personal standpoint as Walter White (or in the case of Pablo Escobar in real life) fights for his survival, but it does not point out that the drug business and consumption is over. Escobar and the Cali Cartel may have disappeared, but other Colombian cartels have taken over the business in a more subtle way, including the Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC), which produces cocaine. In Mexico, the war on drugs still goes on, despite the death of important drug lords like Amado Carrillo Fuentes—known as “El Señor de los Cielos (Lord of the Skies) in 1997, Ramón Arellano Félix in 2002, and Marcos Arturo Beltrán Leyva in 2009.
As some experts have put it, Breaking Bad has shed light on the “futility and brutality that erupt as our drug mentality overwhelmingly focuses on punitive, military-style responses to drug misuse rather than a health-centered approach.” If the drug business is still regarded as a global commodity, while draconian, punitive drug laws in the U.S. exist without a viable solution through rehabilitation and drug prevention programs, a war against drug trade will continue to drain government resources and deepen the damage it has already created.
We are sure many elements of the War on Drugs were left off. If you have any other parallelisms, please share below.
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