The Day I Met El Chapo: Rings True

I just saw "The Day I Met El Chapo: The Kate Del Castillo Story" on Netflix.  I've half-joked that I admire El Chapo's construction of a tunnel (or his people constructing a tunnel) which enabled him to escape from a Mexican prison a few years ago - well, more truth in that joke than half, I've always thought tunnels under buildings were cool - but nothing that I'll say in this review is joking.  Like the documentary, it's 100% real.

I first became aware of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto when U. S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump went to Mexico to meet him.  That meeting did people who opposed Trump in the U. S., and therefore the people of the United States, no favors.  It helped legitimize Trump and his dangerous bluster.  I therefore didn't like Peña Nieto, for that very important reason, from the moment I first heard of him.

Having seen "The Day I Met El Chapo," I like Peña Nieto even less.  If we are to believe what is shown in the movie, and said by many of the people interviewed - journalists, actors, producers, and mostly Kate Del Castillo herself - the Mexican government under Peña Nieto, embarrassed by El Chapo's escape, have persecuted Del Castillo, even though El Chapo has since been recaptured, extradited to the U. S. (the day before Trump's inauguration), and is now awaiting trial in Brooklyn.

The reason is Kate's meeting with El Chapo, along with Sean Penn, several months before El Chapo's recapture.   The purpose of the meeting was undeniably murky, and included making a movie about El Chapo (Kate's main reason for going to the life-endangering meeting), an article Sean Penn was writing about El Chapo for Rolling Stone, and the excitement of meeting an iconic actress (apparently El Chapo's reason, partially reciprocated by Kate, which makes that a second reason for her).  How or why any of that should be illegal, or grounds for the Mexican government coming after Kate, defies logic, and makes Peña Nieto the worst bad guy in this documentary.

Sean Penn doesn't come out smelling like a rose, either.  He denied (in an interview by Charlie Rose) tipping off the U. S. or Mexican government about El Chapo's whereabouts, and points out that El Chapo was ultimately captured nowhere near where  their meeting took place.  But why then did he refuse to appear in the documentary?  What was he afraid of?

And some of the media, who suggested that Kate was having an affair with El Chapo (she admits that she slept with Penn), or laundered money for him, on zero evidence, come off poorly, to say the least, as well.   Being an already well-established actress, her stated reason for taking the meeting - to discuss making a movie about El Chapo - seems much more plausible.  And Kate indeed seems like a passionate person -  but passionate about her work, and her desire to help the Mexican people - not to share El Chapo's bed or his money.

The current crisis with opiates in the U. S. should tell us something about drugs in America.  Years ago, a friend of mine from Colombia told me something which has always stuck with me: the group most responsible for the drug problem in America are not the suppliers, but the people who take the drugs.  Until we do a better job as a society in getting people not to take addictive drugs, we'll always have a drug problem, whether the drugs are supplied by foreign cartels or American pharmaceutical companies.

In the meantime, we should be grateful that people like Kate Del Castillo, who started it all with a tweet, are willing to stand up for their beliefs.

  
It all starts in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn walks off the set
of The Misfits and begins to hear a haunting song in her head,
"Goodbye Norma Jean" ...