“Narcas” offers a rare glimpse of the women in drug gangs

MUCH IS KNOWN about the kingpins of the drug trade, thanks in part to a recent spate of books, songs and television shows. Readers, listeners and viewers are aware of the murderous exploits of Pablo Escobar, Colombia’s most famous drug lord, who was shot dead on a rooftop in 1993. Joaquín Guzmán, a man better known as “El Chapo”, is notorious too as the former head of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel; he is serving a life sentence in America. People may even recognise Emma Coronel, El Chapo’s model wife, who attended his trial in New York in 2019 (and later pleaded guilty to three drugs-related charges).