“I think the major question to be considered in all of this is the why,” Edward Salazar, researcher, cultural critic, and PhD student at the University of California, tells Refinery29 Somos. “What sort of feelings, yearnings, anxieties do these stories materialize? Why do these stories, in which [we see] economic success, the overcoming of poverty, violence, the defiance of government, and legal institutional forces, generate such a fierce attraction? And how, in a country where the majority of the population lives in precarity, with little privileges and rights, do these narratives spark a deep affection?”
