Breaking Bad, Salud
Under the US border
Everyone knows Breaking Bad, the most successful series in the last years, with a great rating and a great plot. In this case we are going to focus in a specific episode, season 4 episode 10 “Salud” that came out on September 18, 2011 in AMC network. The series is about an old man who has cancer, and he wants to give money to his family, but he learns that the illegal way is better to get money, so with his student he learns how to cook drugs and set a whole web of drug traffic. In this episode they go to Mexico to a meeting and how media portrays Mexico is what I am going to talk about. All the facts that stereotypes have defined every country that is under the United States border.
The basic topic to understand what happens in the series is Gustavo Fring, a business man that knows how to traffic drug outside and inside of the border, but he entered in a war with a Mexican cartel (organization that does illegal things as drugs traffic in the border with Mexico and United States) so they arrange a meeting in Mexico to try to fix all the issues they had with each other, but Gustavo was there before and he got scared when he saw his friend got killed because they didn’t wanted to cooperate and now the same people is calling them. Don Eladio, the leader of the organization is a Mexican man who is very wealthy but he is always cheating in the game, and he calls Gustavo because he heard that his product is the best in the market, so he tells that it would be a pleasure to meet Gustavo in his home, Mexico. So Gustavo and Jesse who is the second cooker go there Don Eladio puts Jesse a test to create the product but Jesse isn’t the chemist and he doesn’t know the exact things, he knows how to do it because he has been making it for years. But all the stereotypes that can be found in internet about Mexican people is shown in the episode, making the American people as the good ones and the Mexican people the bad.
First when they are in the U.S. is normal but when they go to Mexico, the light filter looks with hot colors, kind of yellow and orange, all the scenes are in a desert trying to say the message that Mexico is all about Cartels and desert, there’s no civilization or cool things to do, that there’s no technology or buildings, that Mexico is uncivilized. Then the stereotypical Mexican people shows up, small dudes with a moustache, bald, oversized shirts, small in height and saying “whatsup esse” all the time, driving low rider cars and having guns everywhere, the when Gustavo and Jesse meets Don Eladio he looks like the typical “Patron” (leader of the organization) big, handsome guy looking like a Latin lover with the button shirt opened, and eccentric way to act shows up. He is always threatening Gustavo about how to do the things and then he order that Jesse in going to stay as a prisoner in Mexico to cook all the product, Gustavo accept it but he has a plan, poison everyone, so to celebrate Gustavo brings a very expensive bottle of Tequila and like a good Mexican, all the people in the cartel starts drinking and after everything they die and Gustavo finds a way to escape to the United States again. Making this like the kryptonite of Latin people is alcohol or tequila.
In conclusion, I think that this portrays is what people likes to see in this kind of series, crime and illegal things will always have a stereotypical part, in African American people, white people, Asian people or Latin American people, always is the same in the way how they do the things and there’s nothing that will change that, but I think that the series portrays Mexican as the worst ever in how they do the things, saying that Mexico is only for drugs, and killers.
