#honorable mention to Hector Guero Palma’s hot-but-also-somehow-adorable asf shrug at the end

[hausofmamadas]

MIGUEL Y MIN | Pt 5 - The confrontation

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Both Benjamín and Güero open by citing the financial/logistic struggles that their respective plazas are facing.

Specifically, Mín objects to Miguel’s preferential treatment of Sinaloa, pointing out that Sinaloa exclusively relies upon Tijuana’s resources in order to actually get shit over the border.

As we are about to find out, Miguel is under a L O T of pressure from all of the plazas for cash flow. And in fact, we find out just after this during his conversation with Pacho that he’s been floating all of them with his own personal funds in lieu of the money Cali owes them.

But he plays it cool, let’s Mín say his piece, and then tells him that money is coming.

And THEN, things take a sharper, less congenial turn the minute Mín says, “All we want is what’s ours.”

Miguel’s body language and verbal response, “what’s yours is also mine, Benjamín. Never forget that,” speaks to Miguel’s general philosophy and vision in establishing the Guadalajara cartel as a broader conglomerate that encompasses all of the other plazas.

So naturally, he takes issue when Mín considers his own plaza’s fate and success as being something separate from the fate and success of the organization.

And this makes sense when we consider the events just prior to Salva, the S2 premiere.

The last few episodes of S1 show Miguel’s gradual assertion of dominance over the plazas, killing any atmosphere of collaboration that may have existed or that he may have actively/disingenuously engendered when he brought them together.

This is a crucial turning point because it marks a Miguel’s evolution into someone who no longer sees himself as part of a broader entity, nor even its leader. He himself, is La Federación.

It’s now embedded in his identity. Thus, the fervency of his desire to institutionalize the org grows proportionally to the growth of his deeper desire to legitimate himself.

The schmoozing, all the governors and public figures, his impending meeting with Pacho - all of these things culminate in this grand party and stem directly from this unsated desire for institutional validation and legitimacy.

At the time this interaction takes place, Miguel can almost step into the role he’s always wanted to embody, that of a “true” businessman, rather than a criminal.

Fulfilling that desire is more tangible than ever and it serves to inflate his already massive sense of omnipotence and entitlement.

This explains why he is so reactive to Mín’s last statement about the Arellanos wanting what’s theirs.

To Miguel, this is absurd because like, “aRe yOU EvEN sErIOuS. Gorl. I don’t owe anyone shit.”

They’re all part of him anyway. When one wins, they all win. The success of Tijuana, Sinaloa, and Miguel are not separate and he can’t abide Mín leaving with any other impression than that of complete and total dependence.

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Turning to the S3 conversation with Güero and Co, it’s becomes immediately apparent that familiar old tensions are mingling with a new facet of entitlement that the TJ crew and Benjamin have acquired and they’re mingling in a very n o t harmonious way.

It’s all the more caustic without that grounding and *ahem* perhaps, maybe also a little bit threatening theme of universal dependence that characterized Miguel and Mín’s conversation.

This is what makes the subsequent events between Tijuana and Sinaloa so much more explosive than the squabbling and bickering that happens after Miguel’s party throughout S2 (e.g. think Cochi’s prank putting the pig in the Arellanos’ truck, the riff-raff at Roxanne’s when Francisco gets out of jail where Enedina smashes a champagne bottle over some guy’s head, that one time Cochi rolled over some dudes with a steam roller truck whilst cackling maniacally, that other time Ramon executed like 9 innocent dudes for helping Chapo build his tunnel whilst wearing an infuriatingly cool, studded leather jacket - okay, so I might be underselling the degree of conflict a bit, here. Perhaps they were a tad more caliente than squabbles … but hey, it’s not full-blown, killing-a-cardinal-as-you-shoot-up-the-airport-in-broad-daylight kind of warfare, so I rest my case, your honor.)

To make matters worse, it’s my interpretation that Mín is likely informed and motivated by the unaddressed resentment that he expressed to Miguel all those years earlier.

In other words, Mín not only feels like he doesn’t owe anyone shit, but Güero & Co’s inferior status is almost like reparations for Miguel’s favoritism.

When he offers to lease the Imperial Valley border instead of selling it (with the LOL promise to “renegotiate” after the two-year term), he’s actually saying, “Gorl, we owe you n o t h i n g. Any crumbs you get are bestowed by the charitable nature of me and my family. In fact, be grateful for the privilege to even have this conversation.”

For Mín, there is no irony in his being similarly positioned as Miguel, nor is there any contradiction in echoing the sentiment of Miguel’s earlier response.

What we viewers might see as an opportunity to give Güero the grace he didn’t get from Miguel, Benjamín sees as an opportunity to restore his world to equilibrium, a way to to right a past wrong. It’s the only logical conclusion to a perennial conflict.

Adding to the dynamic of Miguel and Mín’s little dance, Güero and Co contribute to an almost demented narrative symmetry - I guess like a sort of fucked/dysfunctional/rotating triad..?

Albeit, their role is less pronounced because they never occupy the top spot (until later when Chapo takes over but we don’t see that in the show).

But they are part of the dance because in S2, Güero and Co are sort of the favored sons of Sinaloa, afforded greater privileges by the man calling the shots, Miguel at the top of the triangle.

It’s never made explicit if/why Miguel actually does show the Sinaloa folks more love at the beginning of S2 or if it was a mistaken perception of Mín’s, maybe something he was blowing out of proportion.

I always got the sense that the favoritism wasn’t a figment of Mín’s imagination or something he was blowing out of proportion. There was an element to it that was real.

So, in light of that, I also suspect that even though he left Sinaloa and moved his whole base of operations to Guadalajara, Miguel still felt an affinity for his hometown and the dudes he grew up with.

Because while the Arellanos are family, his nieces and nephews, he didn’t actually grow up with them, he watched them grow up.

So, there’s automatically a more paternalistic dynamic, or maybe even a subconscious tendency to infantalize them, i.e. keep them at the proverbial kid’s table.

Whereas, with Güero, Cochi, and Chapo, they all more-or-less grew up together, so they’re on more equal footing.

If Miguel views himself and his organization as a single entity, then those who are closer to his equals stand to get a greater share of the loot because they comprise a larger part of him.

This favoritism is also likely why it was such a massive betrayal to the Sinaloa crew when Miguel begrudgingly gave the Arellanos the go-ahead to kill Cochi.

And thus, I suspect this is also why Miguel disproportionately reacted to Güero talking about killing him - not even doing it, just talking about it - by murdering poor sweet Hector’s whole ass fuckin’ family.

So, given the previous S3 episode with Dina’s wedding, we see that the Arellanos (Mín in particular) are similarly close to a place of true social and financial credibility for the first time, which underscores this gangster dream of “going straight,” this need for validation/legitimacy that Mín shares with Miguel.

It’s almost as though they both think they can shed their tainted bandido pasts and move forward to an elite future full of everything. It’s like Everything is a place to be, the destination for them.

For Miguel and Mín, there will never be enough money to fulfill them or to quell these particular cavernous wells of insecurity seated deep in both of their hearts.

This is what sets them on parallel journeys, despite the fact that they are almost polar opposites as individuals.

Their personalities and values are vastly different, which is perhaps best exemplified by the fact that no matter what happened in the course of the show, Mín always protected his family. Like, mans would sooner set himself on fire before betraying them, whether it’s to the cops or to a rival cartel. Like could you imagine a universe in which Mín does to Ruth what Miguel did to Maria? One of the few things we in the Narcos/Narcosmx fandom have overwhelmingly agreed upon is that there is no realistic fanfic plot that features Mín cheating on Ruth, the circumstances would have to be dire asf, or at least before he’s married, right? And then you got Miguel over there - mans had a whole ass baby with a woman who was very much not!Maria

I’ve seen quite a few gifsets showing the parallel journeys of Amado and Miguel, both of whom occupy the top of the aforementioned fucked/dysfunctional/rotating triad at some point but Amado’s success was motivated by something different. Amado was always too self-possessed to really give a fuck about being “legit.”

But I think that’s where the similarities stop for the most part and here’s why.

Amado was WAY more secure in his identity as an outlaw (an outlook that I believe originated with him but that I think was also fostered during his time with Pablo Acosta).

But Miguel and Mín, our two little Icaruses, literally cannot stop themselves from flying so close to the sun. Their drive for validation fuels them to success and also delivers them to failure.

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taglist: *no one: … me: chucking gifs in ur direction* @criatividad-e @tinylittleobsessions @artemiseamoon @narcos-narcosmx @narcolini @purplesong1028 @ashlingnarcos @curaheed @thesolotomyhan @narcosmx

#here we go #the whole big fucking ENCHILADA of a post #and also summore #yes #you guessed it #more GIFS #gifsongifsongifs #i probably read way too much into this analysis #anything that didn’t happen on the show explicitly is fully my interpretation #so please don’t take this as me saying aw yea this is what happened #because truthfully i don’t know shit about shit #not sure if you could already tell #also can we please talk about Mín’s beautiful goddamn beautiful fucking face #yes i meant beautiful 2x #he looks ace in both gifsets for diff reasons #in the Miguel gifset Mín’s serving hot!grad student that u make 👀 at when u run into him at the library vibes -> but make it drugs #in the Guero & Co gifset Mín’s serving DILF on vaca vibes for dayss -> but also make it drugs #oh and … #honorable mention to Hector Guero Palma’s hot-but-also-somehow-adorable asf shrug at the end #Guero really stepped up his game S3 like got me feelin some type of way #i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again #i do love me a broken man #narcos mexico #narcos #miguel angel felix gallardo #benjamin arellano felix #diego luna #alfonso dosal #character analysis #OG gifs by me