El Chapo Real and El Chapo fiction, in the same room | Culture

Alejandro Edda could not contain the curiosity to see Joaquín Guzmán Loera Live. "I'm not wearing a belt," he said before going through the metal detector at the door of the room chaired by Judge Brian Cogan. It is the first time that the Mexican actor goes to visit El Chapo, the character he plays in the Netflix Narcos series. "I come to soak," he says, "to learn." The defendant added that "I expected him to be taller."

El Chapo looked at the actor, greeted him smiling and the one from Puebla trembled. "It was surreal," he said, "my heart started beating and my hands were sweating." Everything he knew so far about the drug trafficker is because of the things he read, what they told him the friends he has in Sinaloa, the local people and the security guards of the production, "many are former soldiers who participated in the operations against the cartel". He explained that the only reference he had to model his voice was a video that dates from when he fled to Guatemala.

Edda, 34 years old, had the number 18 to enter. In the hearing of this Monday he could hear the voice of the drug lord only a few seconds in an intercepted call, although he will stay several days in New York in case the defense finally decided to put him on the stand to tell his part of the story. While waiting to enter, Edda explained that the series is focusing on the strongest events of the drug cartel, in order to have more impact. He also believes that these productions help create a debate.

In the lunch break, with several hours already having seen Guzmán in person and studying him in the intensity of the room, he noted that he was struck by the fact that he was so attentive during the hearing and focused on the interrogation. "I feel that he is very focused on everything that is happening," he said. "He is very present and he looks well in health, he has a good face and he looks healthy." And he says he was intimidated because he provoked feelings that were in conflict.

The Mexican actor, who lives on the coast of Jalisco, traveled expressly from Mexico for the trial. The royal Chapo, he said, "is like a two-edged sword". "The need at the beginning of his life led him to be who he is," he said, recalling the poor past of the drug trafficker, "the problem is that he did very bad things in the end. That is why he is judged. " But at the same time he has lamented that there are other bigger criminals in libertas and that the drug business continues to "stain my country [México]"

Outside the room he greeted Emma Coronel, the wife of El Chapo. As an actor, he says, he just does his job. But at the same time it gives courage that Guzmán is "the face of this scourge". "It's very sad," he concludes, "I put myself in the place of people who suffer the consequences of drug trafficking and it is terrible." His son, he says, asks if El Chapo is good or bad. "The other day he told me that he gave water to the poor," he says, "to whom people will believe more when they do not have electricity in their homes."

El Chapo, as the actor reiterates, is a "human being who exists". "I look at his ways, at his look, at how he touches his face, his features," he describes, while pointing out that this is the first time he was in a trial in his life. He was struck by the "friendly" attitude of the accused's lawyers and the atmosphere in the room, "zero hostile." "The experience has given me a lot," he admitted, "Nunac had seen him in a suit and tie."