April 10th, 2017 
(NEWSMAX) — While the real Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is locked up in a cold, tiny cell in New York, his career as a drug lord apparently over, his fictional counterpart is free and in top form in Colombia, where the Univision network and Netflix are filming a television series about his life.
Ironically, Guzman’s re-arrest in 2016 — after two dramatic prison escapes — has created such a bloody power struggle for his Sinaloa cartel in Mexico that the series’ producers thought it would be safer to film in Colombia, the country that used to be the epicenter of the hemisphere’s drug violence.
Guzman was extradited to the United States in January, and his lawyers complain the conditions he faces at a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial are so restrictive they violate his rights.
The filming in Colombia was so cloaked in secrecy that the crew told locals they were filming a mythical TV soap opera, “Dolores de Amor,” roughly “The Pains of Love.” The Associated Press attended one filming session in the town of Taibo, where a half-dozen extras said they didn’t know what the series was about.