I'm a software engineer from Colombia and Narcos is definitely exaggerated and over dramatized. The cartel war of the 80s and 90s was definitely very brutal and

I'm a software engineer from Colombia and Narcos is definitely exaggerated and over dramatized. The cartel war of the 80s and 90s was definitely very brutal and absolutely terrible for the country but for the vast majority of people that lived through those times (me included) we watched the violence in the news like everybody else. Only in very specific areas of the country some people got to experience actual violence. Colombia has a population of 50 million and at most those cartel gangs add up to 15,000 members in total (counting the guerrilla groups) which is a pretty scary number but still only around 0.03% percent of the population in total. Cartels tend to operate in very marginalized or remote areas (like the jungles) so for many Colombians violence like the one showed in Narcos is something we rarely experience.