El Patron del Mal, Alias al Mexicano, Cartel del Sapos and Los Tres Caines portray real people and events. In Patron del Mal, there is little "law and order" bias and it's fairly consistent with historical accounts. While it humanizes the central traffickers (except for Escobar), it gives equal time to the victims, which is not surprising since it was written by Camilo Cano and produced by Juana Uribe -- each had a parent who were victims of Escobar.

Teresa Mendoza in the fictional La Reina del Sur is one of the strongest female character roles ever. Next Sunday she may get competition when Mun2-TV begins airing La Teniente, an action Teleseries about a young woman named Roberta who is the first woman to serve in combat in an elite anti-terrorim unit of the Mexican Marines. She turns out, of course, not to be just young and beautiful, but the toughest and smartest Marine in the group, and she overcomes all the male hostility, gaining everyone's respect. Like Teresa Mendoza, she breaks the "glass ceiling" and should serve as a powerful role model. (If you are thinking a top female drug trafficker can't serve as a role model, watch the series and see if you don't change your mind.)

So Mun2-TV is the only network to consistently feature English subtitles on its teleseries and telenovelas. Its parent, Telemnundo, used to but stopped on all but one or two telenovelas. As far as I can tell, and I've spent considerable time on this, neither Galavision, Univision, UniMas or Fox Mundo include English subtitles in their teleseries. And at least on my TV, only Spanish close-captioning is available.

If you aren't familiar with Latin, Mexican and Colombian-produced teleseries or telenovelas, I think there is a big difference between them. Telenovelas have emotional themes like U.S. soap operas. I have no interest in them. Teleseries (which include the Narconovelas) tend be action-oriented and made with much bigger budgets. Some are filmed in several countries with great scenery. They are much better made and have terrific actors. The cream of the crop of teleseries usually come from Colombia.

Telemundo is currently re-airing La Reina del Sur Monday to Thursday, without subtitles or English close-captioning. Why, when its subsidiary network, Mun2-TV has them? (The good news is Mun2-TV will re-air all of La Reina Del Sur starting in February.) Here's Telmundo bragging about the show being its highest ever rated, and translated into 32 languages (so why did it pull the English subtitles in the U.S.?)

The Spanish networks, including Telemundo and MundoFox, have put full episodes of their programs on their You Tube channels -- but there are no subtitles and You Tube's close-captioning is abysmal. Same for Caracol (and their full videos are not viewable in the U.S.)

Telemundo just inked a deal with a company called Drama Fever to provide translation of many of its shows for online viewing, but there are no teleseries so far. (The majority of Drama Fever's content seems to be Korean.)

I've been trying to watch El Capo, but it's too frustrating because of the language barrier. There's no available version of El Cartel del Sapos (Cartel of the Snitches) with subtitles currently airing. (You can get DVD's of Cartel with English subtitles, but from the reviews, they seem to be hacked copies, with poor video and incomplete episodes.)

I particularly want to see Los Tres Caines. It's about Carlos Castaño Gil and his brothers Vicente and Fidel, major drug traffickers who founded the AUC in Colombia (the right wing paramilitary group Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia) after FARC allegedly kidnapped and killed their father. They were instrumental in the take down of their former drug associate Pablo Escobar. They founded Los Pepes (Perseguidos por Pablo Escobar), which shared information with the Colombian military's Bloque de Búsqueda (Search Bloc) and the DEA, enabling the Search Bloc to find and kill Escobar (although many say he killed himself and others say it was one of the Pepes who fired the fatal shot.)

The Castano Brothers were also reportedly working with the CIA and provided information that led to the capture of Cali Cartel head Gilberto Oruela-Rodriguez, who is still serving a 30 year sentence in the U.S. They later became right-wing death squads.

Fox Mundo is now airing "Alias el Mexicano" about the infamous drug trafficker José Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha, one of the leaders of the Medellin cartel, along with Pablo Escobar, Carlos Lehder and the Ochoa brothers. The paths of many of these people are interwined. It was Escobar who introduced Rodriguez Gacha to Fidel Castano. Rodrguez Gacha and Castano had a shared political view (right-wing anti-communist) and Rodriguez-Gacha reportedly led the cartel's military operations in Magdalena Medio, where the Medellin Cartel owned huge amounts of land. Carlos Lehder, on the other hand, had far left political views. Here's a Brookings Institution chapter on them and their interconnections.

But I can't watch these shows because Xfinity doesn't carry Fox Mundo as a channel in Denver, and while it has some of its shows, including Alias el Mexicano, available "on demand" for free, they are only available to those with Xfinity's Latino package. Why would an English-speaking only viewer pay for the Latino package when there are no subtitles? And why wouldn't Xfinity want the extra subscribers and money it could generate if the shows provided subtitles?

In Colombia, Caracol (maker of Escobar: Patron de Mal) and RCN television (maker of Los Tres Caines) have many shows on Hulu, but they don't have subtitles. Xfinity carries Caracol, but it's only available by subscription to the Latino package. And since there aren't any subtitles, there's no point in subscribing if you don't speak Spanish.

These networks and Xfinity have to know there would be a substantial market for these programs if they opened them up to English speakers who don't know Spanish.

The networks are also losing money in DVD sales. While Patron del Mal is available with English subtitles, la Reina del Sur and Los Tres Caines are not.

Maybe if enough people complain, Telemundo will restore subtitles to its programs and FoxMundo and Caracol and RCN will start providing them. And Xfinity will start carrying FoxMundo in Denver (you can get it in Miami, LA, Dallas and some other cities.)

Another option, of course, is to strengthen my Spanish. But to understand these shows at the pace they speak would take me years. Yesterday I signed up for the free version of the recently added App on iTunes, Fluencia (You can also get the computer version here.) I have to say, it is far and away the best Spanish language teaching program I've tested so far. (I did not care for Rosetta Stone, it was slow and boring and I didn't learn a thing.) Fluencia is completely intuitive, very fast and interesting. It was so much fun I did all 15 free lessons in one sitting. And today I remember everything I learned yesterday.

I've read online that people have been able to learn Spanish by watching Teleseries or Telenovelas. I don't buy it. I've watched all 70 plus episodes each of El Patron del Mal and La Reina del Sur at least twice with English subtitles on Mun2 TV, and when I try and watch again on Telemundo without subtitles, I can't understand what they are saying. I can follow a bit from the Spanish close-captioning, but it isn't a true translation and is incomplete. It's also hard to watch and read close captioning (as opposed to subtitles) at the same time. Also, if that were true, I'd be fluent by now from all the Spanish wiretaps I've listened to while reading the FBI/DEA translations at the same time. (When I re-listen to the tapes without transcripts I still only understand bits and pieces.)

If you want to see for yourself what I'm talking about, you can watch tonight's episode of La Reina del Sur on Telemundo. It airs at 8 and again at 11 pm MT. It's free, but it's in Spanish with no subtitles.

So what's the solution to this dilemma, which I'd bet is one shared by a lot of English-only speakers who want to watch these shows? I think Xfinity should pay a bit more to the networks for the shows, to cover the networks' cost of adding translation. Xfinity could then add $5.00 a month to new subscribers to its Latino package, drawing lots of new English-speaking customers to make up the cost. The Spanish networks could in turn raise their ad prices since they are gaining additional viewers to cover any additional cost of translation. They might even profit. This might also be good for Spanish-only speaking viewers who want to learn English -- they could hear the show in Spanish and watch accurate English subtitles.