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I have heard the following dialogue in the Narcos TV series:

--Para agarrarlo necesitamos toda esa tecnología satelital y espionaje que tiene su gobierno, Agente Peña.

--Y eso se lo pongo en sus manos yo?

Context: A drug dealer and the leaders of a right-wing paramilitary force want to kill Pablo Escobar and ask for the help of US Agent Peña to accomplish it. The drug dealer says the first sentence and Peña answers with the second one.

What does "se" mean here? I know it is replacing an indirect object pronoun "le" because it is before the direct object pronoun "lo". What would the indirect object pronoun "le" mean here?

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Alan Evangelista
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  • Yes, logically it would be "Le lo pongo en sus manos" but "le lo" gets replaced with "se lo" because that sounds and flows better, I guess. Remember "Ponme la mano aquí" (song lyric)? We show the ownership of a body part with an indirect object pronoun instead of a possessive pronoun in Spanish. Here, both are used, for emphasis -- in this case, to convey a tone of sarcasm. I'm writing a comment rather than an answer because I would like to find an existing le lo -> se lo Q-A to point to. – aparente001 Jan 14 '20 at 04:04
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    Does this answer your question? Why "se lo" instead of "le lo"? / ¿Por qué debo escoger "se lo" en vez de "le lo"? – aparente001 Jan 14 '20 at 04:05
  • @aparente001 My question is not about "le/se" before "lo", but rather the meaning of the indirect object pronoun in the sentence. I have edited my question to make it clear. The ownership of the body part is already expressed with the possessive pronoun "sus" in the sentence. – Alan Evangelista Jan 14 '20 at 09:21
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    @AlanEvangelista yes, "se lo pongo en las manos" would be more correct. Or "lo pongo en sus manos". "Se lo pongo en sus manos" sounds redundant. – wimi Jan 14 '20 at 09:33
  • Is the US agent supposed to be a native speaker of Spanish? – mdewey Jan 14 '20 at 09:37
  • @mdewey Yes, the character speaks Spanish fluently. – Alan Evangelista Jan 14 '20 at 12:08
  • These are Mexican or Colombian series about drugs, etc. I have seen most of the ones on Netflix and Amazon Prime. There is an entire way of talking. But sometimes, in their dialogue, they slip up even in their own dialect. This can be due to a character's level of education or an outright mistake by the actor. – Lambie Jan 14 '20 at 18:50
  • I tried to address both aspects of this in my comment. Now I will focus solely on the indirect object pronoun aspect without any distractions: Remember "Ponme la mano aquí" (song lyric)? We show the ownership of a body part with an indirect object pronoun instead of a possessive pronoun in Spanish. Here, both are used, for emphasis -- in this case, to convey a tone of sarcasm. Without the emphasis, we would just have "Se lo pongo en las manos yo?" Please let me know if more clarification is needed. – aparente001 Jan 15 '20 at 08:02
  • @aparente001 Thanks for the explanation. The emphatic purpose of the redundant "se" is clear now. Could you please write an answer? – Alan Evangelista Jan 15 '20 at 23:25
  • Okay, I'll go ahead and do so, but really, the procedure is supposed to be that people vote to close (your question currently has 4 votes to close, which on some site(s) would be enough), and then you edit your question to explain why the proposed duplicate doesn't answer your question, and then we would probably vote to reopen. But let's imagine that all of that happened. Because I see now where you weren't sure how to make the connection from the proposed duplicate. – aparente001 Jan 16 '20 at 04:11

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Yes, logically it would be "Le lo pongo en sus manos" but "le lo" gets replaced with "se lo" (there are questions q-a's about this).

Now, as to the function of the "le" -- do you remember a while back I shared the lyrics of the classic song "Ponme la mano aquí"? In Spanish one shows the ownership of a body part with an indirect object pronoun instead of using a possessive pronoun as is done in, for example, English.

Here, both are used, for emphasis -- in this case, to convey a tone of sarcasm. It's similar to "You want me to hand it to you on a silver platter?!"

aparente001
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