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Stockholm University Master’s Thesis (30 ECTS) in Cinema Studies Department of Media Studies Spring 2013 Division of Cinema Studies

El mero chingón

Mexicanness at large

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Para mi Morenita, que siempre me resguarda bajo su manto. Para mis padres y Bicho, los ángeles responsables de este sueño que aquí se concreta. Och till min älskade själsfrände, tack för att du finns.

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ABSTRACT

El mero chingón: Mexicanness at large

Valeria Villegas

STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITY Department of Media Studies

Division of Cinema Studies May 2013

This thesis explores the discourse of Mexicanness and its relation to the moving image, pointing to the intellectual discussion it has been subject to since the beginning of the twentieth century. Further, it takes narcoculture as a relevant and recent phenomenon that has the capacity of confronting and reformulating Mexicanness by virtue of its hybridity. In order to assess its contradictions and contingency, this thesis navigates the origins, development and cultural specificities of drug dealing popular culture in the northern and border Mexican states, inserting it in a context of political and economic uncertainty, product of the current war on drugs waged on both sides of the border.

This dissertation draws from History, Latin American and Mexican studies to deconstruct and describe a thorough picture of the impact, popularity and pertinence of narco narratives in Mexican exploitation and theatrical film, as well as soap operas, which act as cornerstones of the liminal discourse of narcoculture. At the same time, it locates the melodramatic logics of narco film and music as vital for the construction of the modern notion of the Mexican drug dealer as an incarnation of contemporary and contradictory Mexicanness. This thesis points to the connection between Mexicanness, northern Mexican and transborder culture, highlighting the cross-cultural influences that meld in the border and northern states and comprise a rich landscape for theoretical analysis. Rendering a comprehensive landscape of the social, historical, cultural and economic factors that allowed for the creation of narcoculture, drug-dealing narratives are assessed as a popular and accessible means to reformulate Mexicanness in the face of contemporaneity.

Keywords

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Acknowledgements

This thesis came to be because of the love and pride felt towards my Mexican heritage, and each and every single lecture, seminar and class at Stockholm University nurtured its core. I thank every talented scholar in the Department that took time, dedication and particular care in giving me a word of advice and trust throughout this journey – this project could have not been possible without your support. Especially, I am most grateful to my supervisor, Professor John Fullerton, whose advice, commitment and patience (!) were key in the completion of this dissertation.

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Introductory notes

Mexicanness is an ever changing, historically contingent discourse overtly informed by colonial trauma and rupture brought about by Spanish colonization and later, by the Mexican-American War. This dissertation approaches the figure of the drug dealer (chingón) as a means to simultaneously reinforce and question institutional Mexicanness from a position of marginality. The revaluing of northern and border cultures elicits this process and unveils the hybrid core of the northern trafficker, which opens a dialogue between Mexicanness and the global landscape that demands an updated conception of national identity. Thus, the epics of modern drug dealing readdress constructions like Latin Americanness and Mexicanness while showing the relation between contemporary Mexico and the powerful neighbor of the north amid the war on drugs. Here, narconarratives expose the contradictions of institutional Mexicanness, updating the original discourse that resulted of the ambitious post-revolutionary Mexican zeitgeist.

By establishing a comprehensive historical framework that locates the reader in Latin America to then zoom into Mexico and its northern border, this dissertation navigates from the general to the particular to untangle Mexicanness and its relation to narcoculture.

Drawing from history and social anthropology, the figure of the chingón (drug kingpin) is explored, for it constitutes a face of contemporary Mexicanness: this thesis proposes that the chingón’s presence in film fiction and music simultaneously updates and reforms Mexicanness in the current scenery of economic urgency, political uncertainty and crisis.

Melodrama in Mexican narcocorridos, soap operas (telenovelas), latslploitation and theatrical features is underlined as a particularly useful resource to understand and delve further into the logics of narconarratives circulated through popular culture, highlighting the importance of marginality, illegality and hybridity to achieve this nuanced version of the original Mexicanness discourse through fiction.

However, it is important to note that this assessment does not constitute a political

stance or journalistic account of the violent occurrences related to organized crime in

Mexico, nor does it correspond to the corpus of this research to condemn or

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folkloric and mythical faces of modern Mexican culture: the fictional narco enacts and reformulates old feuds, presenting a fascinating and fully-fledged culture that claims visibility ever more forcefully. This is a journey through the border, where film and music overlap and unveil a different kind of Mexican, product of his and her time: Pancho Villa might be dead, but the chingón is not going anywhere.

Chapter overview

Chapter One provides a comprehensive introduction that tackles the concept of

Mexicanness as an institutional discourse, rendering its origins and contradictions, as well as the critical assessments inspired by its contingent, yet culturally specific qualities. The relationship between film and Mexicanness is also explored at length, tackling the different discursive forms derived from it throughout the twentieth century. Chapter Two tackles the colonial origin of Latin America and its relationship with Mexicanness, highlighting its opposition to North America. In the same vein, the core of the ambiguous, yet important relationship between the United States and Mexico is explored, zooming into northern and border identities as a site of hybridity where the original discourse of Mexicanness is negotiated and reformed in the face of immigration and traffic as interrelated phenomena.

Chapter Three assesses the matter of the discourse around drugs in Mexico and the bond

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Chapter One

The Mexican Mystery

¿A qué le tiras cuando sueñas, mexicano?,1 issued the starkly honest, yet picaresque songwriter Salvador Flores Rivera “Chava” Flores, “The Ultimate Mexican Folklorist,” remembered by his anecdotal accounts of urban life and its contradictions during the 1950s.2 As an involuntary sociologist of sorts, Flores ventured to capture several features

believed to be a trademark of Mexican identity: a people hopelessly devoted to dreaming, but conveniently apathetic towards real action; with great hubris, but servile when required; lacking seriousness, laughing at death, corruption and even devastation.

The portrayal of what is considered to be part of Mexican identity proves contradictory in popular culture renditions and scholarly accounts alike, as its ambivalent relation to its historical and social past is as uncertain as the one it holds with its future. Mexican identity proves a mystery, updated and confronted by political, economic and social circumstances that rewrite it constantly. This process is twofold, as the institutional account of Mexican identity pioneered by political parties and representatives is revisited and reappropriated by popular culture, adding critical layers to the debate on the complexity that Mexican culture and identity entail.

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accounts and musical rendition, amongst other platforms, endorse the legitimization of these guidelines of Mexicanness through repetition.

Still, we are left with the ever-expanding universe of a construction of identity that faces a set of new political, social and cultural changes, amidst a convulsive moment in Mexican history: the infamous guerra contra el narco (war against drugs) launched by ex-president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (2006-2012). Hand in glove with crisis, how is the idea of the prototypical Mexican rewritten?

This chapter aims to render a general account of the notion of Mexicanidad (Mexicanness) and the origin of its debate, as well as the most important traits associated to “Mexican character”, in order to highlight its relevance and reformulation through time. The relationship between Mexicanness and film will be explored next, while elaborating on the relevance of the state in the creation of normative models of Mexican identity and culture, as assessed by Daniel Chávez.3 Finally, a general frame of narratives centered on Mexicanness, as well as their surrounding political and economic circumstances, will be provided in order to bring forward the pertinence of analyzing and understanding the figure and myth of the chingón (drug kingpin). This figure will be championed in the present dissertation as a potential means to understand the ways in which the original discourses of Mexicanness and Mexican identity are rewritten, negotiated and reappropriated by contemporary narratives on the illegal drug trade.

1.1 Soy Mexicano: Mexicanness in the twentieth century4

“I am Mexican, I was born despising both life and death”, intones the actor Jorge Negrete in a charro (cattle rancher) outfit, in a sequence of El Peñón de las Á nimas (The Rock of Souls, Miguel Zacarías, 1943). Bragging about the gift of bravado, laughing at death and always holding on to his honor, Negrete becomes the incarnation of one of the most famous and enigmatic fictional characters in Mexican popular culture: the quintessential Mexican. “I’m bound to be recognized because of my bravery, I trust no one (…) I’ll never give in, I’d rather take it and laugh,” replies the musical accompaniment to       

3 Daniel Chávez. “The Eagle and the Serpent on the Screen: The State as Spectacle in Mexican Cinema”, Latin 

American Research Review 45, vol. 3 (2010): 115‐141. 

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Negrete.5 But this celebratory description of bravado and festiveness as authentically Mexican is not devoid of inconsistencies.

Contradiction stands at the core of what has come to be called Mexicanness, a discourse on the purported characteristics and viewpoints specific to Mexicans. Its institutional inception can be tracked to the first decades of the twentieth century, when a new and all-encompassing account of identity was sorely needed to create a sense of cohesion. In this period, the country was adrift after the era of modernization promoted by Porfirio Díaz (whose presidential period extended from 1879-1910 and ended with the revolution struggle).6 Further, the distance between the modern urban landscape and the

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this war waged against religious presence in public life put into question whether the purported, postcolonial pillars of Mexican identity were still valid. From this stemmed the need to institutionalize an agenda on Mexican identity, and the subsequent administrations headed by three presidents in name of Calles’ interests entered the 1930s waving the banner of Mexicanness and modern Mexican identity.7

Thus, it is of prime importance to highlight the prominent role played by the state as an institution purportedly derived from the revolutionary process through the creation of the Partido Nacional Revolucionario (National Revolution Party) in 1929, as it was a primary influence in the construction of an official notion of Mexicanness. This was achieved by the involvement of intellectuals appointed as advisors to governmental institutions, who started by defining Mexicanness as the reconciliation of indigenous and European roots.8 This glorified account claimed that Mexican and Latin American populations were the seed of a superior race-mixture, defined as “the cosmic race” by the Mexican intellectual José Vasconcelos.9

However, this unity project was far removed from reality. The revolution, ironically institutionalized in the name of a political party, became an outdated monolith that did not, by any means, provide social equality. Furthermore, neither did it deliver a well-rounded formulation of Mexicanness, as sharply stated by Charles Ramírez-Berg: “Arguably, the biggest disappointment of all was the Revolution’s inability to provide a cohesive formulation of Mexicanidad.”10

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mixture came forward as an essential component of Mexicanness. A first attempt at tackling the contradictions of institutional Mexicanness was provided by philosopher Samuel Ramos, who claimed that as a result of colonial trauma, a merciless inferiority complex was allocated at the center of Mexican identity.11 According to this first approach to Mexicanness, from this complex the blatant disbelief towards the institutions and the future was spawned, the lack of seriousness turned into bravado and the escapist attitude reflected in the festive excess, overtly associated with the Mexican’s need for overcompensation. Correspondingly, the exacerbated sense of hospitality and solidarity – often coded as male and associated to brotherhood– is thoroughly displayed as paramount in Mexican identity. However, this solidarity is only offered insofar as it underlines the magnanimity of such action and, as marked by Octavio Paz, does not leave the granter in a position of disadvantage.12

Following Ramos’ assessment, the most cited and revered exploration on the implications of Mexicanness came to be El Laberinto de la Soledad (The Labyrinth of Solitude) by the intellectual and Nobel laureate Octavio Paz. Arguably the most complete account of the contradictions in Mexican identity, Paz’s work draws from Ramos’ observations to affirm that the aforementioned inferiority complex stems from rupture and solitude as a consequence of the colonial period. The idiosyncratic defensiveness associated with the Mexican, then, according to Paz, generates from a dialectical relation between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ stances. The Mexican refuses to ‘slit open’ towards anyone else, constantly striving to inhabit the other by force, looking to trump over the open, perceived as tainted and invasive. The paramount figure that embodies this opposition is located in Malinche, the indigenous interpreter and concubine of Hernán Cortés during the Conquest. Here, the masculine is associated with the ‘closed’ and overpowering, only opposed to the end of the ‘open’, the feminine. The origin of the traumatic process of mestizaje (racial mixture) is then associated with Malinche and Cortés, where the female counterpart is       

11 Referred to by Ramos as an insight on the “Mexican psyche”, El Perfil del Hombre y la Cultura en México 

(1934) is in tune with his assessment of the Mexican character as one of machismo, bravado, lack of  seriousness and verbal violence. See Filósofo Samuel Ramos Magaña. Ayuntamiento de Zitácuaro, 

Michoacán. http://www.zitacuaro.gob.mx/?sec=nuestromunicipio/culturalocal/hymc2&bio_id=23 (Accessed  February 6, 2013). 

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tainted by the conqueror and ‘caves in’ in an act of treason that ultimately shapes her as a mother and a whore.

According to Paz, therein lies the essential machismo inherent in Mexican vernacular and in popular culture manifestations, where it is inadmissible to cave in and ‘slit open’, as la rajada (the open one) once did. This figure is referred to as La Chingada, the name by which the undesirable mother, Malinche, is evoked. This vernacular figure is essential to Mexicanness in popular accounts, as the ultimate desire is to attain violent triumph in every endeavor –referred to as chingar in Mexican Spanish– and thus become the ultimate chingón.13 Nevertheless, the resent felt towards the mother-whore dyad does

not drive Mexicanness away from a keen sense of attachment to the proverbial Mother –in correspondence to the absent father trope that constantly appears in the family dynamics accounts of popular culture14–, an important trope that stands in close relation to Mexicanness as depicted in film.15

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embodiment of the ultimate macho.17 However, the aforementioned dialectics brought on by Paz do not only work in the service of gender play and role assigning, but also highlight the conflict between the colonial and the modern, the indigenous and the European. This push and pull relation, says Paz, engenders the Mexican’s tendency of denial and leads to a culture of imitation of foreign forms, while paradoxically holding on to the difference that separates Mexicanness from universality, claiming uniqueness in popular adages like “Como México no hay dos” (There is only one Mexico).18 In this sense, Paz predicted the

advent of a set of observations regarding the hybrid nature of Mexican identity, as the matter of migration and the great influence of United States cultural production led to an academic reassessment of hybrid forms like chicano and border culture towards the 1960s and 1970s.

In later assessments, the scarred nature of Mexican identity as a product of colonial times stood at the center of intellectual elaborations of Mexicanness. Moreover, Paz’s seminal analysis was quickly acknowledged and reproduced during several decades after the publication of The Labyrinth of Solitude.

The second half of the twentieth century brought with it not only an array of moments in which economical doom was prime (such as the high devaluation of Mexican currency during the 1970s), but also the most fierce stage of state repression towards political opposition. Authoritarianism reached its peak during Gustavo Díaz Ordaz’s sexenio (1964-1970) and Luis Echeverría’s presidency (1970-1976), and was crystalized in the student massacre of October 2, 1968, and the later attack of civilians who opposed PRI’s reforms in 1971.19 This moment of political and social stagnation influenced greatly

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the set of new readings on Paz’s writings regarding Mexicanness, while bringing forward the need to revisit them in a contemporary light. Paz’s observations were criticized because of their essentialism, and labeled as echoes of a “telluric Mexico”, a key term in this renewed take on Mexicanness.20 This endeavor has been undertaken by writers as Jorge Ibargüengoitia, Carlos Fuentes, Carlos Monsiváis and Heriberto Yépez amongst others, but continues to be intensely reshaped by the literary work of author and journalist Juan Villoro.

Villoro’s books are certainly not the only assessment of this matter, but prove significant in understanding this new impulse. Villoro took Paz’s scepter in order to question Mexicanness in the context of globalization, questioning its relevance in the setting of contemporary Latin America.21 Embracing the context proper to the neoliberal

period after Paz, Villoro privileged the idea of a broader, multifold identity that no longer clings to the argument that the Mexican is necessarily embedded in collectivity. Furthermore, the updated formulation of Mexicanness that Villoro offers in novels like El Disparo de A rgón (1991), Materia Dispuesta (1997) and A rrecife (2012), amongst others, highlights the hybrid nature of today’s notions associated with “Mexican culture”, as it remains in quotation marks, undefined, a bearer of many questions. To a large extent, Villoro reconstructs the ridiculous cartoon of what Mexicanness came to be decades after the Revolution. Thus, parody22 is privileged to further demystify most institutions upon which the previous construct of Mexicanness relied: religiousness, the revolutionary agenda, highlighted folkloric uniqueness.23 The burlesque takes over as a predominant undertone

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lack of seriousness, however, reveals a kernel of criticism. Humor and parodic strategies often provide a tool to cope with rupture and trauma, as Paz argued. Furthermore, the picaresque has constituted a recurring approach to question and criticize Mexicanness, and by extension, has been championed in contemporary popular culture as a means to assess the figure of the narco.24

1.2 Mexicanness and the moving image

Inevitably tied to this discussion, the fleeting concept of Mexicanness proves difficult to understand due to its constant renewal, which can happen by endorsing the original discourse or on the contrary, by questioning and reformulating it in the products of popular culture. That is, through musical rendition, film depiction, graphic rendering and oral tradition, the ever-changing face of Mexicanness is drawn and re-drawn, wandering in order to find anchorage.

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audiences.26 In correspondence to the modernization efforts of the 1930s, the Mexican film production and distribution industries were well established and ripe to offer a full-fledged, normative model of Mexican identity. Understanding the potential that cinematic depiction had to perpetuate and articulate the Mexicanness discourse, the state nationalized the film industry and became actively involved in financing movie production. The good disposition shown towards the development of the cinematic medium revealed the state’s interest in pursuing the creation of films that would reassert and justify the prevalence of the PRI’s establishment. Thus, the political and institutional were, since the beginning, of great influence in the creation of film narratives that would often prove convenient to the state’s agenda. Film quickly became a priority in cultural policies as of the 1940s, which saw Mexico turn into an important producer of popular culture in Latin America during the Golden Age of Mexican film. The state assured its grip on cinematic production by funding the Banco Cinematográfico (Film Bank) in 1942 during Manuel Ávila Camacho’s presidency (1940-1946), encouraging filmmaking and never losing sight of the medium’s potential to shape and perpetuate the status quo.27

These displays of interest in film made the state an ever-present entity in Mexican cinema from the start. Further, and in accordance with the theorist Daniel Chávez, the presence of the state is constantly brought up directly or indirectly Mexican film, which poses a productive line of understanding regarding the relation between political interest and the formulation of discourses around Mexicanness.28

Chávez brings forward the recurrent filmic presence of the Mexican state and its advocates, either censoring criticism towards the institutional, or on the contrary, fostering an analytical attitude in the audience. However, I extrapolate this position to propose that the modes of depiction suggested by Chávez do not only address general outlooks on the institutional and political strand, but also invite to the reflection on how the discourse of

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Mexicanness is reappropriated, reproduced and rewritten by means of popular culture as projected in film.

In this sense, both the narratives with the state as protagonist, as well as those that show the average Mexican in personal endeavors and difficulties, can constitute a fair playground for these processes. I argue that everyday narratives starring ‘average’ Mexicans can also constitute a comment on the unsaid political dimension they carry. Even attempts at universal film narratives that aim to downplay cultural specificity reveal particular nuances of the Mexican context. An example can be found, as Deborah Shaw suggests, even in acclaimed ‘universal’ and quotidian narratives like the one offered in A mores Perros (Love’s a Bitch, González Iñárritu, 2000) where characteristics as economic urgency and political uncertainty are underplayed, for their normalization enables the illusion of homogeneous Mexican identity.29 This underscores that Mexicanness has not lost its puzzling pertinence, even when hidden in contemporary, seemingly politically removed accounts of Mexican life.

As I have mentioned earlier, the relation between power, legitimacy and depiction was, in principle, well delineated during the first half of the twentieth century. Additionally, from the early days in which cinema joined the call for Mexican unity after the revolution, its complementary relationship with other media was rendered evident: the establishing of the XEW radio station in 1930 provided a chance to promote the spreading of ‘national music and traits’ (such as Jorge Negrete’s songs) through narratives of a fictional nature, such as radionovelas (aural precedent to telenovelas – soaps).30 This responds to the creation of a fully fledged apparatus of propagation sponsored by the state, that aimed at reconstructing an otherwise conflicted nation through recognizable forms associated with Mexican identity. Moreover, these occurrences provide a starting point in order to track the different and overlapping modes of depiction in the state-identity dyad mentioned earlier as central to the debate on identity and Mexicanness. Theorist Daniel Chávez has insightfully

      

29 See Shaw’s analysis of Amores Perros and Como Agua para Chocolate in Contemporary Cinema of Latin 

America. 10 Key Films (New York and London: Continuum, 2003), 36‐70. 

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delineated four modes as entwining attitudes and trends of portrayal regarding the state across Mexican films.31

The post-revolutionary period gave place to the first mode Chávez tracks and describes as indigenist discourse, aimed at highlighting the potentialities of the mestizo and the glorification of the Mexican rural landscape through narratives identified as a “(…) home-bred film form that would tell Mexican Stories about Mexicans for Mexicans.”32 With the great success of directors like Emilio “El Indio” Fernández, these films generated attitudes of celebratory difference and uniqueness, illustrating the punctual observations of Paz on this matter.33

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trilogy starring Mexican film icon Pedro Infante and directed by Ismael Rodríguez (1948-1953).

The romanticized outlook on social and economic urgency in Golden Age films constituted a pre-emptive discursive strike to reformulate this inequality into folklore, avoiding its critical dimension and dodging commitment towards change. As responding to the hostile political context during the 1960s and 1970s, the presidential figure was, if not obliterated, highly restricted in its portrayal. As previously mentioned, the massacre of hundreds of civilians in the Tlatelolco Square in 196835 and the Corpus Christi repression of 1971 brought about yet another point of rupture, which would create a cinematic response to keep social turmoil at bay.36 As the mistrust in the PRI government increased

along with corruption and a series of fierce devaluations,37 Mexican cinema saw a paradoxical increase of financial support to its craft promoted by president Echeverría, bringing about a ‘second golden age’.38 This project aimed to have film show the potential of the Mexican nation to overcome difficulty and also to suggest that corruption and inequality were a natural consequence of history, and, therefore, the only way of enduring them was by complying with the law and order provided by the state.39

As it followed, the relation between state and citizenry grew in its complexity. During this period, the “problem film” provided a lenient account of seeming criticism of social ills (proposed as a third mode of representation by Chávez) in movies like El A pando        35 For the most comprehensive documentary account, see El Grito (Holler, Alejandro Jozkowicz, 1968).  36 See Miguel Nazar Haro y la Guerra Sucia: La Masacre del ‘Jueves de Corpus’. CNN Mexico. Published Jan 27,  2012. http://mexico.cnn.com/nacional/2012/01/27/la‐masacre‐del‐jueves‐de‐corpus (Accessed February 6,  2013).  37 By the end of Luis Echeverría’s presidency, the uncertainty regarding the value of the Mexican peso was at  a boiling point. By 1976, the American dollar was at an exchange rate of 25 pesos per dollar, and inflation,  along with the figures in the external debt, increased and was unsuccessfully tackled by José López Portillo  (1976‐1982) and Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado (1982‐1988). This led to a second devaluation in 1987; year in  which average wages were insufficient to face inflation, which reached a 180 percent increase. For a  detailed account about the economic and structural failures behind the 1976 crisis, see Saúl Escobar; Carlos  San Juan; Francisco Pérez Arce. “México y sus devaluaciones.” Nexos (Mexico City), April 1st, 1982. Available  in http://www.nexos.com.mx/?P=leerarticulo&Article=169 (Accessed February 26, 2013).   

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(The Heist, Cazals, 1976). By acknowledging corruption and poverty with a seemingly denunciatory tone, these films reinstated the suggestion of the state as the only legitimate means to tackle social problems, deviating cinematic attention elsewhere. This was achieved by financing prestige and genre pictures. The first were made by young directors and aimed to please the art house circuit, while the second offered generic entertainment and attracted a larger patronage by virtue of their accessible narratives. Independent producers increasingly absorbed genre pictures after Echeverría’s presidency ended – which marked the progressive withdrawal of the state from film funding.40

The proliferation of privately-financed genre films further privileged the use of parody and humor in storytelling, a trait that would be adopted in the 1990s as a recurrent approach on the progressive demystifying of the state and its conceptions of Mexicanness. Chávez identifies this strategy as a fourth mode of depiction regarding the relation between state and citizenry.41

In close correspondence to the social, the cinematic landscape provided a means of facing the social uncertainty provoked by economic crisis, once again anchoring hope in Mexicanness as the cement that could glue society together. This effort was evidenced by the creation of the Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía (Mexican Film Institute, IMCINE) in 1983, during Miguel de la Madrid’s presidency, which initially provided full funding for the production and distribution of films that vindicated and celebrated national identity. Promoting an active revival of cultural policies, the next presidential period, under Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994), steered society towards a discourse of ‘cultural modernization’, instituting the Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (National Council of Culture and Arts, CONACULTA) and the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las

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Artes (National Fund for Culture and Arts, FONCA).42 CONACULTA absorbed IMCINE in 1989, in direct connection with the Department of Education (Secretaría de Educación Pública, SEP), a measure that grouped these instances to work towards the portrayal of topics that protected and promoted Mexican identity.43

The prime importance of reinstating Mexicanness, however, also had a commercial undertone that pervaded well into the 2000s: “(…) contemporary state-funded Mexican film is engaged in order to project a highly exportable image of a changing, but immediately recognizable, modern Mexico, a country ripe for business and tourism, a quaint, demasculinized, and romantic paradise for the weary postmodern consumer.”44

During Salinas’ presidency, Ignacio Durán was appointed as head of IMCINE, actively supporting film insofar as it reinstated Mexicanness through renditions of the unity project it initially represented. It was during this period that Como A gua para Chocolate (Like W ater for Chocolate, Alfonso Arau, 1992) introduced nostalgic Mexicanness to foreign markets, becoming the highest grossing foreign-language film in the United States by 1993, and only to be trumped by A mores Perros a decade later.45 However, the return to romanticized Mexicanness by state-sponsored film was not the only option available. The idea of identity, along with its contradictions and reformulations, was actively reworked by independently-produced, low budget B-movies or videohomes (direct to tape and DVD productions), which had acquired momentum during the late 1970s. These films, labeled as latsploitation movies in virtue of their culturally specific appropriation of exploitation strategies, portrayed a nuanced, more colloquial version of Mexicanness than the one offered by big theatrical releases.46

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Further, the rewriting of Mexican identity was largely explored by means of films that took place on the northern border, a prolific setting to assess and identify the hybrid character of Mexican identity left behind in accounts like Arau’s. Progressively, these stories magnified the quality of the border as a place of illegal drug trade and crime, which rapidly turned narcodramas into a signature genre reproduced in exploitation features. The motivations, exploits and characters involved in the illegal drug trade, commonly named el narco, were increasingly popularized and turned into a recognizable phenomenon.47

However, the portrayal of these phenomena has ceased to be a marginal subject, permeating recent theatrical releases and IMCINE-sponsored initiatives, thus asserting its relevance in relation to Mexicanness and its reappropriation through the celebration of crime and violence.

This particular assessment of Mexicanness in a context of illegality appears intimately bound to a contemporary context of rampant insecurity, anomie and institutional incompetence. A scenery in which golden times from romanticized Mexico as beach, sand and love stories in the glorified Acapulco during the Golden Age sees this city positioned as the second most dangerous place in the world.48

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Cartel, the most powerful drug trade organization in Mexico– on January 19, 2001, from the Puente Grande high security prison.49 In this real story, the enemy got away and projected onto the media canvas a parody of the fierce authorities that claimed to defend the country. The narco was then set in the spotlight of national media and everyday life, more than ever before, to consolidate a recurring motif in film depiction: the rise and fall of the narco, its exploits and the inevitable sense of being untouchable by the authorities. The renditions in which governmental advocates were either cronies or incompetent in front of the illegal drug trade proliferated, and the visible effect in contemporary fiction film was, thus, undeniable. And it had El Chapo waving from Forbes’ 2012 World Billionaire’s list, for the fourth year in a row.50 In the public imagination, this matter brought down the Manichean position of good versus evil, authorities versus narco, and allowed for the mythification of the latter.

In this frame, the ridiculous ghost of the mestizo Mexicanness looking towards “great endeavors” –as “El Indio” Fernández would have it– surfaced during the celebrations held for the Centenary of the Revolution and Bicentenary of the Independence in 2010. Amidst the war on drugs, an occurrence by which Calderon’s sexenio will be remembered, a big celebration of Mexicanness took place not only with events in public venues, but also in the metaphorical public space of the cinema screen.

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reflections upon our history and national identity.”51 The screened films echoed the nostalgic accounts of Mexicanness and Mexican history, ranging from stories about the legendary icon, Pancho Villa (Chicogrande, Felipe Cazals, 2010), and the assassination attempt against dictator Porfirio Díaz in 1897 (El A tentado / The A ttempt Dossier, Jorge Fons, 2010) to a purportedly alternative view on national independence hero and “Father of the Motherland” (Padre de la Patria) Miguel Hidalgo (Hidalgo, la historia jamás contada / Hidalgo, the story we never knew, Antonio Serrano, 2010). Among these films was Luis Estrada’s El Infierno (El Narco, 2010). Featuring a poster in which the logo reading “México 2010” appeared pierced by various bullet holes, along with the words “nada que celebrar” (there is nothing to celebrate), the film directly addressed the involvement of average citizens and authorities in narco carnage. El Infierno became one of the few projects supported by IMCINE to issue a poignant, gory and critical account of the incompetence of the authorities to face the state of affairs concerning the country as occupied by narco activities– echoing Estrada’s La Ley de Herodes, an outspoken critique of PRI governments that was supported but delayed in its release by IMCINE one decade earlier.

A year after its release, the transparency of the failed state painted in El Infierno was featured as one of the lowest, ranked as 3.0 (10 being not corrupt, 0 being very corrupt) in the perception index published by Transparency International, and the ambiguous trust in the governmental machinery plummeted once again.52 As Calderon’s administration came

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Thus, the violent urgency of the subject weaved around the narco, as well as its ever-updating exploits and mythologies, stands at the core of contemporary Mexican representational anxieties. Moreover, the fierce criticism à propos the controversial return of PRI to power in the person of Enrique Peña Nieto has set the table for discussion regarding his administration’s take on the aforementioned war declared by his predecessor. In a scenery in which the Mexican federal government acknowledged 47,515 deaths over drug warfare up to September 2011, the impending need to assess the significance of the narco as a central figure in fiction becomes all the more pertinent.54

More than ever, the discourse of Mexicanness shines its dim light on the figure of the narco. In a time of social and economic urgency, is narco the new role model? Is it just a by-product of an unresponsive state? The figure of the narco in popular culture will be explored in the following chapters, as a means to understand its potential to question or reinstate the hegemonic discourse of Mexicanness.

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Chapter Two

Latinos and Gringos

“So, which one of the Latin countries are you from? The one with the civil war, the one with the cocaine or the one with the fancy hats?” - Stewie Griffin asks to an unnamed, brown-skinned and thick-accented maid in an episode of the famous animated series Family Guy.55 The joke being, amongst others, the demeaning homogeneity that renders Latin America as a big, impoverished and uneducated extension of land with no divisions. Regardless of its comedic undertone, the remark results thought provoking.

Popular culture renditions of Latin America often blur the boundaries and cultural specificities of the countries that comprise it, reinforcing a political and economic distinction between two blocs: the powerful North and the exotic South. Furthermore, this adds another layer of complexity to Mexicanness in its relation with other Latin countries, as well as with the neighbors of the north.

After having discussed the origins and pillars of the institutional discourse of Mexicanness, it becomes pertinent to look at the larger picture. That is, the concept of national identity is also embedded in the constraining notion of Latin America. Therefore, it is important to explore the general to particular dynamics of this arbitrary division.

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the North-South binary in America will help track the origins of the border narco figure in film fiction.

The popularity of these narratives, particularly among Mexican audiences based in the United States, unveils the interaction between anglo and latino, where the great divide marked by the waters of the Río Bravo witnesses a constant reworking of Mexican identities by virtue of the border.56 Hence, the understanding of Latin America, Mexico and El Norte (the north) will shed light on the hybrid nature of narcoculture and the way it can appropriate and assert Mexicanness. Taking the place of charismatic Jorge Negrete, the face of a contemporary Mexican is rendered. Here, the outlaw becomes the prevailing chingón… and, possibly, an updated sketch of the quintessential Mexican.

2.1 A mérica nació libre, el hombre la div idió57

“America was born free, men divided it”, intones Jorge Hernández from the norteño group Los Tigres del Norte in Somos más americanos (We Are More American, 2002).58 The division between North and Latin America poses a productive line of analysis to rethink the geographical and cultural basis upon which such delimitation rests. While Mexico is located in North America, the emphasis on it being a Latin country, rather than a North American one, proves revealing. Further, let us note that Mexicanness and its institutional discourse seem to greatly downplay its relation with Latinamericanness. Seemingly drifting between both blocs, Mexicanness becomes more complex before our gaze.

Certainly, the concept of Latin America highlights the role that the colonial period played in inventing and understanding the continent. Therefore, the colonial appears as a pervading presence, as the coining of the term Latin America alludes to its influence, further homogenizing the peoples of America and generating the need for a nuanced

      

56 Practical distinction of anglo (alluding exclusively to the United States) and latino borrowed from Hernán 

Solís Garza in Los Mexicanos del Norte (Mexico City: Editorial Nuestro Tiempo, 1971). 

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understanding of their particularities, closely following Juan Villoro’s elaborations about the need of rethinking Mexicanness in a globalized context.

However, Latin America is not the only term used to designate the group to which Spanish-speaking countries located in America belong. Let us distinguish three different terms: Hispanoamérica (roughly, Hispanic Americas), Iberoamérica (Iberian Americas) and Latinoamérica (Latin America, and its variant A mérica Latina, in Spanish). The first criterion to distinguish these is language: since Spanish was adopted in the American countries that were under the Spanish rule, the most general way to refer to these is Hispanoamérica. This particular name is given to the countries that have Spanish as an official or second official language, namely Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Venezuela. Nevertheless, this frame can include Brazil, as Portugal colonized its territory but was, in the past, closely bound to Spain as an all-encompassing entity, under peninsular Hispania. For that matter, the designation for Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries was set as Iberoamérica, for it acknowledges both of the Iberian powers that ruled these countries.59 Seemingly, the language criterion is a straightforward means of grouping these countries. Along with an effective division that contrasts Northern, Central and South America as three geographical blocs that compose the American Continent, divided by the Equatorial line, both Hispanoamérica and Iberoamérica provide a less controversial delineation. Yet, the impossibility of containing a nation in strictly geographical and language-based grounds, as I will explore further, still comes forward, largely as a result of the intense flow of Latino peoples migrating to the United States.

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Barquín in Paris, with the Bolivarian spirit of ‘Unifying the soul of America’.61 The word was actively promoted and accepted by the French rule of Napoleon III, pretending to group Spanish, Portuguese and, additionally, French-speaking peoples of America under an umbrella term. Nevertheless, this distinction, which associated the aforementioned countries by virtue of their linguistic similarity, was not an innocent move. As the late Spanish philologist, Santiago de los Mozos, argued, the term constituted a “linguistic weapon” used to jettison the Spanish and Portuguese heritages and legitimize the imperial French rule as an overpowering force over the (not so) New World.62 In short, it was a way

of asserting who would keep the bounty of Latin America.

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United States: “Those that pretend to lay their shackles on us / Let them find us ready for battle / Receive them with our gunpowder and gunshots / To the sound of the battle trumpet! (…) Nations of the South, brave, driven / the world will chant to your unity!”64

Moreover, it would be impossible to separate this reformulation of the term Latin A merica from the foregrounding Bolivarian ideal of La Patria Grande (The Great Motherland).65 The project of unifying the Americas in a sole nation through a bond that would overcome the colonial trauma and, thus, reinstate the Latin in its full glory, is privileged in several contemporary formulations about Latinamericanness. An important reconceptualization comes from the pen of the Uruguayan writer, novelist and journalist Eduardo Galeano. In his much praised book, Las venas abiertas de A mérica Latina (The open veins of Latin A merica), Latin America is no longer exclusively defined by its colonial past, but also by the commercial and economic relations it was forced to create in order to adapt to an overall capitalist regime.66 This critical line has been embraced by intellectuals proper to the Venezuelan and Cuban scenes, overtly opposed to and aware of the systematic exploitation of Latin America’s resources. However, the “open wound” of exploitation, as Galeano would have it, only magnifies the arbitrary nature of the division, which was motivated by geographical, political and economic agendas. According to Galeano, it reduces America to a pile of dependent states that are linguistically obliterated, much like De los Mozos argued about the French endorsement of the word Latin America:

“And along the way we even lost the right to call ourselves American. (…) Nowadays, America is, in the eye of the world, no more than the United States: we inhabit, if anything, a sub America, a second-class America, mistily identified.”67

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Certainly, Galeano’s is not the only critical voice on this matter, nor does it hold the unquestionable truth, and it falls out of the remit of this dissertation to fully tackle the political and economic causes of the impoverishment of Latin America. However, the poignant remarks made by the author help us understand the way Latin America is defined by virtue of its complex relationship with the United States.

Further, this matter is far from being an exclusively political debate, as it has permeated popular music, amongst other strands of popular culture. The recovery of the Bolivarian idea that reinstates America as a whole continent pushes through in the iconic song A mérica, by Los Tigres del Norte– the ensemble on which this dissertation will focus as a central voice of Mexican-Americans and Latino immigrants in the United States. Composer Enrique Franco,68 who penned this song while living in the United States, explicitly denounces the mistake of reducing America to the United States: “I was born bearing the color of the earth, and have inherited the Spanish language. The northern fellows call me ‘Latino’; they refuse to call me American. (…) If the ones born in Europe are Europeans, and those born in Africa, Africans, I was born in America, and I don’t see why I shouldn’t call myself an American.”69

Emphatically, the definition of Latin America takes on force when contrasted with North America, which poses a productive line of thought for this dissertation, as such opposition will help us navigate northern and border Mexican identities.

2.2 Somos más americanos que todititos los gringos70

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peoples of northern Mexico (norteños) have been largely influenced by the hybridity that characterizes the border. Moreover, the opposition of norteño (northern) and americano (American) is frequently reproduced and associated with narcodrama and narco film. As a result, this particular genre provides the possibility of identification and recognition of Mexicanness in border and U.S.-based Mexicans (and Latin Americans, for that matter) that avidly consume these narratives, bringing forward the ambivalent attitude of Mexicanness towards los gringos.71

In the case of the north, it can be argued that Mexicanness operates in a multi-directional fashion, while asserting its belonging to Latin America and yet, rewriting and expanding to incorporate and highlight the hybridity that seemed to be obliterated from the centralist, post-revolutionary discourse explored in the previous chapter. In order to discuss the regional identities privileged in narconarratives, it is pertinent to assess what is considered as el norte. For these purposes, I will refer to those states located in the border with the United States, namely, Baja California, Sonora, Coahuila, Chihuahua, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas, while adding the non-border states of Zacatecas and Sinaloa for their relevance to build an all-encompassing idea of the norteño and the narco.72

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possibilities of narconarratives over Mexicanness in La Reina del Sur (The Queen of the South, Telemundo, 2011) in the fourth chapter.

But even when some northern native peoples endured and contested the colonial trauma, they did not remain impervious towards the second trauma. Following the path drawn by Jorge Carrión’s and Octavio Paz’s observations, one could argue that the orphanhood paramount to Mexicanness in postmodern times is twofold: it does not only stem from the rupture brought about by the forceful colonizer, but also from the rupture provoked by the Mexican-American war (1846-1848). This anxiety, in line with Carrión’s formulations, was originated after the signing of the aforementioned Guadalupe Hidalgo Treaty annexed a large extension of Mexican land to the United States.75 This rupture, as

described by Carrión, marked the figurative emasculation of Mexico.76 In close connection with the chingón figure, the intruders were, more than ever, the gringos. This throwback to the norteño triumph over the neighbor of the north, foregrounded by Pancho Villa’s mythical figure –and in tune with the revolutionary rhetoric of Mexicanness in its origins– underscores the importance of chingar, outfoxing the United States in every way possible to assert retribution. Thus, northern Mexicanness gained currency in constant confrontation with the northerners on the other side of the border.

Nevertheless, however dated the effect of the loss of territory in the nineteenth century might seem, its influence in popular culture is palpable:

Don’t call me gringo, you fucking beaner, stay on your side of the god damned river; don’t call me gringo, you beaner / No me digas beaner, Mr. Puñetero, te sacaré un susto por racista y culero, no me llames frijolero, pinche gringo puñetero [my emphasis]77

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and

now why don't you look down to where your feet is planted / that U.S. soil that makes you take shit for granted / If not for Santa Anna, just to let you know, that where your feet are

planted would be Mexico, correcto! [my emphasis]78

The reproduction of structures of recognizable antagonism between Mexicans and gringos (in this case overlapping with the subject of migration) makes the figure of the chingón all the more forceful, as a representational force that seems to symbolically vindicate the Mexican loss of territory –and some would say, of dignity– through illegality, as I will argue later, asserting that “the drug dealers are the new Pancho Villas.”79 Further,

the use of melodramatic structures proves suitable for the ‘symbolic vindication’ I suggest, enhancing the sense of belonging in the audience while enabling the rewriting of Mexicanness.

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Mexican land from U.S. hands during the 1860s and 1870s.81 This outspoken opposition highlighted the enemy perceived in the United States, further complicating the sense of affiliation to those of Mexican descent, later known as chicanos. The aforementioned historical oppositions resonated with the hybrid nature of chicano culture and fueled its plea for political recognition during the 1960s and 1970s, as a voice of young political radicalism. Although it falls beyond the scope of this dissertation to make a longer assessment of chicano history, let us understand its relevance as a prime example of hybrid identities that conflate elements of both sides of the border, recuperating the national figure of Mi Raza (My People) and the mythical reference of A ztlán.82

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identities, whose contradictions and negotiations between Mexican and United States’ elements pervade in the figure of the border narco.

Under the light of the cultural intersections proper to the Mexican north, the border becomes a synonym for the merging of the cultures. As pointed out by the Mexican scholar Norma Iglesias, however, the perceptions and social representations associated with the border are greatly shaped by the side of the border on which we stand.85 Certainly, the importance of understanding the relation of norteños, the border and illegal drug trade stems from their constant association in cinematic depiction. The dynamics of supply and demand of drugs in the border, as well as the wave of violence derived from such activity, have been thoroughly portrayed in fronterizo (border) cinema. According to Iglesias, this has contributed to conceptualizing the border as a “(…) savage but appealing place (…) where one would flee justice. [A] free, lawless place, open to all.”86 Furthermore, and in accordance with Iglesias, these conceptions of the border both endorse and evidence transborderism, where the symbolic and cultural interaction between both sides of the fence modifies the social and cultural core of border identities, enriching them and thus nuancing essential Mexicanness. As a result, the contemporary norteño setting renders, as defined by the Mexican essayist Julián Herbert, “(…) a rotten pot of postmodern identities, and a tier that is not defined by the lack of culture, but rather by the simulacra of many cultures at once.” In his renditions, affiliating to norteño identity is more like devoting oneself to a dogmatic faith of sorts: it is indescribable by virtue of its hybridity and constant updating, and is in need of literary reassessment.87

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Chapter Three

Of how I came to love Mario Almada

3.1 Desde Nav olato v engo89

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who consumed psychotropic mushrooms in order to heal individuals “from within” and become one with the spirit world, and was later commercially exploited as a part of the 1960s and 1970s mind-expanding discourse about drug use.92 Thus, the use of psychoactive substances is not alien to Mexican culture and has been present since time immemorial.93 Although it is beyond the scope of the present dissertation to elaborate on such matters, it is of prime importance to note that the cultural meanings ascribed to drug consumption and distribution are far from new in the Mexican context, and have been reformulated thoroughly, first by the Spanish prohibition and then, by the twentieth-century ban on these substances.

By the turn of the century, the consumption of opium, marihuana and cocaine-based wines was legal in Mexico, as they were used as medical treatments for common physical ills and could easily be acquired in pharmacies.94 Further, this activity represented a lucrative venture for pharmaceutical companies at a time when these substances were not yet prohibited. Moreover, the Public Council of Health (Consejo Superior de Salud Pública) published in 1883 a set of guidelines that stipulated the responsible commercialization of psychoactive substances as legitimate medicine, which was to be carried out with the utmost attention on their purity and quality by apothecaries.95 The now controversial coca leaves, peyote, heroin, marihuana, opium and poppy-derived       

92 Agustín (ibid, 49‐54) records the mind‐boggling popularity mushrooms brought about by Robert Gordon 

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preparations were a part of the list of products to observe these guidelines. But even when some of these substances were legally imported from the United States, Asia and Europe to supply pharmaceutical and leisure demands, they could also be acquired in local markets and non-pharmaceutical establishments.96 Further, marihuana and opium poppy were officially reported as an integral and productive part of the native flora of the northern states of Sinaloa (1886) and Sonora (1828), which rapidly became known for being socially and agriculturally friendly towards drugs.97 Nevertheless, the cultivation and distribution of

these plants was banned in 1920 and 1926 respectively,98 which made northern produce a

forbidden fruit that would be largely exploited after the ban.99 Official prohibition was further reinforced by attitudes that seemed to obliterate the previous medical discourse around drugs, actively associating –by means of newspapers and gazettes– northern cities like Ciudad Juárez, Sinaloa and El Paso with drug abuse and distribution due to their prolific output of marihuana and poppy.100 From then on, the modern rhetoric connecting

illegal drugs and the northern cities was originated in public conscience and was reinforced by repetition. By this point, drugs and their consumption had already originated several associations of their own: as Astorga notes, the use of opium was often associated with Chinese minorities at the turn of the century, while marihuana was often stigmatized as the drug of low-lives and deadbeats,101 which was reinforced by popular imagery well into the 1960s and 1970s.102 The official prohibition of marihuana and poppy in the 1920s gave place to the creation of a web of liminal meanings surrounding drugs, sprouting a discourse

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that stood at the margins from the one promoted by the punitive authorities and generating a unique climate for the creation of what would be later understood as narcoculture.

Given that cultivating and distributing these plants was forbidden, the northern states, havens of marihuana and opium poppy par excellence, gave place to the early legend of the criminal chingón. As appointed by Astorga, the state of Sinaloa, home of kingpins such as El Chapo Guzmán and Caro Quintero, became what could arguably be the cradle of narcoculture, in which the social and historical contexts overlapped to facilitate the trade and production of opium, marihuana and poppy from an early stage, giving place to the early figure of the trafficker.103 Sinaloa and Sonora appeared as active points of marihuana

and poppy cultivation and trade as early as 1925, a few years after prohibition. Thus, Sinaloan populations such as Culiacán (the state’s capital), Mazatlán, La Cruz, Aguacaliente, Navolato, Sanalona, El Dorado and Oso were soon in the spotlight as meccas of prohibited plants that would later make their way to the United States.104 Additionally, drug consumption spread like wildfire in northern populations like Hermosillo (Sonora), Mexicali (Baja California) and Guadalajara (Jalisco), which were reported as venues of drug consumption and trade, monitored between 1922 and 1928.105 Further, the emergence of figures that predated modern Mexican cartel heads and business models, as the anthropologist and specialist in border cultures Howard Campbell recalls, can be exemplified by Pablo González El Pablote’s ring of morphine106 smuggling in the zone of El Paso-Juárez, which after the death of both of them was inherited to El Pablote’s wife,

      

103 Astorga. Ibid., 13.   104 Astorga. Ibid., 29‐32.  

105 As noted in Astorga’s detailed report of the first formal anti‐drug campaign enforced in Sinaloa during the 

1920s. Ibid., 30.  

106 As  a  complement  to  Campbell’s  assessment,  Juan  Carlos  Ramírez‐Pimienta  points  out  that  El  Pablote 

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Ignacia Jasso González, La Nacha.107 Jasso’s long career as a “Dope Queen” went on a prolific run from the 1920s to the 1970s, giving place to a formal and recognizable structure of illegal drug trade in the northern border.108

Therefore, the pervading presence of identities associated with the northern states as an element of narcoculture also relate to the hybridity proper of the zone, in which a constant cultural dialogue is carried out between both sides of the border. This poses the possibility of reworking Mexicanness in these contexts, in which the local and the global clash and call for an updated take on Mexican identity. Privileging the local also accentuates the dynamics between Mexico and the United States in an antagonistic relationship of certain ambiguity: as the most prominent criminal organizations of the last decades (Juárez, Sinaloa, Golfo and Tijuana cartels) have taken command of northern border cities, they have also waved the banner of local norteño identity with pride, while reinstating a relationship of cooperation, and yet, of dominance over their U.S. business partners.

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Mexican identity as a whole, and does not equal these instances. Narcoculture conflates a series of recognizable meanings à propos drug dealing activities, which are awarded a significant place in contemporary Mexican popular culture at this particular moment in history. Therefore, it is important to avoid the mistake of generalizing, acknowledging narcoculture’s existence as “(…) limited to the inner workings of Mexican and border drug-trafficking organizations, not [as] Mexican or border culture as a whole.”110 As Campbell

poignantly distinguishes, the notion of narcoculture is to be assessed as a construction of its own, as an illustration of contemporary Mexican hybridity but not as an instance that equals to Mexican culture at large, thinking of it as the product of “(…) a wider transnational dialogue between the neocolonial U.S. empire and the postcolonial existence of Latin America,” a context rendered in the former chapter’s discussion about Latin America and the Mexican north.111 Furthermore, these considerations are to be taken in mind when understanding the statement made in this dissertation, which sees in narcoculture a possibility of re-inscribing and questioning Mexicanness, and not as the essential rule for all northern and border identities, but rather as a phenomenon in close proximity to them.

The very existence of narcoculture confirms Astorga’s argument, which highlights that drug use and dealing do not only entail political and economic dimensions, but also generate meaning by their social and cultural significance, which is shaped in accordance with the sociopolitical context at hand.112 Narco and border narratives across film, television and music allow the audience to reimagine the border space and activities such as migration and drug dealing by means of fiction, which at the same time feeds upon social, political and cultural shifts. This directs our gaze to the north again, a landscape that would now substitute the classic cinematic battle between redskins and cowboys for one starring narcos and DEA agents.

3.2 Entering the drug war zone

As I have mentioned before, the northern Mexican border proves attractive when seen under the light of the illegal drug trade and its narrative epics in popular culture.       

110 Campbell. Ibid., 18.  

111 Benavides quoted in Campbell, Ibid., 18. 

112 Luis Alejandro Astorga. La Mitología del Narcotraficante en México. (Mexico: Plaza y Valdés, 2004 [1995]), 

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Further, drug dealing proves particularly profitable in the generalized situation of poverty on the border. Although the cartels have spawned several other organizations focused on extortion, kidnapping and blackmail as sideline activities, the profitability of smuggling narcotics over the border stands at their cultural core, promoting an apologetic image of the illegal drug trade as the magic key for escape from poverty and marginalization.

Let us look closer at the map: the border spreads over more than 3,000 kilometers and concentrates more than 10 million inhabitants in total. Here, the most important border cities are Ciudad Juárez and Ojinaga in Chihuahua; Matamoros, Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo in Tamaulipas; Mexicalli, Tijuana and Tecate in Baja California, Ciudad Acuña and Piedras Negras in Coahuila and finally, Agua Prieta, San Luis Río Colorado and Nogales in Sonora.113 Coincidentally, these cities report an increasing violence rate due to drug dealing, but also represent a gateway that enables migration and with that, the promise of a purported better life that waits on the other side of the fence. Additionally, this mobilization of people adds to the prolific landscape of hybrid cultural forms, eliciting different degrees of transborderism that contribute to the dialogue of a nuanced and contemporary idea of Mexicanness.114

Moreover, the border situation has changed greatly over the past two decades. Although the northern states registered temporary and greatly increased growth after the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994,115 this temporary bonanza vanished between 2000 and 2004, hitting all-time low unemployment rates that rose to 5.42 per cent at the highest, reaching the low and medium tiers of northern society in equal measure.116 Summed to an overall unemployment rate of 5.5 per cent in Mexico

between 2002 and 2009, the most affected sectors were young graduates and agrarian workers.117 Additionally, the impoverishment of the latter has favored the popular ‘change of crop’, in which a more profitable produce is harvested: poppy and marihuana. The       

113 Isaac Leobardo Sánchez Juárez; Rosa María García Almada. “La Frontera Norte de México: Una 

aproximación socio‐económica desde Tijuana”. Entelequia, Revista Interdisciplinar 13 (Spring 2011): 110‐111. 

114 As borrowed from Iglesias’ term, Ibid.  

115 See North American Free Trade Agreement Portal. http://www.naftanow.org/ (Accessed April 4, 2013).  116 Ernesto Eliseo Díaz González; Turner Barragán. “Pobreza y política social en México y estados de la 

Frontera Norte.” Análisis Económico 64, vol. 26. (First quarter of 2012).  

117 Esther Figueroa; Orsohe Ramírez; Martín González; Francisco Pérez; Luis Enrique Espinosa. “Análisis del 

References

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