Write a response and explain what the author(s) want the reader to know about the attached reading: "Investigating Narcocorridos and Their Meaning in the U.S.-Mexico Border Context"
2. Investigating Narcocorridos and Their Meaning in the U.S.-Mexico Border Context As a particular case in which some of the general concerns men- tioned in Chapter 1 may be elucidated, the research on narcocorri- dos is intended as a preliminary investigation regarding their role, in combination with social conditions, in shaping the creation of a cultural archetype or persona—the narcotrafficker—and the pat- tern of action that ties violence, power, money, and drugs to po- litical, social, and regional themes for which the narcotrafficker is known. 1 Produced and distributed through well-known yet ‘‘under- ground’’ channels, these songs feature archetypal heroes, or ‘‘big men,’’ who are involved in the drug trade, smuggling, drug use, or other related activity that is prevalent on the border. Build- ing on the corrido tradition—border ballads with epic themes of heroes who resisted the Texas Rangers, U.S. authorities, or, in some cases, even central Mexican authorities (Paredes 1958, 1993; Herrera-Sobek 1993)—these new corridos have situated their pro- tagonists in the current border context and have gained substan- tial popularity among a wide range ofMexican,Mexican American, and other Hispanic audiences. For some narcocorrido groups (e.g., Los Tucanes de Tijuana or Los Tigres del Norte), 2 the audience has broadened beyond Mexico to Latin America at large. Like some ‘‘gangsta rap’’ or early reggae, the narcocorridos often describe the exploits of, and situations faced by, those who are por- trayed in some manner as outlaw heroes, or ‘‘social bandits’’ (Hobs- bawm 1969). A basic presumption, therefore, is the following: the fact that these songs are in corrido form has significance with re- spect to their meaning and themeaning of the narcotrafficker char- acter they so often feature. For purposes of this research, I was generally interested in the following: • How are these narcocorridos framed or understood by those who listen to them and those who produce them? Both groups Co py ri gh t @ 20 04 . Un iv er si ty o f Te xa s Pr es s. Al l ri gh ts r es er ve d. M ay n ot b e re pr od uc ed i n an y fo rm w it ho ut p er mi ss io n fr om t he p ub li sh er , ex ce pt f ai r us es p er mi tt ed u nd er U .S . or a pp li ca bl e co py ri gh t la w. EBSCO : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 7/22/2018 3:41 PM via UNIV OF TEXAS AT EL PASO AN: 130423 ; Edberg, Mark Cameron.; El Narcotraficante : Narcocorridos and the Construction of a Cultural Persona on the U.S.-Mexico Border Account: s4252121.main.ehost 26 El Narcotraficante have been included in this study under the assumption that the meanings commonly drawn from a given media product result from a synthesis of producer and consumer motives, goals, and interpretive frameworks. • How do the narcocorridos shape or reflect common under- standings of the narcotrafficker—particularly in terms of the way the narcotrafficker is situated in the context of broader social forces in the U.S.-Mexico border area, which include patterns of social stratification? • Do narcocorridos, as a vehicle for representing the narco- trafficker, have any impact on patterns of individual action, including violence and involvement in trafficking? And, finally, • Are the answers to these questions generalizable to broader questions regarding the influence of public (including media) representations on individual action? Of course, in a small-scale, preliminary study such as this, I do not expect definitive answers.What I hope for is more at the level of the suggestive, which can at least provide directions for further research. Research Site and Rationale I conducted the research primarily in two sites, following the gen- eral division between producers and consumers of the narcocorri- dos.The bulk of interviews and observations were conducted in the twin cities of El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, which straddle the border inWest Texas.Together, El Paso and Juárez form an urban area with a population of more than two million. The El Paso/Juárez metropolitan area is a major urban border center, char- acterized by significant poverty (e.g., in the colonias, slums or shack settlements) and visible wealth, due to the dominant presence of maquila (cross-border) industries and the drug trade. It also has a relatively high rate of drug use, including injection use. I also conducted a small number of interviews in Los Angeles, California, because that metropolitan area is the site of offices and studios for a number of the major producers, distributors, and mar- keters of narcocorridos and related music—including EMI Records (EMI-Latin) and Fonovisa and several smaller companies, such as Cintas Acuario Internacional. In addition, the Los Angeles area could be characterized as a ‘‘hot spot’’ with respect to the popularity of narcocorridos, not only because many are produced there, but Co py ri gh t @ 20 04 . Un iv er si ty o f Te xa s Pr es s. Al l ri gh ts r es er ve d. M ay n ot b e re pr od uc ed i n an y fo rm w it ho ut p er mi ss io n fr om t he p ub li sh er , ex ce pt f ai r us es p er mi tt ed u nd er U .S . or a pp li ca bl e co py ri gh t la w. EBSCO : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 7/22/2018 3:41 PM via UNIV OF TEXAS AT EL PASO AN: 130423 ; Edberg, Mark Cameron.; El Narcotraficante : Narcocorridos and the Construction of a Cultural Persona on the U.S.-Mexico Border Account: s4252121.main.ehost Investigating Narcocorridos 27 also because they are very popular in clubs and on radio stations serving the near-majority Hispanic population. Finally, I conducted interviews with members of a norteño group that performs all along the border and performs corridos (including narcocorridos) as an important part of their repertoire.These inter- views were conducted in Douglas, Arizona, a small border town di- rectly across from Agua Prieta in Mexico. The research was therefore organized on the lines of what George Marcus (1998) has called ‘‘multi-site ethnographic research.’’ It fol- lowed current theoretical developments in anthropology and other social sciences that seek to move beyond a strict construction of culture as tied to place. These developments are particularly rele- vant when studying cultural representations as they are produced, disseminated, and consumed via mass media, because mass-media representations flow so quickly across geographic space and are so easily available to be incorporated, adapted—or rejected—by people from a broad range of cultural traditions. Social Stratification and Poverty on the Border Thinking along the lines of multisited ethnography, however, does not mean ruling out any consideration of geography. The context of place still has a part to play in the meaning of representations; it just may not be the only or the final word. In this research, the geographic area in which most of the research took place retains some importance in understanding narcocorridos and the narco- trafficker image because the corrido genre at issue was born in a border context. Moreover, the area provides a historically relevant setting for assessing connections between social stratification and cultural representations. The U.S.-Mexico border is characterized by high poverty, migration, population flux, and a proliferation of cross-border factories, known as maquilas (or maquiladoras). The maquilas exemplify what has become the prevalent organization of labor among transnational corporations in the past several decades: administrative and technical operations located in the home coun- try, with manufacturing or assembly located offshore, or across the border, where inexpensive labor can be found (see Sklair 1989; Dwyer 1994). There are well over three hundred such maquilas on the Mexican side of the border in Juárez.While the maquilas have created employment on both sides of the border (though the flow of wage labor, not surprisingly, has moved to the Mexican side), much of the employment is low wage and characterized by high turnover (Dwyer 1994). Poverty in many large border cities such as Juárez Co py ri gh t @ 20 04 . Un iv er si ty o f Te xa s Pr es s. Al l ri gh ts r es er ve d. M ay n ot b e re pr od uc ed i n an y fo rm w it ho ut p er mi ss io n fr om t he p ub li sh er , ex ce pt f ai r us es p er mi tt ed u nd er U .S . or a pp li ca bl e co py ri gh t la w. EBSCO : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 7/22/2018 3:41 PM via UNIV OF TEXAS AT EL PASO AN: 130423 ; Edberg, Mark Cameron.; El Narcotraficante : Narcocorridos and the Construction of a Cultural Persona on the U.S.-Mexico Border Account: s4252121.main.ehost 28 El Narcotraficante is rampant, and the colonias on its outskirts are filled with house- holds living in wood-and-scrap shacks and often headed by single women who work in the maquilas. More than 100,000 residents have no running water (see Moore 2000). Even on the U.S. side of the border, the poverty rate is one-third greater than the national average, and per capita income is 12 per- cent below the average. Unemployment is high, and one-quarter of adults have less than a high school education (U.S. White House, Office of the Press Secretary, Bulletin, May 25, 1999). At the same time, the population is growing twice as fast as in the rest of the country and is much younger. In Juárez itself, only about one- quarter of the population has completed grade school (information from Juárez SISVEA [Sistema de Vigilancia Epidemiológica de las Adicciones—Epidemiologic Survey System of Addictions] director, Esteban Román Olvera, M.D., in Proceedings of Border Epidemi- ologyWork Group, August 1998). And El Paso, despite its gleaming city center, is the poorest large city in Texas and the fourth poor- est in the country (U.S. Census Bureau, 1992), with 25 percent of families living below the poverty line. It is also approximately 73 percent Hispanic. Finally, the reality of social stratification by racial or ethnic cate- gory in Mexico cannot be ignored. Despite the historical represen- tation of Mexican culture as mestizo, a deep racism born during the Spanish invasion and conquest remains as a ‘‘disdain for pure Indi- ans and a special respect for güeros, or whites’’ (Riding 1989, p. 7). Accompanying the racism is the socioeconomic fact that Indian peoples are, by and large, the poorest of Mexicans, while those of European (criollo) ancestry have traditionally been overrepresented among the economic elite, a pattern that mirrors the general legacy of European colonialism in theNewWorld. Also not unusual is that the most egregious racism against Indian peoples is often reported as coming from mestizos (Riding 1989, pp. 199–218). Apropos this research, rural people—a large part of the narcocorrido audience— may in general be more associated with poverty and ‘‘Indian-ness.’’ Narcocorridos as Subject Matter Examining narcocorridos and their social context and role provides an excellent vehicle for the examination of broader questions re- lated to the construction, production, and interpretation of media images and archetypes as they relate to poverty and social stratifi- cation, and the relationship between these media images and indi- vidual practice.This is so because narcocorridos are a current itera- Co py ri gh t @ 20 04 . Un iv er si ty o f Te xa s Pr es s. Al l ri gh ts r es er ve d. M ay n ot b e re pr od uc ed i n an y fo rm w it ho ut p er mi ss io n fr om t he p ub li sh er , ex ce pt f ai r us es p er mi tt ed u nd er U .S . or a pp li ca bl e co py ri gh t la w. EBSCO : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 7/22/2018 3:41 PM via UNIV OF TEXAS AT EL PASO AN: 130423 ; Edberg, Mark Cameron.; El Narcotraficante : Narcocorridos and the Construction of a Cultural Persona on the U.S.-Mexico Border Account: s4252121.main.ehost Investigating Narcocorridos 29 tion of the corrido form, a very deeply rooted vehicle in Mexican culture for the representation and dissemination of culturally sig- nificant values and social roles. In their current form, however, they have melded into the larger domain of mass media. This, as will be argued, not only has transformed certain elements of their essential character, but also has changed the way in which they exert influ- ence as purveyors of culturally shaped messages. To begin understanding narcocorridos