Gold plated AK-47s. Marble columned mansions with caged panthers in the foyer. Caches of jewel-encrusted gold crucifixes affixed to heavy chains. Lots of bling is how you live when “investing for retirement” refers to your grave setting. And so it has been in Mexico among the drug gangs, spawning a pop culture infused with reverence for violence mixed with epicurean delights: narcocultura.
Narcocultura has a certain “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” appeal among poor boys who lack educational and job opportunities. “You’ve got these mythological figures, and if you take a 12-year-old who is living on a dirt road, no electricity, some very high poverty setting and they see these people, it’s a fantasy to be able to live like that. To have all that power and to be able to be so powerful even the government is afraid of you and they can be corrupted by you,” says Mark Edburg, a cultural anthropologist at The George Washington University. It is also laden with sex appeal. Young girls frequent beauty salons and mimic trends to try and catch a life of immediate luxury with a “narco prince.”
Mexican gangster raps, better known as narcocorridos, are rhythmically distinct from the American variety, but similarly contain vivid depictions of life in the fast lane. The lyrics can be quite profound, reassessing history, shootouts, and the justice system from the subaltern perspective. The natural beauty of mountains are a common theme. References to grandeur seem moored by a psyche that never can quite overlook a sunset, because tomorrow truly isn’t promised.
Much about narcocultura is now fading away. The government’s war on the cartels has made many of the more ostentatious trappings a thing of the past. Nowadays drug chieftains are rather more dapper, or rather more plain, blending into the social scene rather than sticking out. Their image, like their dress, is now muddled, “narco love” is met with “narco hate.”