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El Estado Narco: una breve explicación sobre el tráfico de drogas, su efecto paralizante en el estado mexicano, y las expresiones artísticas del problema a través del cine
Abstract
This project attempts to examine the history, evolution, and rapid expansion of the drug trade industry in Mexico. Drug trafficking organizations have caused crime and violence to reach unprecedented levels on both sides of the border. As a result of economic and social struggle, a new form of Mexico’s capitalist state has emerged. This so-called Narco-state is battling a war against drugs which is ultimately failing due to the quickly evolving facets of organized crime. Drugs, human trafficking, and pirated property are all part of the multi-billion dollar import and export business. This generation’s culture of corruption has made its way to even the highest levels of the Mexican state government. As a result of intimidation, violence, and practically unlimited funds, the power struggle between government and organized crime has arguably been shifted in favor of the cartels. By summarizing and analyzing the points made in Ioan Grillo’s book El Narco, I attempt to provide a clear and accurate picture of the current issues involving the drug trade as well as our national response to it (or lack there of). It is necessary to educate ourselves regarding these often grim and sometimes overlooked current events in order to change them. By drawing examples from film, interviews, and music, this project may shed light on the evolving threat, proposed solutions, and the emerging culture of drug trafficking in Mexico.
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Drug Trafficking in Mexico is a multibillion-dollar industry which shapes the country
in many ways. This paper will highlight the economic impact of drug trade in Mexico
by using pro/contra analysis and evaluating strengths/weaknesses of selected research
fields such as consequences for small businesses, investment and employment.
A musical derivation of the traditional polka-and waltz-like corrido, the narcocorrido is often dismissed and simplistically read as an archaic and ultraviolent form of the “classic” Mexican ballad, updated only in its replacement of revolutionary heroes with the glorified exploits of contemporary cross-border drug traffickers. While increased attention has been given to the genre from both scholarly and popular authors in the past decade, most notably Mark Cameron Edberg, Hermann Herlinghaus, Sam Quiñones, Stephen Tatum, and Elijah Wald, this essay will reveal how this iteration of the contemporary corrido not only operates as a narrative form of geopolitical intervention, reflection, and critique, but one that serves to illuminate the tragically perverse, historical paradoxes that have produced this musical form within the context of both the referential past and the present of its making. Specifically using Jean Baudrillard’s notion of simulations and simulacra as a framework, this essay seeks to deconstruct the narco performance, revealing how any grounding in a rational reality has long since been replaced by a world of spectacle and empty signifiers.
This work studies the emergence in Mexico of a new form of peripheral capitalist State: the NarcoState, whose external manifestation is that of a technocratic neoliberal political regime with a strong presence of organized crime's representatives in its various governments as well as in the economy and in finance. This phenomenon is part of the current crisis of global capitalism, taking the form, in the case of Mexican society, of a major organic crisis consisting of a deficit of rationality (three decades without economic growth) and a deficit of institutional legitimacy. This has resulted in social violence and public insecurity at unprecedented levels in contemporary Mexico's history and in a growing militarization of the State apparatus, engaged in a failed war against drug trafficking.
Thanks to the nature of its political system, Mexico has had a long history of political corruption. Yet recent changes in the patterns of corruption and broader political changes have seemingly altered the equation. Anger over rampant corruption under President Carlos Salinas contributed to the stunning electoral defeat of the PRI in July 1997, while the outcome, the PRI's loss of majority control of the Chamber of Deputies, will add to the structural pressures that have mounted in recent years against institutionalised corruption. This article explores these trends. It sets out the historical and theoretical foundations of corruption in Mexico, examines changes in the incidence and patterns of corruption, and discusses the impact of recent political changes on this aspect of the system. Though cautiously optimistic regarding the impact of Mexico's political breakthrough on efforts to deal with the problem of corruption, the essay concludes on a cautious note, highlighting the difficulties other Latin American countries have encountered in strengthening the rule of law and reining in corruption.
Este trabajo explora el papel del ritual polílico en la esfera pública y la relación entre ritual, rumor y corrupción en la dialéctica de la expansión estatal en México. El trabajo considera el desarrollo histórico de las regiones políticas en México, traza los diversos espacios en que se dan "esferas públicas" en el espacio nacional, y luego discute el papel del ritual en la geografía política mexicana. El autor desarrolla una perspectiva teórica novedosa y presenta algunas propuestas metodológicas para el estudio de la mediación cultural en las sociedades nacionales, al tiempo que ilumina los lazos existentes entre el ritual político y la construcción de comunidades políticas en el espacio nacional. /// This paper explores the role of political ritual in the public sphere and the relation between ritual, rumor and corruption in the dialectic of state expansion in Mexico. The article explores the historical development of political regions in Mexico, identifies the various spaces in which "public spheres" occur in the national space and then discusses the role of ritual in Mexican political geography. The author develops a novel theoretical perspective, presenting a number of methodological proposals for the study of cultural mediation in national societies while shedding light on the existing links between political ritual and the construction of political communities in the national space.
This paper traces the antecedents and implementation of the so-called US certification process in the Western Hemisphere. It portrays certification as an emblematic component of an ongoing, yet ultimately ineffective and counterproductive, hemispheric anti-drug war based upon supply-side policies and unilateralism. The paper illustrates how the apparently inconstant application of the process in the region reveals the continuing existence of some awkward contradictions within US narcotic foreign policy. It is argued that issues of trade and commerce have now replaced Cold War political considerations as a cause of inconsistent transnational anti-drug policy. A discussion of US–Mexico narco-diplomatic relations since the creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) provides evidence of the systemically imposed and now well-ingrained practice of sacrificing drug control to other US foreign policy considerations.
Forty years ago, the world declared war on drugs. Today, after decades of failing to adequately control drug consumption, an even graver problem has emerged: violent drug traffickers have taken the industry hostage and will stop at nothing to preserve their power. Governments have instituted dozens of programs to dismantle the illicit drug industry, but they have seen only marginal success. One strategy, however, has yet to be fully tested: universal legalization. Universal legalization of all drugs would attack the illicit drug market head-on, destroying the profit incentive for drug traffickers and placing control of the industry in the hands of national governments. This Note first surveys the history of the illegal drug industry, focusing on the particular problem of violent drug traffickers. Second, this Note examines past attempts to control the drug industry and assesses their strengths and weaknesses. Third, this Note proposes a new scheme to end the violence associated with global drug trafficking-universal legalization-and assesses its potential efficacy and feasibility. Last, this Note posits a regulatory framework through which national governments can control their own domestic drug problems if drugs became legal, focusing particularly on the United States.
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