The Ballad of Narcomexico

Abstract

In the first years of the new millennium, Mexico experienced a wave of violence associated with the trafficking of illegal substances, and the deep-seated Mexican ballad tradition called the corrido has served as a chronicle of these events, facilitating a popular discourse couched in the sweet sonorities of Mexican song and bespeaking a heroic vision of history as witnessed at the grass-roots level. Here, in what was first delivered as an address to the American Folklore Society, I seek to get beyond the slick veneer of the narcocorridos, ballads that celebrate and glamorize the trade, to sample a zone of commemorative practice where narcocorridos share a space in the national consciousness with two additional manifestations of the contemporary genre: corridos of trafficking, which tell drug-world stories in a level-headed manner, and corridos of remediation, which seek to ameliorate the devastation wrought upon the Mexican people by the drug wars of the early twentyfirst century.