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REPORTS: MEXICO |
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On
the Edge, The Drug Cartel Threat
By Michelle Melendez
MEXICO
CITY -- Mexicans view drug lords here
the same way they view death -- as a
fact of life that's easier to live
with if you make it a joke.
They celebrate the Mexican holiday Day
of the Dead with candy skulls and
bone-shaped breads. They make
characters out of drug smugglers with
such names as the king, the lion, the
tiger and the rooster, the highest
rank of all.
The narco is the new
hero-villain in popular border music
and films. He's the bad guy being
protected by police in a popular
prime-time soap opera. He's the dark
figure in detective novels, lurking on
dirty Mexico City streets.
As mystery novelist Paco Taibo II puts
it, the narcotraficante is a
popular character "because it's
there."
Writers, musicians and film makers get
their material from everyday life.
For example:
* Dozens of murders of high-ranking
police officials are linked to drug
cartels;
* The still-unsolved assassinations of
a presidential candidate and political
party leader are rumored to be
connected to drug kingpins;
* There are allegations by the
government that peasant uprisings are
backed by drug runners and mounting
evidence that drug capos rose to power
by paying off key political bosses.
Mexican foreign policy expert Jorge
Chabat says only half-jokingly that
Mexico has to be a democracy before it
can be a narco-democracy.
Given the lack of public confidence in
the judicial process, the cultural
responses to drug smuggling seem less
absurd.
To his countrymen, the marijuaneros
lived by the motto "Easy come,
easy go," Taibo says. They spread
the wealth by building a fountain,
erecting a monument or footing the
bill for the spring carnival in their
hometowns. Similarly, poppy growers
employ kids in the fields after school
to harvest the gummy material used to
produce heroin.
"These guys are full of money in
poor communities," Taibo says.
That's why in many corridos (Mexican
ballads) the drug lord is portrayed as
the pillar of the community.
Ballads star smugglers
The Mexican drug smuggler has taken
the place of revolutionaries in
corridos, the popular music of
northern Mexico and the southwestern
U.S. border. The stylized characters
in the songs have names like El
Gallo (the rooster or boss), El
Gato, El Zorro, El Negro and the
Gypsy.
The corrido is a narrative musical
form most commonly performed with the
accordion playing a polka rhythm, made
famous by such bands as Los Tigres del
Norte.
While the earliest corridos can be
traced to the Mexican independence
struggle of the 1820s, the corrido
really grew up later on the Texas
border with stories about cattle
drives and tequila smugglers
outrunning the Texas Rangers, says
Manuel Peña, a social anthropologist
at the University of Texas at Austin.
Peña, who specializes in
Mexican-American musical history, says
the corrido came of age during the
Mexican Revolution in 1910. It
chronicled the events of that war and
served as a town crier for illiterate
peasants in the far reaches of the
republic.
"The corrido became a symbol of
defiance," Peña said. "The
hero-corrido tradition started with
corridos about intercultural
conflict."
The most famous corrido was made into
a movie starring Edward James Olmos.
" 'The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez'
told the story of a brave Mexican who
defended his rights with his pistol in
his hand against an army of gringo
cowards," Peña said.
As early as the 1970s, writers
composed corridos about drug
smugglers.
"They still resonate in the
consciousness of the working-class
Mexicano, people who live in
misery," Peña said. "The narcotraficantes
challenge law and order, and peasants
don't have any use for law and
order."
One corrido sung by Los Tucanes de
Tijuana opens with a narrative scene
about the seconds before drug
trafficker Guero Palma's airplane
crashed in Nayarit. The crash led to
Palma's capture by Mexican officials.
He was a "king," goes the
song. "The country was his."
Another lists all the infamous
"bosses" of Sinaloa on
Mexico's central Pacific coast, a
state known for marijuana and poppy
cultivation.
Some say the ballads romanticize
drugs. A group of mothers in Tijuana
is trying to get the songs banned from
the radio. Others say they simply
mirror contemporary life in Mexico.
Bruce Springsteen even got in on the
act with "Sinaloa Cowboys,"
a song about a couple of immigrant
brothers who worked the fields in
California until they found they could
make more money cooking
methamphetamines for their bosses from
Sinaloa.
The Sinaloan drug saint
In Sinaloa, Santo Malverde is said to
be the patron saint of drug smugglers.
Jesus Malverde was a real-life Robin
Hood figure in the late 1800s during
the 35-year dictatorship of General
Porfirio Diaz, says Luis Astorga,
author of "Mythology of the Drug
Smuggler."
A chapel stands at the railroad
crossing in Culiacan, Sinaloa, near
the site where Malverde was hanged in
1910, says writer John Ross.
Ross, a journalist who has lived in
Mexico for most of the past four
decades, said Malverde was called
"Bad Green" because he
dressed in banana leaves and jumped
out from behind bushes to rob the
rich. Then he distributed coins to the
poor.
After his death, people pitched stones
at his hanging corpse and received
good tidings, thus guaranteeing
sainthood for the man. He is not
recognized by the Catholic Church.
Malverde became associated with drug
runners through his following among a
colony of poppy pickers, Ross said.
Malverde has also become the protector
of migrant workers, prostitutes and
one-legged men.
Believers pin testimonies to the walls
of the chapel, adorned with flowers
and candles around an encased plastic
head of the saint. People throw
stones, rub the plastic head and paste
locks of hair to the walls, thanking
Malverde for their good fortunes and
praying for his protection.
TV imitates life
The nation's attention is riveted on
an ongoing drama involving a
fortune-teller, a jilted lover and
several other conspirators.
The real-life group is behind bars for
allegedly trying to frame Raul Salinas
de Gotari, brother of the former
president. They allegedly planted a
body on a ranch owned by Salinas to
bolster a murder charge against him.
(He has been held in jail for two
years without a trial and also is
accused of amassing $120 million
through corruption.)
The bones were "discovered"
around Day of the Dead -- perfect
timing.
"What could a writer invent to
top this melodrama," remarked
acclaimed Mexican novelist Carlos
Fuentes.
The makers of the telenovela
"Nada Personal" couldn't
have predicted the real-life drama
would eclipse the finale of their
prime-time soap opera.
The soap opera began airing last year
on an independent television station
(seen locally on the Telemundo
network), and broke government
censorship rules by opening with a
high-level assassination and narco-corruption.
Camila, the main character, revealed
the truth about the chief of
intelligence for the city police, who
was bought and paid for by the drug
cartels and responsible for murdering
Camila's father, a former attorney
general.
She got the information by romancing
the corrupt cop and turned it over to
her boyfriend -- a hotshot reporter.
She unmasked the cop despite an
English-speaking American's warnings
that to do so would harm bilateral
relations.
Symbol still strong
Taibo says the narco is losing its
romantic character as reality worsens.
Still the narco makes a good villain
in his books.
In one book, "Some Clouds,"
the villain -- Commander Saavedra --
is a judicial police commander who
rose to his position of power by
stealing cocaine from a pair of gringo
drug runners.
Taibo writes: "It wasn't long
before he discovered that coke had the
power to open doors and windows."
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