ITESM Campus Monterrey

P.2012 Ciudadana y Democracia

Raoul Godnez
16.08.2016
Jos Luis Galn Argumedo A01017000
Al otro lado Questionnaire
1.

What is your position regarding narco-corridos in contemporary Mexican mainstream

culture? What political values do you think this situation represents?

Due to the nature of this question, Im taking the freedom throughout the following lines to state
my position before and after having seen the documentary of Natalia Almada.
Before seeing the documentary, narco-corridos was a foreign concept to me, describing
one of the most disappointing and fear-invoking problems that our contemporary Mexican
culture faces: the open worship of death, drug-trafficking, and self-empowerment disregarding
basic social values as life and the rule of law. These songs openly portrait the lives and deaths of
popular anti-heroes, made godly due to their reckless, fearless way of life. These songs are the
portrait of our incapacity to ensure equal opportunities to those who need it the most, to provide
education and a dignifying way of life for those in the bottom of the social pyramid.
After seeing the documentary, or having participated in the discussion on the seen
imagery, my position regarding the content of the songs has not changed, but the understanding
on what this genre to a significant portion of the population represents was profoundly
transformed. Using the words of Mark Cameron Edberg, author of El narcotraficante:
Narcocorridos and the Construction of a cultural persona on the US-Mexico Border. much of
this work [narco-corridos] has involved rich descriptive ethnography of cultural patterns in their
relation to social conditions, descriptions of attitudes, values and beliefs [](2004, p.13); it is
an attempt to focus on identity and representation. This is true to portions of the population that
lacked for decades a true identity, left orphan by a centralist Mexican government that seems to
have forsaken them, and deny a North American culture, foreign even for those who have lived
decades in what for us is the other side. The similitude has an uncanny similitude to what
Octavio Paz in his book El laberinto de la soledad described as Pachuco, fifty years ago
regarding a self-denying society and thus it is worth noting (1950, pp. 1-5).

2.

In terms of developmental issues for working class or peasant sectors in contemporary

Mexico, what do you think this represents or are trying to convey? What developmental
challenges do you perceive in the content of the documentary? Use a political focus to answer.
Narco-corridos, youngster affiliation to drug cartels, alongside a significant portion of the
northern Mexican population that emigrates into the United States, state what could be a clear
message: they have been forgotten, left to build their own identity and social heroes, perusing to
prevail oppressive poverty through the means that are to them given.
One of the biggest challenges that the Mexican government faces (independent from a
prevailing corrupt government) is the equalization of opportunities throughout a largely
secluded, socially divided population. As Chiquiar and Hanson explain through their paper
International Migration. Self-selection, and distribution of wages: Evidence from Mexico and
the United States, it is fact that Mexican migrants in the United States, while much less
educated than U.S. native, are on average more educated than their Mexican counterparts
(2002). Furthermore, despite the currently open discussion on weather illegal migrants contribute
more than what they require, the North American market demands these unskilled workers,
contributing in pay sales and property taxes and complementing on a rather unappealing job
market (Jacoby 2006 pp. 2-4). This only promotes a situation, where Mexicans workers are
forcedly displaced, risking a life threating illegal border crossing in order to find better life
conditions.
A far more worrisome scenario is left for those who stay home. When the option to an
uneducated, son of a working-class adolescent was given, either to stand out in a social circle,
being an idolized cartel warrior, whose life is almost guaranteed to end in a bloodshed or
gunfight, worth of odes and ballads; or stay behind for the rest of his life, subject of scarcity and
incapacity to change, the answer for many may be very clear. Drug trafficking is for them the
best and only way to have a dignifying life. The answer to this developmental challenge should
be simple enough: to ensure a quality of life through legal means that these very same teenagers
would perceive appealing enough to avoid the dangers of the life threatening drug trafficking
lifestyle. The biggest challenge is to find out HOW.

3.

How does the following Paco Caldern cartoon tie into a contemporary idea of Mexican

mainstream culture?

As Mexicans, we are proud: proud of our costumes and clothes; of the colors of our flag and our
national anthem. We are proud of our music and dance; we are even proud of our own
inventiveness. So proud are we of our own selves, that for many, any sign of affection and
approval of foreign values is marked as malinchista, and we as Mexicans, are scared of that
offensive statement. We are scared to be identified as someone who denies our own ancestry and
heritage, on the face of updated values; scared to be persecuted in an attempt to build bridges to
other cultures. Scared to be recognized as someone who denies oneself and openly accepts
others.
Surprisingly enough, as Jacqueline Gerson states through her contribution Malinchismo,
Betraying ones own to the book The Cultural Complex: Contemporary Jungian perspectives
on psyche and society the malinchismo complex is latent in our contemporary society: we prefer
foreign products above locally produced goods; we name our daughters Monique or Mark
instead of Mnica and Marcos; we even seek for foreign words to describe mundane objects,
instead of broadening our own language; everything foreign seems better. And yet, as Gerson
eloquently states,
We have not been able to move out of being possessed by this cultural complex. A
complex that holds people in this way tends to be static. Within the individuals of the
group, there is little reflection, little analysis, and no search for new possibilities. Rather,
they become stuck in a repetitively stereotypical point of view without a real tension of
opposites that can permit psychological movement (2004 pp. 35-37, 43).
thus, condemning ourselves to denial.

References.
Almada, N. (Director). (2005). Al otro lado [Motion picture on DVD]. Mexico - USA: Altamura
Films.
Chiquiar, D., & Hanson, G. (2002). International Migration, Self-Selection, and the Distribution
of Wages: Evidence from Mexico and the United States. National Buereau of Economic
Research. doi:10.3386/w9242
Edberg, Mark C. (2004). El narcotraficante: Narcocorridos and the construction of a cultural
persona on the U.S.-Mexico Border (2004). Ed. University of Texas Press: USA.
Gerson, J. (2004) Malinchismo, Betraying ones own in Singer, T., & Kimbles, S. L.
(2004). The cultural complex: Contemporary Jungian perspectives on psyche and society.
Hove, East Sussex: Brunner-Routledge.pp. 35-37, 43.
Jacoby, Tamar. (2006). "Immigration Nation."Foreign Affairs. Web. 15 Aug. 2016. Pp. 2-4
Paz, Octavio. (1950). El Pachugo y otros extremos. El laberinto de la Soledad. Ed. Fondo de
cultura econmica: Mxico. Pp 1-5.