El Narcotraficante

‘War’ is no exaggeration in discussing the bloodshed that has terrorized Mexico in the past decades. As rival cartels battle for control of a billion-dollar drug trade, the body count - 23,000 dead in five years - and sheer horror beggar the imagination of journalistic witnesses. Cartel gunmen have attacked schools and rehabilitation centers, and murdered the entire families of those who defy them. Reformers and law enforcement officials have been gunned down within hours of taking office. Headless corpses are dumped on streets to intimidate rivals, and severed heads are rolled onto dancefloors as messages to would-be opponents. And the war is creeping northward, towards the United States. El Narco is the story of the ultraviolent criminal organizations that have turned huge areas of Mexico into a combat zone. It is a piercing portrait of a drug trade that turns ordinary men into mass murderers, as well as a diagnosis of what drives the cartels and what gives them such power. Veteran Mexico correspondent Ioan Grillo traces the gangs from their origins as smugglers to their present status as criminal empires. The narco cartels are a threat to the Mexican government - and their violence has now reached as far as North Carolina. El Narco is required reading for anyone concerned about one of the most important news stories of the decade.

Since the late 1970s, a new folk hero has risen to prominence in the U.S.-Mexico border region and beyond—the narcotrafficker. Celebrated in the narcocorrido, a current form of the traditional border song known as the corrido, narcotraffickers are often portrayed as larger-than-life "social bandits" who rise from poor or marginalized backgrounds to positions of power and wealth by operating outside the law and by living a life of excess, challenging authority (whether U.S. or Mexican), and flouting all risks, including death. This image, rooted in Mexican history, has been transformed and commodified by the music industry and by the drug trafficking industry itself into a potent and highly marketable product that has a broad appeal, particularly among those experiencing poverty and power disparities. At the same time, the transformation from folk hero to marketable product raises serious questions about characterizations of narcocorridos as "narratives of resistance." This multilayered ethnography takes a wide-ranging look at the persona of the narcotrafficker and how it has been shaped by Mexican border culture, socioeconomic and power disparities, and the transnational music industry. Mark Edberg begins by analyzing how the narcocorrido emerged from and relates to the traditional corrido and its folk hero. Then, drawing upon interviews and participant-observation with corrido listening audiences in the border zone, as well as musicians and industry producers of narcocorridos, he elucidates how the persona of the narcotrafficker has been created, commodified, and enacted, and why this character resonates so strongly with people who are excluded from traditional power structures. Finally, he takes a look at the concept of the cultural persona itself and its role as both cultural representation and model for practice.

Since the late 1970s, a new folk hero has risen to prominence in the U.S.-Mexico border region and beyond—the narcotrafficker. Celebrated in the narcocorrido, a current form of the traditional border song known as the corrido, narcotraffickers are often portrayed as larger-than-life "social bandits" who rise from poor or marginalized backgrounds to positions of power and wealth by operating outside the law and by living a life of excess, challenging authority (whether U.S. or Mexican), and flouting all risks, including death. This image, rooted in Mexican history, has been transformed and commodified by the music industry and by the drug trafficking industry itself into a potent and highly marketable product that has a broad appeal, particularly among those experiencing poverty and power disparities. At the same time, the transformation from folk hero to marketable product raises serious questions about characterizations of narcocorridos as "narratives of resistance." This multilayered ethnography takes a wide-ranging look at the persona of the narcotrafficker and how it has been shaped by Mexican border culture, socioeconomic and power disparities, and the transnational music industry. Mark Edberg begins by analyzing how the narcocorrido emerged from and relates to the traditional corrido and its folk hero. Then, drawing upon interviews and participant-observation with corrido listening audiences in the border zone, as well as musicians and industry producers of narcocorridos, he elucidates how the persona of the narcotrafficker has been created, commodified, and enacted, and why this character resonates so strongly with people who are excluded from traditional power structures. Finally, he takes a look at the concept of the cultural persona itself and its role as both cultural representation and model for practice.

“Malcolm Beith risked life and limb to tell the inside story of Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán Loera, Mexico’s notorious drug capo.” —George W. Grayson, author of Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State? The dense hills of Sinaloa, Mexico, were home to the most powerful drug lord since Pablo Escobar: Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. Guzman was among the world’s ten most wanted men and also appeared on Forbes magazine’s 2009 billionaire list. With his massive wealth, his army of professional killers, and a network of informants that reached into the highest levels of government, catching Guzman was once considered impossible Newly isolated by infighting amongst the cartels, and with Mexican and DEA authorities closing in, El Chapo was vulnerable as never before. Newsweek correspondent Malcolm Beith had spent years reporting on the drug wars and followed the chase with full access to senior officials and exclusive interviews with soldiers and drug traffickers in the region, including members of Guzman’s cartel. The Last Narco combines fearless reporting with the story of El Chapo’s legendary rise from a poor farming family to the “capo” of the world’s largest drug empire. “The Last Narco gracefully captures the heroic struggle of those who dare to stand up to the cartels, and the ways those cartels have tragically corrupted every aspect of Mexican law enforcement.” —Laura Bickford, producer, Traffic

This work marks the 3rd Small Wars Journal—El Centro anthology. Its analyses, crafted by over thirty contributing authors, forms a compilation of the violence and corruption in Mexico plaguing the first year of Enrique Peña Nieto’s presidency. Instances of spillover violence in the United States and the gang and cartel crime wars in other Latin American countries are also chronicled. Spanish language article appendices are additionally incorporated in this important anthology. Dave Dilegge SWJ Editor-in-Chief

Pedro Avilés Pérez, Jaime Herrera Nevarez, Juan N. Guerra, Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, Rafael Caro Quintero, Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, Manuel Salcido Uzeta, Pablo Acosta Villarreal, Juan José Esparragoza Moreno, Gilberto Ontiveros Lucero, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, Joaquín Loera Guzmán, los hermanos Arellano Félix, los hermanos Quintero Payán, Alberto Sicilia Falcón, Héctor Luis Palma Salazar, Rafael Muñoz Talavera, Juan García Ábrego, Casimiro Campos Espinosa, Luis Medrano García, José Alonso Pérez de la Rosa, Óscar Malherbe, Oliverio Chávez Araujo, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, Baldomero Medina Garza, Juan Ramón Matta Ballesteros, Pablo Escobar Gaviria, Carlos Enrique Lehder, Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha, Jorge Luis Ochoa Vázquez, Roberto Suárez Gómez, Luis Malpartida, Carlos Langbert, Reynaldo Rodríguez López, los hermanos Rodríguez Orejuela, entre muchos otros, son los principales protagonistas de esta novela político-policiaca. Aunque durante sus respectivos juicios se evitó hablar de sus poderosos e influyentes cómplices, al final salieron a relucir los nombres de los políticos, militares y policías como: Miguel Alemán Valdés, Luis Echeverría Álvarez, Mario Moya Palencia, Manuel Bartlett Díaz, Miguel Nazar Haro, José Antonio Zorilla Pérez, Rafael Chao López, Rafael Aguilar Guajardo, Florentino Ventura Gutiérrez, Miguel Aldana Ibarra, Manuel Ibarra Herrera, Carlos Aguilar Garza, Guillermo González Calderoni, Emilio Martínez Manautou, Tomás Yarrington Ruvalcaba, Leopoldo Sánchez Celis, Antonio Toledo Corro, Enrique Álvarez del Castillo, óscar Flores Sánchez, Javier Coello Trejo, Rodolfo León Aragón, Raúl Salinas de Gortari, Jorge Carpizo, Juan Arévalo Gardoqui, Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo, Arturo Durazo Moreno, Francisco Sahagún Baca, y de muchísimos personajes más. De los expedientes de estas historias, el periodista y escritor José Luis García Cabrera formó la trama de esta su quinta novela: 1920-2000 ¡El Pastel!, un documento apegado a la dura y terrible realidad del tráfico de drogas en México.

The predominant view in economic theory until the crisis of the '70s, argued the great enterprise was the key player in the innovation process, this was conceived as an activity that unfolded in specific areas, with clear responsibilities and predetermined objectives. This operating structure of the innovative process was functional demand model that favored the standardization of production. The innovative process was developed predominantly by firms that had a domain oligopolistic market from which they made windfall with which financed the research and development activities. In this context, the role of SMEs in the innovation process is limited to covering the portion of the market that big companies left.

Sponsored by the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology section of the American Sociological Association (CITAMS), this volume features social science research that examines the practices, patterns and messages related to representations of crime in mass media around the world.