Pubdate: Fri, 25 May 2001
Source: Orange County Weekly (CA)
Issue: 25-31 May 2001
Section: Weekly Arts, Vol. 6, No. 38
Copyright: 2001, Orange County Weekly, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.ocweekly.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/322
Author: Gustavo Arellano

LIVING LA VIDA COCA

Singing Along With The Drug Trade

You're driving down Harbor Boulevard with the windows rolled up, but you 
can still feel it from a distance: the brain-rattling bass from a car 
stereo transmitting itself through the imperfect media of air, car and your 
own skeleton. You expect an expletive-filled rap from a Honda, but you 
instead pull up to a yuppie panzer, and then you hear the Spanish lyrics 
and the herky-jerky polka strains of an accordion. At the wheel is a 
teenager with a shaved head and earring but otherwise dressed like a 
chuntaro (a Mexican hillbilly).

This is the future America. The new Mexican no longer toils on his family's 
sterile plot of land. He works in el Norte to earn the new beast of burden: 
an SUV. He is the product of narcocultura-literally, the culture of 
narcotics trafficking-itself a byproduct of the American war on drugs.

Over the past 30 years, Mexican economics, pop culture and dress have been 
shaped by the drug business. And like almost everything bad in this world, 
narcocultura can be blamed in part on American excess. During the 
drug-fueled '70s, entrepreneurs known as narcotraficantes introduced drug 
crops throughout rural Mexico, especially in the state of Sinaloa, where 
the major narcotraficantes have been based. In an effort to eradicate the 
emerging narco-economy, the Mexican army went after smugglers and growers 
with equal vigor. With a common enemy, narcotraficantes and townspeople 
united in a socioeconomic symbiosis: the narcos would give ailing ranchos 
financial aid, and the citizens would grow drugs.

The benevolence of narcotraficantes created cult followings for the cartels 
and their leaders, including such figures as Amado Carrillo Fuentes, "El 
Senor de los Cielos" (the Lord of the Sky), who died during plastic surgery 
in 1997; Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, who recently escaped from a 
Guadalajara prison and is currently at large; and the Arellano-Felix cartel 
of Tijuana. Narcos became the modern-day folk heroes of Mexico, reported on 
breathlessly by the Mexican media.

With jobs and adoration, though, came gang hits and drug-related massacres 
throughout rural Mexico. The violence was exploited by a Mexican film 
industry that had been in decline throughout the 1960s and was desperate 
for a moneymaker. Thus the narcopelicula, the narco film. These were not 
Cheech and Chong farces but rather portrayals of the Mexican drug trade as 
a deadly but glamorous adventure. The men were almost stereotypically 
macho, the women either whores or virgins, and the movies violent even by 
the sanguinary standards of Mexican film. Shootouts were the norm-at 
weddings, while driving, in the mountains. The most famous actors of the 
narcopelicula, brothers Mario and Fernando Almada, were the good guys: 
50-year-old Dirty Geraldos massacring anyone who crossed their path. They 
became Mexican idols, and their films are still shown as if on an endless 
loop on Spanish-language television stations.

But the embodiment of narcocultura was the late Chalino Sanchez. Elvis 
Presley, John Lennon and Johnny Rotten rolled into one undocumented Mexican 
immigrant, Sanchez helped transform the corrido, Mexico's traditional song 
structure, into a running commentary on the glories and terrors of drug 
running: the narcocorrido.

Sanchez sang narcocorridos not in Mexico but in Southern California during 
the late 1980s. He combined the violent imagery of the narcopelicula and 
the corrido form-with its emphasis on communicating history-and added his 
own ideas. Sanchez turned the corrido into something like journalism, 
singing about contemporary but otherwise anonymous people whose only claim 
to fame was their (usually violent) life story. If he was experimental, he 
was also traditional, writing songs on commission, transforming the 
invisible lives of immigrants into heroic songs of violence, hard work and 
tragedy.

Soon, narcocultura had a sartorial style named for Sanchez himself, the 
Chalinazo: a cowboy hat, exotic-animal cowboy boots, gold chains, an ornate 
belt called a cinto pitiado, and silk shirts. After Sanchez's 1992 
assassination in Sinaloa, his style and music became de rigueur for any 
Mexican who wanted to be el mas chingon, the biggest badass around.

The music and clothes established, the official car of the narcocultura 
emerged from the suburban dreams of soccer moms and dads: the monstrous 
SUV. Much like corridos about famous horses in days gone by, new corridos 
hit the radio waves boasting about trucks-such as "El Cherokee de La 
Muerte" ("The Cherokee of Death") and "El Suburban." These new ballads sing 
the praises of vehicles bought with drug money and emblazoned with symbols 
of the rancho: bulls, horses and la Virgen de Guadalupe.

This love of materialism yielded the newest trend in narcocultura: corridos 
pesados, heavy corridos. They deal only peripherally with drugs and 
narcotraficantes, instead concentrating on trash talk. The protagonist in 
the corrido pesado has made his drug money; now he brags about what he owns 
as a result and vows to kick your ass if you have a problem with him. Most 
notably, singers of corridos pesados cuss-big time. This created a dilemma 
for the Federal Communications Commission. During the birth of corridos 
pesados, around 1999, Spanish-language radio was awash in expletives. 
Perhaps FCC monitors spoke Spanish, but not the Mexican Spanish in which 
many swear words translated literally have no obvious vulgar content. For 
example, "Te voy a madriar" means "I'm going to mother you," but in Mexican 
Spanish more liberally translates as "I'm going to kick your fucking ass." 
The FCC seems finally to have captured the nuances of Mexican swearing; in 
the past year, corridos pesados have been censored or outright banned on 
Spanish radio.

The group with the biggest reputation among narcocultura acts is Los Razos 
de Sacramento y Reynaldo, who play at JC Fandango Sunday night. Emulating 
the voicing (something between a howl and a screech) and dress that Sanchez 
employed, Los Razos have made their name as Los Reyes del Corrido Pesado 
(Kings of the Heavy Corrido) with songs such as "El Jodon" (The Bad-Ass 
Motherfucker) and "El Huevudo" (The Guy with Big Balls). In interviews, 
lead singer Sacramento Ramirez has frankly said the only reason his group 
sings corridos pesados is because that's where the money is. It's not the 
older generation of immigrants he wants as fans-it's their children, the 
ones who drive the huge trucks, are immersed in narcocultura and are the 
future of this nation. With corridos pesados in one culture, gangsta rap in 
another, and thrash metal as overlord, we can look forward to some 
interesting shit in the next decade.

Los Razos de Sacramento y Reynaldo perform with Eliseo Robles, Flamazo 
Norteno and Banda Grullo at JC Fandango, 1086 N. State College Blvd., 
Anaheim, (714) 758-9998. Sun., 8 p.m. $30.
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MAP posted-by: Beth