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Nonfiction

Violence and Drug-Trafficking in Mexico

By Juan Villoro
Translated from Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa
This journalistic essay explores the causes and human costs of the drug wars.

In Mexico, people will pay up to $70,000 dollars for a license to hunt and kill a bighorn sheep. Killing a man is much cheaper—about $2,000, according to the rates charged by hitmen in Ciudad Juárez, the most dangerous city in the world.

And yet, on occasions, death comes free. On August 24, 2010, in Tamaulipas, seventy-two migrants were murdered before they could achieve the golden American dream. The workers, who had no passports, came from Brazil, Central America, and various parts of Mexico. They were intercepted by a group of hired killers, who tried to recruit them as drug-traffickers, offering them easy money and food, as well as that most important commodity in these lawless deserts: protection. After their difficult journey, the migrants were quite happy to undertake any of the illegal jobs on offer in the United States, but they were unwilling to get involved in organized crime. For a few minutes, they “negotiated” with the AK-47s of those trying to recruit them, but they would meet the same fate as certain mayors who have dared to reject similar offers from the drug-traffickers. In that no-man’s land where snakes and impunity from the law are the rule, saying “No” is an affront. The migrant workers were duly gunned down.

This incident came to light because of the testimony of a survivor (whose name has been carelessly bandied about by the Mexican and international press, putting both his life and the lives of his family at risk).

Néstor García Canclini, author of Culturas híbridas [Hybrid Cultures], said to me a few days ago: “The worst aspect of the whole affair is that it’s hardly the first time this kind of thing has happened. In the last six months, ten thousand illegal migrants have been kidnapped. After all, they’re the perfect victims: defenseless people with no identity papers looking for illegal work. The kidnappers get paid $400, payable via Western Union.” These are insignificant amounts of money compared with the sums involved in trafficking drugs, guns, and women, but they reveal the scale of social decay and the lack of protection that characterizes much of the area.

Amado Carrillo was known as “The Lord of the Heavens”—not because he was particularly religious, but because of the regularity with which his cocaine-laden light aircraft took off—and in the 1990s, he proposed paying off the country’s foreign debt in exchange for the government allowing him to continue his activities unimpeded. Drug-traffickers with a social agenda are a thing of the past. They are now openly violent and their violence affects everyone.

Death has long been a dominant feature of Mexican culture, from the popular celebrations held in cemeteries on the Day of the Dead to the artist José Guadalupe Posada’s engravings of skeletons and skulls. The Aztec underworld (Mictlán) is the remote anteroom of works by modern-day poets, for example Xavier Villaurrutia’s Nostalgia de la muerte [Nostalgia for Death] and José Gorostiza’s Muerte sin fin [Endless Death].

Today, death is not just the inspiration behind rituals, poetry and philosophy. At the corner of Avenida Patriotismo and Río Mixcoac, one of the busiest crossroads in Mexico City, there is a bridge where people often hang advertisements and protest banners. Last week, I saw a yellow sign advertising a newly fashionable profession: “thanatology,” the study of corpses and the manner of their death having become an urgent need.

To paraphrase the protagonist of Mario Vargas Llosa’s Conversation in The Cathedral, we might ask: “Just when did Mexico get so screwed up?” Violence has been on the increase for decades, but the speed of that increase began to escalate about four years ago. In December 2006, after a much-disputed election, Felipe Calderón announced “a war on drug-trafficking.” He had been in power for only two weeks, hardly enough time to plan a battle of that magnitude.

Four years on, the death toll is frightening: between 23,000 and 32,000 dead, many of them civilians. True, there have been significant seizures and arrests (like the recent capture of Edgar Valdez Villarreal, alias La Barbie), but justice moves far more slowly than crime: each month, the police confiscate 200 guns, but in that same month another 2,000 arrive from the United States.

The crucial political aspect of the “war on drug-trafficking” is that it lacks consensus. Without the backing of a solid social alliance, the “war” isn’t seen as State business. Nor is it seen as an initiative on the part of the Partido Acción Nacional, which has governed the country for ten years, but as a personal initiative on the part of President Calderón. The controversial elections of 2006 divided the country, and he, as winner, was merely trying to divert attention away from the controversy. However, the social cost of that diversion has been enormous.

Many say: “It’ll end in three years’ time anyway, when the PRI [Partido Revolucionario Institucional] come back into power,” because they are convinced that we are embroiled not in a national struggle but in a presidential one. This belief is based more on resignation than on hope. The party that governed the country for seventy-one years is seen as the anti-hero we need to restore order. A piece of graffiti sums this up: “We’ve had enough of incompetence, bring back corruption!”

If all wars are measured by the advances and retreats at the battle front, the war in which Mexico is engaged in its bicentenary year comes down firmly on the debit side. As Diego Enrique Osorno, the author of El cártel de Sinaloa [The Sinaloa Cartel], quite rightly says, the main effect of the war has been to push up the price of arms and drugs, and there has been no fall in the consumption and trafficking of drugs. Any obstacles placed in the path of the intermediaries have worked in their favor.

Over the decades, drug-trafficking has created a subculture, a kind of parallel normality. Nowadays, it’s possible to give birth to your child in a hospital owned by drug-traffickers or narcos, baptize him in a church owned by narcos, enroll him in a school owned by narcos, bring him up in a condominium owned by narcos, hold his wedding reception in a function room owned by narcos, get him a job in a business run by narcos and hold a wake for him in a funeral parlor owned by narcos.

This phenomenon began in Sinaloa, the birthplace of the main narco bosses (among them, Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán, the second richest man in Mexico after Carlos Slim), but it has spread throughout the country, with the exception of those cities considered to be the safest (Mérida, Puebla, Torreón), where the members of organized crime gangs choose to live rather than “work.”

In a country where it never snows, the narcos have commissioned such architectural fantasies as Tudor-style ranch-houses. You only have to see these mansions adorned with satellite dishes to know what their owners sell. In Mexico City, one particular shop, El Triunfo, offers shamelessly kitsch ornaments for sale. If someone buys three tin giraffes, each three metres tall, then you know at once what business they’re engaged in. We know which seafood restaurants are frequented by members of the cartels and the flame-haired beauties who accompany them; indeed, the chain of restaurants called Los Arcos has been rechristened Los Narcos. Martín Amaral, a journalist from Culiacán, wrote an eloquent article about this: “A young hired assassin washes his car.” Clothes, cars, and dollars all betray those living a life of crime.

Drug-trafficking has prospered in broad daylight, creating traditions and accounting for 10% of the money in circulation. Having grown accustomed to the presence of tourists (those “subtle invaders” as Jean-Paul Sartre called them), for years, we saw narcos as a form of extreme tourism. They were people who weren’t like us, but who left a tip on our table, people who were somehow different, who wore ostrich-skin boots, gold chains and strange tattoos, and who led a questionable lifestyle, but one, fortunately, that had nothing to do with ours.

“The Compassionate Assassin” and other musical successes

Mexican tragedies happen twice: once in reality and again in song. Music has contributed to normalizing dishonorable behavior, transforming criminals into emulators of Robin Hood. Many recordings are dictated and sponsored by the criminal bosses themselves (they are said to have paid as much as $40,000 for a “narco-ballad”). Oddly enough, the depressing melodies, primitive lyrics and dreary accordion accompaniment have found a wide audience, who are apparently prepared to be persuaded that the sordid is chic.

The effect is similar to that of stories romanticizing prostitution. In her book Esclavos del poder [Slaves of Power], Lydia Cacho describes how in a Mexican brothel, the movie Pretty Woman (starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere) is used as a form of brainwashing. After they have been kidnapped and stripped of any documentation, the women are shown the movie in which Gere appears as a Prince Charming offering love in the world of prostitution. Believing that there is an alternative, although not to their life of subordination, helps the women to accept their lot.

These “narco-ballads” have given a dubious artistic pedigree to those who kill for a living. It is no mere chance that several performers have met a similar fate to that of the characters they sing about. On the night of June 26, 2010, Sergio Vega, known as Shaka, was murdered on Route 15 in the north of the country. True to form, he was driving along, still in his pajamas, in a red Cadillac. He was apparently heading for a concert he was due to give the next day. He left behind him seventeen orphaned children. He had been receiving death threats for years, which is why he had adopted a Zulu nickname (Shaka means “he who knows no fear”). One of his successes was “The Compassionate Assassin,” which alludes to the trafficking of drugs: “I was a smuggler by trade,/well, if you want to make money that’s the only way/I’ve smuggled tons of grass across the border in my day.” He goes on to say: “To avenge my brothers/I became a killer.”

The number of musicians who have been killed suggests a very murky relationship between crime and narco-ballads. In August 2006, the singer and composer of the group Explosión Norteña (who used to sing about the exploits of the Atellano Félix cartel) was badly wounded. One of their records had been recorded at a concert held in a discotheque in Tijuana, and, in a pause between songs, the singers can be heard exchanging greetings and banter with some of the narco celebrities in the audience.

Celebrating a criminal gang is a highly dangerous thing to do. While singers may have no direct contact with dirty money, they can be seen as propagandists for an enemy army. In a struggle in which decapitations have the symbolic function of both humiliating and diminishing the power of rivals, silencing a musician means erasing the enemy’s history.

In July 2010, in Zacatecas, I met up with Élmer Mendoza, a novelist who lives in Culiacán, a bastion of drug-trafficking. With regard to the attacks made on journalists, he said, with a degree of irony: “It’s not the baddies you have to watch, it’s the goodies.” The author of Balas de plata [Silver Bullets] was referring to the fact that while the major criminals tend to commit their crimes on the known drug routes, for anyone not involved in that world the most dangerous place is actually the area where the money gets laundered, where crime tries to take on a more legitimate guise in the form of entertainment, in hotels, discotheques, brothels and bars. A newspaper article or a narco-ballad can cause more ructions there than in the deserts where the enemies are the Army or the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration). The narco-turned-concert hall owner is more of a danger to civil society because he’s prepared to defend his reputation with bullets.

No Northern Mexican group has had more impact than Los Tigres del Norte, who received a Latin Grammy nomination for their album El jefe de jefes [The boss of bosses]. For years, Los Tigres were notable for giving a voice to migrant workers and to Mexicans in exile. However, they made a real blunder when they decided to glorify El jefe de jefes, Arturo Beltrán Leyva, the head of a gang of drug-traffickers who used to send messages accompanied by the body parts of mutilated victims. This song in which the capo is portrayed as a benevolent, protective tree has met with surprising success in Mexico, the United States, and Spain.

Other musicians have been less fortunate. In November 2006, the singer Valentín Elizalde—nicknamed El Gallo de Oro [The Golden Rooster]—was gunned down in Tamaulipas, where, after singing “A mis enemigos” [“To my enemies”], he found himself on the receiving end of sixty-seven AK-47 bullets. In January 2007, Javier Morales Gómez, a member of Los Implacables del Norte, was shot six times while he was talking on his cellphone in a square in Michoacán. In December 2007, Zayda Peña, La Dama del Sentimiento, the vocalist with Zayda y Los Culpables, was wounded in a hotel in Matamoros and finished off by her attackers in the operating room of the hospital she was taken to. In December 2007, Sergio Gómez, vocalist with the group K-Paz, was murdered in Michoacán, after being horribly tortured. In December 2009, Ramón Ayala, El Rey del Acordeón, was arrested in Cuernavaca, while he was performing at a party held by the Beltrán Leyva gang.

In a way, any music that treats murderous attacks and escapes from justice as valiant exploits is guilty of normalizing crime. That’s why it’s so important to strip the narco-ballad of its romantic aura.

Best of enemies

Thirty years ago, Carlos Monsiváis gave a lecture on the detective novel with the incisive title: “You, who have never been murdered.” Nowadays, such a title would strike a much grimmer note: we, the living, are victims by omission.

We no longer live at a safe distance from violence. Every Mexican has a story to tell. On November 26, 2008, I attended an editorial lunch for journalists from Reforma, the newspaper I write for. Our editor, Alejandro Junco, told us that he was leaving the country. He had been threatened by a drug cartel and had decided to move to Texas. He has lived there ever since. Manuel Vázquez Montalbán wrote that the first thing a journalist should know is who owns the newspaper he’s working for; the second thing he should know is where the owner lives. When your boss has to go into exile to safeguard his life, that makes you realize just how precarious your own life is.

About a year ago, I tried to make an appointment to see an acupuncturist who had not treated me for a while. When no one answered the phone, I went to the clinic itself, where they told me his story. He had been kidnapped in order to treat a wounded drug-trafficker. He did a really splendid job, and his kidnappers told him: “Our orders were to kill you, but just to show you how grateful we are, we won’t lay a finger on you if you agree to leave the country.” The acupuncturist now lives in Austin, Texas.

On May 22, 2010, I went to Monterrey for the first night of my play Muerte parcial [Partial Death]. After the performance, we decided to have supper at a restaurant in Calzada Madero. We found the place locked. We were just about to give up, when the doorman appeared and told us we could come in. The restaurant was completely deserted. A heavy door closed behind us. The windows were all blocked off. The staff explained that bursts of machine-gun fire had become commonplace there. The street was full of bars and table-dancing joints, and the drug-trafficking mafias marked with bullet holes the places where their competitors sold their drugs. We dined in utter seclusion.

I am writing this on August 31, 2010. Yesterday, a female relative received the following e-mail message from Tampico: “Don’t go alone to the supermarket because they’re kidnapping people.” Going shopping in that town has become a high-risk undertaking.

Violence is invading our lives to the point where that parallel normality is beginning to be our normality. Meanwhile, President Calderón is celebrating the bicentenary in grand style. A few weeks ago he had the bones of heroes paraded down the streets in mobile sarcophagi. At a time when there are narco-graves everywhere, could there be anything more absurd than using a public display of skeletons as a means of arousing national pride?

Richard Sennett warns that in the current economic climate, uncertainty is rife, despite there being no actual “looming historical disaster.” It’s normal now to change jobs and give up the security of a routine in order to follow the capricious activities of markets where accidents are more common than long-term plans. The individual has no stability and no direct relationship with his bosses; he works in increasingly diffuse networks and groups. The result is a “corrosion of character,” a loss of values and of any sense of belonging.

“Flexible capitalism,” as Sennett calls it, is preparing for a still vaguer scenario: black economies, offshore investments for laundering money, and piracy. It provides for another scenario too: drug-trafficking. Globalization links businesses together and destroys individuality.

A cultural variant of this topic has yet to be studied in depth. Seven million young people in Mexico are neither in education nor employment. They are known as Ninis. Their only chance of finding employment is in organized crime, not just in economic terms but as a way of integrating into society. The narcos offer support and shared values. It would be hard to find a better way of combining the local and the global in the new “flexible capitalism.”

Putting an end to the problem will require a multi-pronged approach: legalizing certain drugs; closing down the narcos’ financial networks; identifying collusion with various branches of government; improving military intelligence; extraditing the capos; and, most importantly of all, persuading the United States—as the main consumer of drugs and main seller of arms—to accept responsibility for their role in all this.

However, the crucial factor is education. Creating alternatives for young people will take longer and prove more costly than patrolling the entire country, but it’s the only real way we can hope to rebuild the social fabric.

About once every century, Mexico becomes embroiled in a war. In 1810, it was the War of Independence; in 1910, the Revolution. In 2010, we are witnessing a battle between a government adrift in uncharted waters and criminals intent on going unpunished. All we know about the postwar period is that neither party will have any role to play in it.

August 31, 2010

English Spanish (Original)

In Mexico, people will pay up to $70,000 dollars for a license to hunt and kill a bighorn sheep. Killing a man is much cheaper—about $2,000, according to the rates charged by hitmen in Ciudad Juárez, the most dangerous city in the world.

And yet, on occasions, death comes free. On August 24, 2010, in Tamaulipas, seventy-two migrants were murdered before they could achieve the golden American dream. The workers, who had no passports, came from Brazil, Central America, and various parts of Mexico. They were intercepted by a group of hired killers, who tried to recruit them as drug-traffickers, offering them easy money and food, as well as that most important commodity in these lawless deserts: protection. After their difficult journey, the migrants were quite happy to undertake any of the illegal jobs on offer in the United States, but they were unwilling to get involved in organized crime. For a few minutes, they “negotiated” with the AK-47s of those trying to recruit them, but they would meet the same fate as certain mayors who have dared to reject similar offers from the drug-traffickers. In that no-man’s land where snakes and impunity from the law are the rule, saying “No” is an affront. The migrant workers were duly gunned down.

This incident came to light because of the testimony of a survivor (whose name has been carelessly bandied about by the Mexican and international press, putting both his life and the lives of his family at risk).

Néstor García Canclini, author of Culturas híbridas [Hybrid Cultures], said to me a few days ago: “The worst aspect of the whole affair is that it’s hardly the first time this kind of thing has happened. In the last six months, ten thousand illegal migrants have been kidnapped. After all, they’re the perfect victims: defenseless people with no identity papers looking for illegal work. The kidnappers get paid $400, payable via Western Union.” These are insignificant amounts of money compared with the sums involved in trafficking drugs, guns, and women, but they reveal the scale of social decay and the lack of protection that characterizes much of the area.

Amado Carrillo was known as “The Lord of the Heavens”—not because he was particularly religious, but because of the regularity with which his cocaine-laden light aircraft took off—and in the 1990s, he proposed paying off the country’s foreign debt in exchange for the government allowing him to continue his activities unimpeded. Drug-traffickers with a social agenda are a thing of the past. They are now openly violent and their violence affects everyone.

Death has long been a dominant feature of Mexican culture, from the popular celebrations held in cemeteries on the Day of the Dead to the artist José Guadalupe Posada’s engravings of skeletons and skulls. The Aztec underworld (Mictlán) is the remote anteroom of works by modern-day poets, for example Xavier Villaurrutia’s Nostalgia de la muerte [Nostalgia for Death] and José Gorostiza’s Muerte sin fin [Endless Death].

Today, death is not just the inspiration behind rituals, poetry and philosophy. At the corner of Avenida Patriotismo and Río Mixcoac, one of the busiest crossroads in Mexico City, there is a bridge where people often hang advertisements and protest banners. Last week, I saw a yellow sign advertising a newly fashionable profession: “thanatology,” the study of corpses and the manner of their death having become an urgent need.

To paraphrase the protagonist of Mario Vargas Llosa’s Conversation in The Cathedral, we might ask: “Just when did Mexico get so screwed up?” Violence has been on the increase for decades, but the speed of that increase began to escalate about four years ago. In December 2006, after a much-disputed election, Felipe Calderón announced “a war on drug-trafficking.” He had been in power for only two weeks, hardly enough time to plan a battle of that magnitude.

Four years on, the death toll is frightening: between 23,000 and 32,000 dead, many of them civilians. True, there have been significant seizures and arrests (like the recent capture of Edgar Valdez Villarreal, alias La Barbie), but justice moves far more slowly than crime: each month, the police confiscate 200 guns, but in that same month another 2,000 arrive from the United States.

The crucial political aspect of the “war on drug-trafficking” is that it lacks consensus. Without the backing of a solid social alliance, the “war” isn’t seen as State business. Nor is it seen as an initiative on the part of the Partido Acción Nacional, which has governed the country for ten years, but as a personal initiative on the part of President Calderón. The controversial elections of 2006 divided the country, and he, as winner, was merely trying to divert attention away from the controversy. However, the social cost of that diversion has been enormous.

Many say: “It’ll end in three years’ time anyway, when the PRI [Partido Revolucionario Institucional] come back into power,” because they are convinced that we are embroiled not in a national struggle but in a presidential one. This belief is based more on resignation than on hope. The party that governed the country for seventy-one years is seen as the anti-hero we need to restore order. A piece of graffiti sums this up: “We’ve had enough of incompetence, bring back corruption!”

If all wars are measured by the advances and retreats at the battle front, the war in which Mexico is engaged in its bicentenary year comes down firmly on the debit side. As Diego Enrique Osorno, the author of El cártel de Sinaloa [The Sinaloa Cartel], quite rightly says, the main effect of the war has been to push up the price of arms and drugs, and there has been no fall in the consumption and trafficking of drugs. Any obstacles placed in the path of the intermediaries have worked in their favor.

Over the decades, drug-trafficking has created a subculture, a kind of parallel normality. Nowadays, it’s possible to give birth to your child in a hospital owned by drug-traffickers or narcos, baptize him in a church owned by narcos, enroll him in a school owned by narcos, bring him up in a condominium owned by narcos, hold his wedding reception in a function room owned by narcos, get him a job in a business run by narcos and hold a wake for him in a funeral parlor owned by narcos.

This phenomenon began in Sinaloa, the birthplace of the main narco bosses (among them, Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán, the second richest man in Mexico after Carlos Slim), but it has spread throughout the country, with the exception of those cities considered to be the safest (Mérida, Puebla, Torreón), where the members of organized crime gangs choose to live rather than “work.”

In a country where it never snows, the narcos have commissioned such architectural fantasies as Tudor-style ranch-houses. You only have to see these mansions adorned with satellite dishes to know what their owners sell. In Mexico City, one particular shop, El Triunfo, offers shamelessly kitsch ornaments for sale. If someone buys three tin giraffes, each three metres tall, then you know at once what business they’re engaged in. We know which seafood restaurants are frequented by members of the cartels and the flame-haired beauties who accompany them; indeed, the chain of restaurants called Los Arcos has been rechristened Los Narcos. Martín Amaral, a journalist from Culiacán, wrote an eloquent article about this: “A young hired assassin washes his car.” Clothes, cars, and dollars all betray those living a life of crime.

Drug-trafficking has prospered in broad daylight, creating traditions and accounting for 10% of the money in circulation. Having grown accustomed to the presence of tourists (those “subtle invaders” as Jean-Paul Sartre called them), for years, we saw narcos as a form of extreme tourism. They were people who weren’t like us, but who left a tip on our table, people who were somehow different, who wore ostrich-skin boots, gold chains and strange tattoos, and who led a questionable lifestyle, but one, fortunately, that had nothing to do with ours.

“The Compassionate Assassin” and other musical successes

Mexican tragedies happen twice: once in reality and again in song. Music has contributed to normalizing dishonorable behavior, transforming criminals into emulators of Robin Hood. Many recordings are dictated and sponsored by the criminal bosses themselves (they are said to have paid as much as $40,000 for a “narco-ballad”). Oddly enough, the depressing melodies, primitive lyrics and dreary accordion accompaniment have found a wide audience, who are apparently prepared to be persuaded that the sordid is chic.

The effect is similar to that of stories romanticizing prostitution. In her book Esclavos del poder [Slaves of Power], Lydia Cacho describes how in a Mexican brothel, the movie Pretty Woman (starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere) is used as a form of brainwashing. After they have been kidnapped and stripped of any documentation, the women are shown the movie in which Gere appears as a Prince Charming offering love in the world of prostitution. Believing that there is an alternative, although not to their life of subordination, helps the women to accept their lot.

These “narco-ballads” have given a dubious artistic pedigree to those who kill for a living. It is no mere chance that several performers have met a similar fate to that of the characters they sing about. On the night of June 26, 2010, Sergio Vega, known as Shaka, was murdered on Route 15 in the north of the country. True to form, he was driving along, still in his pajamas, in a red Cadillac. He was apparently heading for a concert he was due to give the next day. He left behind him seventeen orphaned children. He had been receiving death threats for years, which is why he had adopted a Zulu nickname (Shaka means “he who knows no fear”). One of his successes was “The Compassionate Assassin,” which alludes to the trafficking of drugs: “I was a smuggler by trade,/well, if you want to make money that’s the only way/I’ve smuggled tons of grass across the border in my day.” He goes on to say: “To avenge my brothers/I became a killer.”

The number of musicians who have been killed suggests a very murky relationship between crime and narco-ballads. In August 2006, the singer and composer of the group Explosión Norteña (who used to sing about the exploits of the Atellano Félix cartel) was badly wounded. One of their records had been recorded at a concert held in a discotheque in Tijuana, and, in a pause between songs, the singers can be heard exchanging greetings and banter with some of the narco celebrities in the audience.

Celebrating a criminal gang is a highly dangerous thing to do. While singers may have no direct contact with dirty money, they can be seen as propagandists for an enemy army. In a struggle in which decapitations have the symbolic function of both humiliating and diminishing the power of rivals, silencing a musician means erasing the enemy’s history.

In July 2010, in Zacatecas, I met up with Élmer Mendoza, a novelist who lives in Culiacán, a bastion of drug-trafficking. With regard to the attacks made on journalists, he said, with a degree of irony: “It’s not the baddies you have to watch, it’s the goodies.” The author of Balas de plata [Silver Bullets] was referring to the fact that while the major criminals tend to commit their crimes on the known drug routes, for anyone not involved in that world the most dangerous place is actually the area where the money gets laundered, where crime tries to take on a more legitimate guise in the form of entertainment, in hotels, discotheques, brothels and bars. A newspaper article or a narco-ballad can cause more ructions there than in the deserts where the enemies are the Army or the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration). The narco-turned-concert hall owner is more of a danger to civil society because he’s prepared to defend his reputation with bullets.

No Northern Mexican group has had more impact than Los Tigres del Norte, who received a Latin Grammy nomination for their album El jefe de jefes [The boss of bosses]. For years, Los Tigres were notable for giving a voice to migrant workers and to Mexicans in exile. However, they made a real blunder when they decided to glorify El jefe de jefes, Arturo Beltrán Leyva, the head of a gang of drug-traffickers who used to send messages accompanied by the body parts of mutilated victims. This song in which the capo is portrayed as a benevolent, protective tree has met with surprising success in Mexico, the United States, and Spain.

Other musicians have been less fortunate. In November 2006, the singer Valentín Elizalde—nicknamed El Gallo de Oro [The Golden Rooster]—was gunned down in Tamaulipas, where, after singing “A mis enemigos” [“To my enemies”], he found himself on the receiving end of sixty-seven AK-47 bullets. In January 2007, Javier Morales Gómez, a member of Los Implacables del Norte, was shot six times while he was talking on his cellphone in a square in Michoacán. In December 2007, Zayda Peña, La Dama del Sentimiento, the vocalist with Zayda y Los Culpables, was wounded in a hotel in Matamoros and finished off by her attackers in the operating room of the hospital she was taken to. In December 2007, Sergio Gómez, vocalist with the group K-Paz, was murdered in Michoacán, after being horribly tortured. In December 2009, Ramón Ayala, El Rey del Acordeón, was arrested in Cuernavaca, while he was performing at a party held by the Beltrán Leyva gang.

In a way, any music that treats murderous attacks and escapes from justice as valiant exploits is guilty of normalizing crime. That’s why it’s so important to strip the narco-ballad of its romantic aura.

Best of enemies

Thirty years ago, Carlos Monsiváis gave a lecture on the detective novel with the incisive title: “You, who have never been murdered.” Nowadays, such a title would strike a much grimmer note: we, the living, are victims by omission.

We no longer live at a safe distance from violence. Every Mexican has a story to tell. On November 26, 2008, I attended an editorial lunch for journalists from Reforma, the newspaper I write for. Our editor, Alejandro Junco, told us that he was leaving the country. He had been threatened by a drug cartel and had decided to move to Texas. He has lived there ever since. Manuel Vázquez Montalbán wrote that the first thing a journalist should know is who owns the newspaper he’s working for; the second thing he should know is where the owner lives. When your boss has to go into exile to safeguard his life, that makes you realize just how precarious your own life is.

About a year ago, I tried to make an appointment to see an acupuncturist who had not treated me for a while. When no one answered the phone, I went to the clinic itself, where they told me his story. He had been kidnapped in order to treat a wounded drug-trafficker. He did a really splendid job, and his kidnappers told him: “Our orders were to kill you, but just to show you how grateful we are, we won’t lay a finger on you if you agree to leave the country.” The acupuncturist now lives in Austin, Texas.

On May 22, 2010, I went to Monterrey for the first night of my play Muerte parcial [Partial Death]. After the performance, we decided to have supper at a restaurant in Calzada Madero. We found the place locked. We were just about to give up, when the doorman appeared and told us we could come in. The restaurant was completely deserted. A heavy door closed behind us. The windows were all blocked off. The staff explained that bursts of machine-gun fire had become commonplace there. The street was full of bars and table-dancing joints, and the drug-trafficking mafias marked with bullet holes the places where their competitors sold their drugs. We dined in utter seclusion.

I am writing this on August 31, 2010. Yesterday, a female relative received the following e-mail message from Tampico: “Don’t go alone to the supermarket because they’re kidnapping people.” Going shopping in that town has become a high-risk undertaking.

Violence is invading our lives to the point where that parallel normality is beginning to be our normality. Meanwhile, President Calderón is celebrating the bicentenary in grand style. A few weeks ago he had the bones of heroes paraded down the streets in mobile sarcophagi. At a time when there are narco-graves everywhere, could there be anything more absurd than using a public display of skeletons as a means of arousing national pride?

Richard Sennett warns that in the current economic climate, uncertainty is rife, despite there being no actual “looming historical disaster.” It’s normal now to change jobs and give up the security of a routine in order to follow the capricious activities of markets where accidents are more common than long-term plans. The individual has no stability and no direct relationship with his bosses; he works in increasingly diffuse networks and groups. The result is a “corrosion of character,” a loss of values and of any sense of belonging.

“Flexible capitalism,” as Sennett calls it, is preparing for a still vaguer scenario: black economies, offshore investments for laundering money, and piracy. It provides for another scenario too: drug-trafficking. Globalization links businesses together and destroys individuality.

A cultural variant of this topic has yet to be studied in depth. Seven million young people in Mexico are neither in education nor employment. They are known as Ninis. Their only chance of finding employment is in organized crime, not just in economic terms but as a way of integrating into society. The narcos offer support and shared values. It would be hard to find a better way of combining the local and the global in the new “flexible capitalism.”

Putting an end to the problem will require a multi-pronged approach: legalizing certain drugs; closing down the narcos’ financial networks; identifying collusion with various branches of government; improving military intelligence; extraditing the capos; and, most importantly of all, persuading the United States—as the main consumer of drugs and main seller of arms—to accept responsibility for their role in all this.

However, the crucial factor is education. Creating alternatives for young people will take longer and prove more costly than patrolling the entire country, but it’s the only real way we can hope to rebuild the social fabric.

About once every century, Mexico becomes embroiled in a war. In 1810, it was the War of Independence; in 1910, the Revolution. In 2010, we are witnessing a battle between a government adrift in uncharted waters and criminals intent on going unpunished. All we know about the postwar period is that neither party will have any role to play in it.

August 31, 2010

“¡Qué manera de perder!”: Violencia y narcotráfico en México

En México, el permiso para matar un borrego cimarrón se subasta en unos 70 mil dólares. Matar a un hombre es más barato: dos mil dólares, según la tarifa de los sicarios de Ciudad Juárez, la ciudad más peligrosa del mundo.

Sin embargo, en ocasiones la muerte es gratuita. El 24 de agosto de 2010, 72 migrantes fueron asesinados en Tamaulipas, antes de alcanzar el dorado sueño americano. Los trabajadores sin pasaportes venían de Brasil, Centroamérica y diversas partes de México. Un comando de sicarios los interceptó y trató de reclutarlos para el narcotráfico. Les ofrecieron dinero rápido, comida y, lo más importante en esos desiertos sin ley, protección. Después de viajar en condiciones oprobiosas, los migrantes estaban dispuestos a desempeñar todos los trabajos ilegales que ofrece Estados Unidos, pero no a ingresar al crimen organizado. Durante unos minutos “negociaron” ante las ametralladoras AK-47 de quienes pretendían contratarlos. Su suerte sería la misma que la de los alcaldes que se han atrevidos a rechazar las ofertas del narcotráfico. En esas tierras dominadas por las víboras y la impunidad, decir “no” es una afrenta. Los trabajadores fueron acribillados.

Esto se supo por el testimonio de un sobreviviente (cuyo nombre ha sido mencionado con enorme descuido por la prensa mexicana e internacional, poniendo en riesgo su vida y la de sus familiares).

“Lo más grave es que ya había cifras de que eso podía suceder”, me dijo hace unos días Néstor García Canclini, autor de Culturas híbridas: “En los últimos seis meses ha habido diez mil secuestros de indocumentados. Son víctimas perfectas: gente indefensa, que busca trabajo ilegal y no tiene papeles. Los secuestran por 400 dólares, pagaderos a través de Western Union”. Esas cantidades son insignificantes, comparadas con las cifras que mueven el tráfico de drogas, armas y mujeres, pero revelan el deterioro social y la falta de protección que caracteriza a buena parte del territorio.

En los años noventa, Amado Carrillo, conocido como El Señor de los Cielos, no por su religiosidad, sino por la puntualidad con que despegaban sus avionetas cargadas de coca, propuso pagar la deuda externa a cambio de que el gobierno lo dejara operar. Los narcos con proyecto social son cosa del pasado. Su violencia se impone sin disimulo y afecta a todos por igual.

La muerte ha dominado buena parte de la cultura mexicana, de los rituales populares que se celebran en los cementerios el 2 de noviembre a los grabados de esqueletos y calaveras del dibujante José Guadalupe Posada. El inframundo azteca (Mictlán) es la remota antesala de obras decisivas de nuestra poesía moderna, como Nostalgia de la muerte de Xavier Villaurrutia y Muerte sin fin de José Gorostiza.

Hoy el aniquilamiento no solo es motivo de rito, evocación lírica o reflexión filosófica. En Avenida Patriotismo y Río Mixcoac, uno de los cruceros más transitados de Ciudad de México, hay un puente en el que se suelen colocar anuncios o mantas de protesta. La semana pasada encontré ahí un letrero amarillo. Promovía una profesión de moda: “Tanatología”. El estudio de los cadáveres y las formas de morir se ha vuelto urgente.

Parafraseando al protagonista de Conversación en La Catedral podríamos preguntar: “¿En qué momento se jodió México?”. La escalada de violencia comenzó hace décadas, pero se aceleró cuatro años atrás. En diciembre de 2006, luego de unas muy discutidas elecciones, Felipe Calderón anunció la “guerra contra el narcotráfico”. Llevaba 14 días en el poder, tiempo escaso para planear una contienda de esa magnitud.

Cuatro años más tarde, el saldo es desolador: entre 23 y 32 mil muertos, muchos de ellos civiles. Es cierto que ha habido decomisos y detenciones importantes (como la reciente captura de Edgar Valdez Villarreal, alias La Barbie), pero la justicia opera con menos velocidad que el delito (cada mes se incautan 200 armas y otras 2000 llegan de Estados Unidos).

El aspecto político decisivo en la “guerra contra el narcotráfico” es que carece de consenso. Sin una alianza social que la respalde, no se percibe como un asunto de Estado. Tampoco es vista como un empeño del Partido Acción Nacional, que gobierna el país desde hace diez años, sino como una iniciativa personal del presidente Calderón. Las cuestionadas elecciones de 2006 dividieron al país y el ganador quiso que cambiáramos de conversación. El costo social por mudar de tema ha sido inmenso.

“Todo se acabará en tres años, cuando regrese el PRI”, dice mucha gente, convencida de que no estamos ante una lucha nacional sino presidencial. Este convencimiento se funda menos en la esperanza que en la resignación. El partido que gobernó el país durante 71 años es visto como un antihéroe necesario para poner orden. Un graffiti resume el tema: “¡Que se vayan los ineptos y que vuelvan los corruptos!”.

Si toda guerra se mide por los avances y repliegues en el frente de batalla, la que México libra en su bicentenario no arroja saldos positivos. De acuerdo con Diego Enrique Osorno, autor de El cártel de Sinaloa, el principal efecto de la contienda ha consistido en subir el precio de las armas y las drogas. El consumo y el tráfico no han disminuido. Los obstáculos han servido para favorecer a los intermediarios.

Durante décadas, el narcotráfico fue creando una subcultura, es decir, una normalidad paralela. Hoy en día, es posible tener un hijo en un hospital de narcos, bautizarlo en una iglesia de narcos, inscribirlo en una escuela de narcos, criarlo en un condominio de narcos, casarlo en un salón de fiestas de narcos, incorporarlo a un negocio de narcos y velarlo en una funeraria de narcos.

El fenómeno comenzó en Sinaloa, cuna de los principales capos (entre ellos, Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán, segundo hombre más rico de México, después de Carlos Slim), pero se ha extendido a todo el territorio, al grado de que las ciudades que se consideran más seguras (Mérida, Puebla, Torreón) son las que el crimen organizado utiliza para vivir y no para “trabajar”.

En un país sin nieve, el narco ha patrocinado delirios arquitectónicos estilo Tudor ranchero. Basta ver esas mansiones coronadas por antenas parabólicas para saber qué venden sus inquilinos. En Ciudad de México, la tienda El Triunfo ofrece objetos de decoración que responden a un descarado sentido el kitsch. Si alguien compra tres jirafas de hojalata, cada una de tres metros de altura, sabemos a qué se dedica. Conocemos los restaurantes donde los miembros de los cárteles comen mariscos (la cadena Los Arcos ha sido rebautizada como Los Narcos) y las mujeres de pelo flamígero que los acompañan. Martín Amaral, periodista de Culiacán, escribió un elocuente retrato de costumbres: “Joven sicario lava su carro”. La ropa, los vehículos y los dólares delatan a quienes viven en estado de delito.

El narcotráfico ha prosperado a la luz de día, creando tradiciones y apropiándose del 10% del dinero circulante. Acostumbrados a los turistas (“invasores sutiles”, los llamó Jean-Paul Sartre), durante años vimos el narco al modo de un turismo extremo. Gente que no era como nosotros pero dejaba propina en nuestras mesas. Gente distinta, con botas de piel de avestruz, cadenas de oro y tatuajes específicos, que llevaba una vida cuestionable pero venturosamente ajena.

“Asesino compasivo” y otros éxitos musicales

Las tragedias mexicanas suceden dos veces: primero en la realidad, luego en la canción. La música han contribuido a normalizar el oprobio, transformando a los criminales en émulos de Robin Hood. Numerosas grabaciones son dictadas y patrocinadas por los propios capos (se dice que llegan a pagar 40 mil dólares por un narcocorrido). Curiosamente, las deprimentes melodías, las letras primitivas y los anémicos acordeones han contado con un público amplio, dispuesto a descubrir que la sordidez es chic.

El efecto ha sido similar al de las historias que romantizan la prostitución. En su libro Esclavas del poder Lydia Cacho cuenta que en un burdel mexicano la película Preety Woman (con Julia Roberts y Richard Gere) se usa como obra de superación personal. Después de ser secuestradas y privadas de sus documentos, las mujeres ven la cinta en la que Gere aparece como un Príncipe Azul que brinda amor dentro de la prostitución. Saber que hay una alternativa preferible, sin eliminar la subordinación, ayuda a las mujeres a aceptar su condena.

Los narcocorridos han otorgado dudoso pedigrí artístico al oficio de vivir matando. No es casual que varios intérpretes hayan acabado como sus personajes. En la noche del 26 de junio de 2010, Sergio Vega, el Shaka, fue asesinado en la carretera 15, al norte del país. Fiel a su estilo, conducía en pijama un Cadillac rojo. Aparentemente se dirigía a un concierto que tendría al día siguiente. Dejó 17 huérfanos. Llevaba años recibiendo amenazas; por eso había adoptado el sobrenombre de un guerrero zulu (Shaka significa “el que no tiene miedo”). Uno de sus éxitos era “Asesino compasivo”, que alude al tráfico de drogas: “Me dediqué al contrabando/ sólo así se hace dinero/ he cruzado toneladas/ de hierba hasta el extranjero”. Poco más adelante informa: “Para vengar a mis hermanos/ me convertí en asesino”.

El número de músicos muertos sugiere una turbia connivencia entre el crimen y el narcocorrido. En agosto de 2006, fue herido el cantante y compositor del grupo Explosión Norteña, que solía cantar las gestas del cártel de los Arellano Félix. Uno de sus discos registra un concierto en una discoteca de Tijuana. En una pausa, los cantantes saludan e interpelan a celebridades del narco entre el público.

Celebrar a un grupo delictivo es oficio peligroso. Aunque no tengan contacto directo con el dinero sucio, los cantantes pueden ser vistos como propagandistas de otro ejército. En una lucha donde las decapitaciones cumplen la función simbólica de humillar y reducir el poder de los rivales, silenciar a un músico significa borrar la historia enemiga.

En julio coincidí en Zacatecas con Élmer Mendoza, novelista que vive en Culiacán, bastión del narcotráfico. A propósito de los ataques a periodistas comentó con ironía: “Hay que cuidarse de los buenos, no de los malos”. El autor de Balas de plata se refería a lo siguiente: los más enjundiosos criminales se dedican a hacer fechorías en los caminos de la droga; para la gente que no pertenece a ese entorno, la zona más peligrosa es la del lavado de dinero, donde el delito pretende legitimarse y transformase en entretenimiento a través de hoteles, discotecas, prostíbulos, bares. Ahí, un reportaje o un narcocorrido pueden sentar peor que en los desiertos donde los rivales son el Ejército o la DEA. El narco reconvertido en dueño de una sala de conciertos es más peligroso para la sociedad civil porque está dispuesto a preservar su reputación a balazos.

Ningún grupo norteño ha tenido la trascendencia de Los Tigres del Norte, nominados al Grammy Latino por El jefe de jefes. Durante años, los Tigres destacaron por darle voz a los migrantes y articular el relato de los mexicanos en el exilio. Sin embargo, cometieron el error de glorificar al Jefe de jefes, Arturo Beltrán Leyva, narcotraficantes que dejaba mensajes con trozos de víctimas mutiladas. En forma sorprendente, la canción donde el capo aparece como un árbol benévolo que protege del sol ha tenido éxito en México, Estados Unidos y España.

Menos afortunada ha sido la ruta de otros músicos. En noviembre de 2006, el cantante Valentín Elizalde fue acribillado en Tamaulipas (después de cantar “A mis enemigos”, El Gallo de Oro recibió 67 balas de Ak-47). En enero de 2007, Javier Morales Gómez, integrante de Los Implacables del Norte, recibió seis balazos mientras hablaba por teléfono en una plaza de Michoacán. En diciembre de 2007, Zayda Peña, La Dama del Sentimiento, vocalista de Zayda y Los Culpables, fue herida en un hotel de Matamoros y rematada en el quirófano del hospital donde era intervenida. En diciembre de 2007 Sergio Gómez, vocalista del grupo K-Paz, fue asesinado en Michoacán, luego de sufrir atroces torturas. En diciembre de 2009, Ramón Ayala, El Rey del Acordeón, fue detenido en Cuernavaca mientras actuaba en una fiesta de los Beltrán Leyva.

En cierta forma, el delito se asimila a la costumbre con la música que transforma asaltos y fugas en una saga de valientes pericipecias. De ahí la importancia de despojar al narcocorrido de su aura romántica.

Enemigos íntimos

Hace unos treinta años, Carlos Monsiváis impartió una conferencia sobre la novela negra con un titulo mordaz: “Usted, que nunca ha sido asesinado”. Actualmente ese lema sería tétrico. Los vivos somos víctimas omitidas.

La distancia con la violencia se ha roto. Cualquier mexicano tiene anécdotas al respecto. El 26 de noviembre de 2008 asistí al almuerzo de editorialistas de Reforma, periódico en el que escribo. Nuestro director, Alejandro Junco, nos comunicó su decisión de abandonar el país. Había sido amenazado por un cártel y debía mudarse a Texas. Desde entonces vive ahí. Manuel Vázquez Montalbán escribió que lo primero que debe saber un periodistas es quién es el dueño de su periódico. Lo segundo es saber dónde vive. Cuando tu jefe se tiene que exiliar para proteger su integridad, queda claro cuáles son los límites de la tuya.

Hace cosa de un año quise consultar a un acupunturista al que llevaba tiempo sin ver. Como nadie me respondió en sus teléfonos, acudí al centro de acupuntura del que él formó parte. Ahí me contaron su historia. El médico había sido secuestrado para curar a un narcotraficante herido. Hizo un espléndido trabajo; entonces, los hombres que lo habían llevado a ver a su jefe le dijeron: “Teníamos órdenes de matarlo pero estamos muy agradecidos. Si se va del país, no le haremos nada”. El acupunturista vive en Austin, Texas.

El 22 de mayo fui a Monterrey al estreno de mi obra de teatro Muerte parcial. Terminada la función, quisimos cenar a un restaurante en Calzada Madero. La puerta estaba cerrada. Ya nos íbamos cuando el portero nos informó que podían recibirnos. Entramos a un sitio desierto. Un pesado portón se cerró a nuestras espaldas. Las ventanas habían sido tapiadas. Nos explicaron que las ráfagas de ametralladoras se habían vuelto frecuentes. En esa avenida abundan los bares y los negocios de table dance. Las mafias del narcomenudeo señalan con disparos los puntos en los que trafica la competencia. Cenamos en condiciones rigurosamente enclaustradas.

Escribo estas líneas en 31 de agosto. Ayer, una pariente recibió el siguiente correo electrónico desde Tampico: “No vayas sola al supermercado porque están secuestrando”. Hacer la compra en esa ciudad del golfo se ha vuelto asunto de alto riesgo.

La violencia invade nuestras vidas, a tal grado que la normalidad paralela comienza a ser la nuestra. Mientras tanto, el presidente Calderón celebra el bicentenario en forma ditirámbica. Hace unas semanas hizo que los huesos de los héroes desfilaran por el país en sarcófagos rodantes. En un momento en que se encuentran narcofosas por todas partes, ¿hay algo más absurdo que se exhiban osamentas para exaltar el orgullo nacional?

Richard Sennett advierte que en la economía contemporánea la incertidumbre existe “sin la amenaza de un desastre histórico”. Es normal cambiar de trabajo y sacrificar la seguridad de la rutina para seguir la caprichosa actividad de los mercados donde los accidentes son más comunes que los planes a largo plazo. El individuo pierde estabilidad y relación directa con sus jefes, trabaja en redes y grupos progresivamente difusos. El resultado es “la corrosión del carácter”, la pérdida de valores y sentido de pertenencia.

El “capitalismo flexible”, como lo llama Sennett, prepara un escenario aún más vago: las economías de sombra, las inversiones offshore que lavan dinero, la piratería. Esto prepara otro escenario: el narcotráfico. La globalización articula negocios y vulnera identidades.

No se ha estudiado a fondo una variable cultural del tema. En México hay 7 millones de jóvenes que no estudian ni trabajan. Son conocidos como Ninis. Este sector no tiene otro horizonte que el crimen organizado, no sólo en términos económicos sino como forma de integración social. El narco ofrece arraigo y códigos compartidos. Es difícil encontrar mejor forma de combinar lo local y lo global en el “capitalismo flexible”.

Acabar con el problema exigirá de una estrategia múltiple: legalizar selectivamente las drogas, intervenir las redes de financiación del narco, detectar la complicidad en los distintos mandos del gobierno, mejorar la estrategia de inteligencia militar, extraditar a los capos y, sobre todo, que Estados Unidos asuma su responsabilidad como principal consumidor de estupefacientes y principal vendedor de armas.

Pero el factor fundamental es educativo. Crear opciones para los jóvenes es más tardado y costoso que patrullar el país, pero es la única forma digna de reconstruir el tejido social.

Cada cien años, México se somete a una guerra. En 1810 la causa fue la Independencia; en 1910, la Revolución. En 2010 asistimos a una batalla entre un gobierno sin brújula y criminales que buscan preservar su impunidad. Lo único que sabemos de la posguerra es que ahí no habrá sitio para ninguno de los bandos combatientes.

Cuco Sánchez anticipó la situación en la canción ranchera: “¡Qué manera de perder!”

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