The Narcocorridos And The Borders Of The USA Essays Example

The first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of artistic or cultural movements is some kind of social upheaval or a dramatic change in the way people within a particular community or political geography think or behave. However, there are some movements which are not so easily classified and make it hard to understand where one must draw the lines of political boundaries. The Narcocorridos is one such example – in spite of originating in Mexico, they have quite a powerful influence on shaping the culture of borderland USA and Mexico. Rosalino “Chalino” Sanchez is perhaps the most famous of the Narcocorridos and almost single-handedly created the contemporary image of what an artist in this genre is meant to look like and behave.
Before considering Sanchez himself, it may be helpful to understand how and why the Narcocorridos have such a powerful impact on political geography, perhaps even more so than much more famous groups and movements such as Grunge Rock Bands or Jazz artists. In both of the latter cases, the most influential artists and groups all originated from one specific geopolitical zone – the USA. In terms of political criteria like citizenship, political issues addressed, etc. these groups were quite homogeneous. However, the Narcocorridos, which in spite of their influence in the USA, originated in Mexico and hence have a much more Latin American setting and address vastly different political issues. Moreover, the moment the Narcocorridos crossed the border in the USA, their fame was built on very different foundations than typical American artists and these have very powerful political implications, especially in terms of crafting national borders.
Chalino Sanchez is still perhaps the single most influential Narcocorrido artist. His reputation as a troublemaker and bad-boy outcast was earned from an early age. At the age of fifteen, he shot a Mafioso who had raped his sister and fled Mexico in order to escape the authorities. He spent his early years in the USA doing odd jobs in California while constantly trying to maintain himself financially. These years were almost certainly instrumental in creating some of the most recurrent themes and images in his work. Sanchez’s mother tongue was Spanish and, despite the fact that Spanish is the second most spoken language in the USA, this did present some early difficulties for the young artist to get real fame. In the 1980s, he spent much of his time in small to mid-sized concerts until he began producing cassettes with Angel Parra.
As the archetypal illegal immigrant, Sanchez fell into many standard stereotypes but also constantly battled them through his music. He spent much of his career as a singer in various nightclubs and it was at one of these nightclubs that he achieved his fame. An incident involving a gunman attacking Sanchez and resulting in his (the gunman’s) death, the death of another person, five wounded persons and Sanchez’s own wounding shot to instant fame. This was compounded to a much greater degree and he became the poster boy for Narcocorridos after his apparent murder. Unlike most artists who achieved great fame through successful concert tours or producing several records and distributing them through the mass media, Sanchez’s fame was built on his own life and the construction of a kind of legend out of it. This highlights one of the most significant features of Narcocorrido music which distinguishes it from almost all other forms of narcotic-related art forms – it stems from the Spanish ballad.
Given its origins and main themes, Narcocorrido music has a very peculiar way of treating certain themes. A notable feature is that many of these songs are ‘dedicated’ to certain drug lords and drug cartels – which stems directly from the ballad tradition of dedicating songs to a patron. However, in the case of Sanchez, this is not quite so simple. Since he was on the run from both the Mexican authorities and from Mafiosos, his music feeds on another strain of Narcocorrido ideology – that of constant struggle and violence. Much like genres like hip-hop and rap, there is the constant undertone of a kind of loyalty towards a certain way of life which the singer, apparently, would not leave even if they could. The Narcocorrido music of Sanchez is particularly renowned for glorifying a particular kind of Latin machismo which is unique to Mexico and even some parts of the southwestern American states like California.
This is where Sanchez’s influence on political geography becomes most evident. Because his particular form of machismo is so highly celebrated through the ‘legend’ of his life (or rather, the legend which his life became), this particular ideology of life has started influencing large parts of the USA. In more recent times, Several of Sanchez’s songs such as ‘Prenda del Alma’ have become mainstream hits and, although they do not talk about the more ‘core’ Narcocorrido themes such as drug abuse, it lays the groundwork for such music and also points in that direction. Essentially, Sanchez paved the way for Narcocorrido music to enter the USA and thereby blurred geopolitical lines of where Mexican cultural influence ends and where American cultural influence begins.