I like bad guys. I believe the difference between a bad guy and a anti-hero, a revered figure in popular culture, is entirely based on circumstances. If you end up being the bad guy of the story, it's because someone decided to take sides against you, is all. Point is, I'm a pretty understanding guy but even I find that some guys are fucked up. The Mexicann drug cartels are a good example. I don't know how to explain them. It's something created out of pure, cannibalistic lust for power and, like any phenomenon that grows past a certain point, it gave birth to a culture of its own. Documentary NARCO CULTURA is trying to bridge the gap between the daily atrocities committed by the Sinaloa cartel in Juarez, Mexico and ''narco cultura'' phenomenon sweeping through the latino communities in the U.S. While it doesn't really connects all the dots together, but it ends up drawing a terrifying portrait of our need for validation and empowerment.
Did you know something called ''narcocorrido'' existed? It's a musical genre that's pretty hot in Mexico and among the latino communities of America that I could describe best as mariachi music with lyrics that chant the glories of the Mexican drug cartels. In fact, cartel members often request narco corridos (literally ''drug ballads'') to be written about them and pay good money to narcocorrido artists to make it happen. Isn't it fucked up a little? Some cartel guy cuts heads, buries bodies, terrifies entire families of the people who were unfortunate enough to stand in his way, and at the end of a long day of work, he gives some hack a fat wad of bills to have him sing to everybody about how great and fearsome he is. The ruthlessness and the power of Mexican drug cartels inspired an alienated and vulnerable youth a world where they were in absolute control and the freedom and the innocence of the same youth inspired Mexican drug cartel members to perceive themselves as misunderstood folklore heroes. It's kind of an abusive relationship, isn't it?
NARCO CULTURA is following two main characters: Richi, a frightened an defeated crime scene investigator in Juarez, picking up bodies of innocent people every day and Edgar, the signer of emerging narcocorrido band BuKanas de Culiacàn, right as the genre is starting to overtake latino-American culture. What's happening to Richi is unspeakably sad, but you've seen it all before. If you have any interest in the Mexican border situation, you've seen what kind of festival of horrors Juarez has become. So the Richi scenes come less as a surprise, but they are necessary to keep Edgar in perspective. The meteoric rise of Edgar to stardom in the latino community is quite disturbing. He seems like he's having fun, like the records, the booming crowds, the money and the homicidal drug runners are not real to him. He's living in a Scarface fairy tale.
I invite you to read this interview with Edgar, where he says he doesn't think of himself as someone who glorifies violence, but as a journalist figure, who chronicles what's really going on in Mexico. You have to watch NARCO CULTURA to understand how full of shit this guy is. In the movie, he admits he's never been at the heart on the hardcore violence in Mexico and laments that his songs are ''mere bullshit he came up with in his garage''. When he finally decides to visit Mexico along with a bandmate, he goes straight to Culiacàn, at the heart of the Sinaloa catrel, a city that's been conquered by the underworld. The only thing that Edgar is really doing in Mexico is borrowing a feeling of power he's never had to earn.
Director Shaul Schwarz does a good job at illustrating this through a short, yet powerful scene where interviews a young, imprisoned enforcer of the cartels who actually lived through what Edgar is signing about. I understand why Schwarz didn't interview cartel members directly, it would've been gambling with his own life. Seems like he understood the importance of creating distance between Edgar and his lyrics though and really stressed how different it is to sing about atrocities and actually commit them.
I try not to get emotional about movies. It's easy to get offended at the dissonant portrait of meaningless death and ''narco culture'' portrayed in NARCO CULTURA. I'm not so sure the documentary is meant to piss you off, though. If anything, it illustrates the gap between theory and experience painfully well. The Mexican drug cartels became more than what they actually are, to the latino-American youth. They symbolize the power to break free from their current social condition and live what we call here ''The American Dream'' for themselves. This imaginary landscape has always been and will always be. It's something that's proper to the human condition. NACRO CULTURA is a difficult, gripping documentary, but it's worth a watch as it's trying to explain something far more complex than your run-of-the-mill documentary about the Mexican drug cartel is. It's more than just another guilt trip.
