Non-typical narcocorridos in contemporary northern music. Examples and considerations.

Abstract

When Mexican Revolution ended, the need to define a national identity encouraged intellectuals like Octavio Paz to define the “prototypical Mexican”. The idea of Mexico as a country entering into Modernity and devoid of its own ancient culture motivated Mexican intellectuals to obsessively repeat two prototypical images: in one hand, a passive and distressed individual with an inferiority complex, and in the other an arrogant “macho” dressed like a “charro”.  Reaching the new century, NAFTA, the consolidation of drug trafficking as a major transnational industry, and the mass migration of Mexican families to the United States, demands a new prototype of national iodentity. Drugs ballad (“narcocorrido”) might offer some answers to understand the newest representations of “lo mexicano”.