The Narco Uncanny

Abstract

This article analyzes the unease created in northern Mexico by the prevalence of “narco-accusations,” which single out individuals suspected of being drug traffickers. The official discourse to justify the Mexican government’s unwillingness to investigate the majority of the 235,000 murders created by the “war on drugs” since 2006 is that the deaths consist of “narcos killing each other off.” However, as a result of the profound interlocking of legal and illegal sectors, most forms of livelihood in the borderlands are potentially implicated in the drug economy. Therefore, the way that deaths are dismissed when labeled as those of “narcos” produces a particular discomfort among people working at the blurry edges of the narco-economy. By analyzing these experiences through the lens of “the uncanny” this article argues that the subject position of the narco is not just derivative of a set of political discourses but a powerful way that people attempt to distance themselves, and their loved ones, from violence.

Narco‐spectrality: Narco‐aesthetics and hauntings in the short filmPánico en Pánuco

“…These atmospheres are as embodied as they are spatialized, influencing how people respond to and move through places. These are “hard‐to‐capture [uncanny] atmospheres” that manifest the liminality of life under the narco (Muehlmann 2020, 343). This threatening yet uncertain environment is one that haunts, and one that's full of ghosts.…”

“…“Narco‐violence” then is not only perpetrated by narcos but also by the military, paramilitary groups, and the police. At the same time, it's increasingly difficult to parse out who's “narco,” to the extent that it becomes a problem of ethnographic description (Campbell 2009; Muehlmann 2020). This back‐and‐forth between visibility and invisibility generates much uncertainty and has meant the narco has become increasingly enmeshed in every aspect of daily life.…”

Domesticating Danger: Coping Codes and Symbolic Security amid Violent Organized Crime in Mexico

“…State “war on drugs” narratives affect how hundreds of thousands of its victims are perceived from below. Muehlmann (2020:332) finds that the “lack of attention to the everyday lives and experiences of those people labeled as narcos by the state has inadvertently contributed to the dismissal of their violent deaths . .…”

“…Coping codes emerge from below, but they can both challenge and reproduce official narratives from the top. Los malitos challenged “war on drugs” narratives when applied to state officials, but it also reproduced and coproduced them when applied to victims of violence “accused of being into something.” I drew on research on symbolic boundaries (Lamont and Molnár 2002; Pachucki et al 2007), including work on the effect of media and state narratives of the “war on drugs” on the criminalization of the dead in Mexico (de Lachica Huerta 2020; Muehlmann 2020; Schedler 2016), to explain how and why violence, impunity, and vulnerability converge in the everyday sentencing of the dead from below. Ultimately, I argued that coping codes can prompt symbolic security through the creation of new symbols that minimize danger and the drawing of new symbolic boundaries that allow individuals to distance themselves from both danger and its victims.…”

“… 6. Narcocultura includes, among other features, a taste for corridos (Valenzuela Arce 2010), cowboy hats, and alligator boots (Muehlmann 2013) as well as a preference for pick-up trucks. When Muehlmann (2020:333) first visited northern Mexico in the early 2000s, the anthropologist was told, “You might see people dressed as cheros [ ranchero , cowboy], but the alligator skin boots are how you tell the real narcotraficantes ” apart. These are much more expensive than cowhide boots, and Muehlmann (2020:333) met “several men working in the illegal trade who wore those alligator boots with pride, fully aware they signaled the narco status of the wearer.” …”