Paper short abstract:

This paper argues against scholarship that suggests that musicians servicing Mexican narcos have little agency due to the dangers of challenging orders. It interrogates how rappers shape narco aesthetics, emotions and masculinities in songs directly commissioned for and about Mexican narcos.

Paper long abstract:

Scholarship suggests that musicians servicing Mexican narcos have little agency due to the dangers of challenging orders. Short-term fieldwork with an ex-narco and rappers who willingly write commissioned narco music in Tamaulipas, Mexico, suggest that many rappers exert power creatively, despite the risks. In this paper, I explore how rappers shape narco aesthetics, masculinities and emotions. I argue that narco rap songs promote an ethics that goes beyond bravado and hedonism. Hyper- and vulnerable narco masculinities are entangled in these songs, where men have romantic outpourings, shed tears in mourning, and tremble in shoot-outs. Narco rap serves to reassure narcos that the emotional and physical traumas of engaging in armed warfare are manageable; encourage a work ethic of being astute, loyal and firm; and affirm that redemption is possible. Yet within the scope of vulnerable narco masculinities, only certain feelings and sensations are embraced. Mourning, for example, is signaled mostly as a means of remembering, rather than a traumatic process. Crucially, the agony of physical suffering and death are absent in these songs. Instead, narco rap provides assurance that respect, belonging and salvation are achievable, whatever atrocities narcos commit and however scared they may be. More broadly, my concern is to interrogate the humanity of narcos, arguing against prevalent discursive us-them dichotomies that facilitate Othering and stigmatisation of actors in the narco-world, and serve to accentuate narco-power.