The Politics of Life and Death: Mexican Narconarratives at the Edge of the Twenty-First Century

THE POLITICS OF LIFE AND DEATH: MEXICAN NARCONARRATIVES AT THE EDGE OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by Angel M. Díaz-Dávalos December 2018 Examining Committee Members: Sergio R. Franco, Advisory Chair, Department of Spanish and Portuguese Hiram Aldarondo, Department of Spanish and Portuguese Víctor Pueyo Zoco, Department of Spanish and Portuguese Ignacio Sánchez Prado, External Member, Washington University in St. Louis ii © Copyright 2018 by Angel M. Díaz-Dávalos All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT The Politics of Life and Death: Mexican Narconarratives at the Edge of the Twenty-first Century. Angel M. Díaz-Dávalos Doctor of Philosophy Temple University, 2018 Doctoral Advisory Committee Chair: Sergio R. Franco This dissertation examines the link between sovereignty, law, community and (il)legal violence in 20th/21st century Mexican narratives associated with drug trafficking themes. The field of biopolitics provides ample pathways to explore the intersection of these concepts as they are portrayed in contemporary Mexican literature, music and film. Combining the theories of Michel Foucault, Roberto Esposito, Giorgio Agamben and Carl Schmitt, among others, this project analyzes the law and the sovereign, as well as the community and the narco within the spaces they inhabit as they enter in (violent) dialogue with each other. Furthermore, such relationship is viewed panoramically in three stages. First, I analyze the rise of a mythologized narco-sovereign and the creation of what could be conceptualized as Narcobiopolitcs, which materializes the moment the drug trafficker emerges into the Mexican collective imaginary and fights for a space for its own “community.” Second, narco-communities are allowed to thrive in the outskirts, cementing the figure of the narco-sovereign, a figure that challenges the power of the law. Lastly, the relationship between the law and the trafficker disintegrates due to an excess of violence and the communities they inhabit collapse, thus pointing to the fall of iv the (narco) community. The authors examined to explore these three phases are: Pablo Serrano, Yuri Herrera, Juan Pablo Villalobos, Gerardo Cornejo, Raúl Manríquez, Víctor Hugo Rascón Banda and Orfa Alarcón (literature); Gerardo Naranjo (film); Los Tucanes de Tijuana, Jenni Rivera, El Komander, Gerardo Ortiz and Los Tigres del Norte (music). The prologue provides a socio-historical context explaining the rise of drug trafficking violence in 20th century Mexico, as well as the current debate on narconarratives. It argues that such debate has yielded stagnating responses from academics and critics and specifies this project’s need to steer away from it. Chapter one offers the theoretical framework that will be utilized along the subsequent chapters in order to create a new space for dialogue surrounding these narratives. Chapter two analyses the rise of the mythologized figure of the narco-sovereign. The purpose of this entity is to create its own narco-community at the margins of the law, even though such community will always be under the Sovereign’s gaze. Chapter three showcases well-developed narco-communities who have managed to claim, through their narco-sovereigns, a space in their fight against the government institutions. Chapter four pinpoints the moment the relationship between legal and illegal violence collapses. This moment is portrayed in the narratives as the destruction of the community, with both entities (government and drug traffickers) responsible for such catastrophic downfall. Finally, the epilogue will conclude this dissertation by summarizing the main theoretical and analytical discussions, thus offering an opening to academic dialogue about narconarratives without the aim of sealing off the topic. Additionally, the epilogue will disclose research routes to undertake in the near future. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation could not have been completed without the support of many people who offered their guidance along the way, beginning with my extremely resourceful committee. My advisor, Dr. Sergio R. Franco mentored me throughout the entire process in a timely manner, from the drafting of the proposal to the preparation of the dissertation defense. I am extremely grateful for all the discussions I have had with him throughout the years and for all of his ideas and (counter)arguments that positively challenged and improved my project. In addition, I thank him for providing me with ample flexibility to explore the topic that occupied my thoughts for the last years. Dr. Hiram Aldarondo’s original comments on my proposal and his continuous support as Chair of the department, as well as his willingness to Chair my defense, were also invaluable. I thank Dr. Víctor Pueyo Zoco for his administrative help throughout the way, especially during the last months, as well as for his encouraging conversations and critical insight surrounding my research topic. Furthermore, I would also like to extend my gratitude to my external reader, Dr. Ignacio Sánchez Prado for providing suggestions and commentary for future research projects associated with the current one. From casual conversations in the hallways to impromptu writing retreats, my peers at the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and elsewhere also helped to make this process smoother. I thank you for having provided moral support and/or thoughtful conversations throughout all these years: Gabriela Díaz-Dávalos, Joshua Pongan, Brendan Spinelli, Patricia Moore-Martinez, Kathleen Cunniffe Peña and William Ryan, among many others. Additionally, I wouldn’t have been able to finish without my family’s input throughout these last years of my career. I am thankful to my parents and vi brother, for keeping me focused and for listening to my academic needs. Finally, I am grateful to my wife, Gabriela, for listening to my concerns, for having the patience to deal with our academic projects, and for offering her guidance and moral support all of this time. Thank you all. ! vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ......................................................................................................................iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................v PROLOGUE ....................................................................................................................viii CHAPTERS 1. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ......................................................................... 1 2. THE EMERGENCE OF A NARCOBIOPOLITICS ............................................53 3. THE NARCOTRAFFIC BODY POLITIC.........................................................112 4. THE LIMITS OF NARCOBIOPOLITICS: BETWEEN THANATOPOLITICS AND EXCESS IMMUNIZATION .....................................................................172 5. EPILOGUE..........................................................................................................226 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...........................................................................................................232! ! ! ! viii PROLOGUE Current transnational organized crime, especially drug-related violence in Latin America has its roots in twentieth century policy making. The rise of the powerful cartels in countries such as Mexico, Colombia and, to some extent in the political buffer zones created in Central America during our modern globalized period, in which frontiers from old and new markets alike were delineated, shed light on the vulnerability of the modern Latin American (democratic) Nation-State and the impossibility to thoroughly govern its entire territory vis-à-vis these violent forces.1 In addition, such lack of governability from the holders of the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force, as Max Weber classified the State in his Politics as a Vocation (1919), gave rise to privileged spaces of violence; spaces in which these criminal organizations, who are stronger than ever now can participate almost completely free from all legal implications and can articulate their own monopoly on violence, crafting, at the same time, their own sense of community and their own visible body politic with the im/explicit aid of government institutions. Miguel A. Cabañas, in “Introduction: Imagined Narcoscapes: Narcoculture and the Politics of Representation” states about the rise of the drug trafficking industry: “Since the capitalist crisis of the 1980s and the implementation of neoliberal policies in the past two decades, drug trafficking has become the most important illegal global industry and a source of political corruption, judicial impunity and violence throughout Latin America” (3). In the Mexican case, the drug-related political economy’s venture into these spaces was not conceived without the active engagement of military forces, of individual and collective political actors and organizations, of bilateral policies by Mexican and American agencies, and, in some areas of the Republic, of the State itself. Guillermo ! ix Valdés Castellanos, former director of the Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional (CISEN) states in Historia del narcotráfico en México that the three vectors that explain today’s phenomenon are: 1) the evolution of drug trafficking’s economic activities as heterogeneous enterprises; 2) the consumption culture in the United States from the 1940s onwards as well as politics

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