Americas Features

Saints and singers bloom from Mexico's fertile narco-culture

By Klaus Blume Jan 11, 2012, 10:08 GMT

Mexican State agents guard the bodies of some of the 13 people murdered in Zitacuaro town, Mexican state of Michoacan, among them 10 adults and three underages, which were taken to the Forensics Center in Morelia, Michoacan, Mexico, 09 January 2012. EPA/STR

Mexico City/Berlin - Mexico's drug bosses and pickpockets scoff at both earthly law and the Ten Commandments. But the 'Santa Muerte' - Saint Death - is the answer to their prayers.

Ghoulishly represented in streetside altars as a scythe-wielding Grim Reaper in a full-skirted dress, the sinister saint is popping up across the country. She's reputed to offer help with stealing, smuggling, or giving foes a push toward the Great Beyond, in exchange for an offering of tequila, cigarettes or cocaine.

And she's not just for drug lords anymore.

'There are more and more altars, in Mexico City and all over the country, in public places and in homes. Families are putting them up in living rooms, dining rooms, even in their bedrooms,' says the poet and novelist Homero Aridjis, who has written extensively about the phenomenon.

'She's the saint for crooks, yes, but also for the poor.'

As Mexico grapples with a wave of crime and violence that has killed more than 45,000 in five years, drug gangs seem to have become part of the landscape. Their 'narco-culture' has blossomed from Mexico's northern drug-smuggling regions into a genuine cultural phenomenon, that starts with flashy-kitsch clothing, jewelry, and architecture and influences everything from popular music to spiritual life.

In the northwestern city of Culiacan, the capital of drug-plagued Sinaloa state, pilgrims worship at the shrine of Jesus Malverde, patron of drug dealers.

Like a Mexican Robin Hood, he's said to have stolen from the rich and given to the poor, until he met his end at the gallows in 1909. Since then, he's been adopted by the 'narcos' as one of their own, and credited with all kinds of underworld wonders, including the miraculous recovery of a drug kingpin's seriously injured son.

Narco-culture isn't just reworking Mexican folk legends. It's writing new ones - to music.

In their original form, Mexico's corridos are folkloric ballads, celebrating the heroes of the Mexican revolution (1910-1917) or the immortal Adelita, loyal sweetheart of a revolutionary soldier.

But today's so-called narcocorridos play a different tune: of sneaky smugglers, marijuana farmers, filthy rich drug lords, duped policemen, murdered snitches or the bosses' romantic liaisons.

Like the Santa Muerte, narcocorridos reach a wide audience, and their fans are no longer limited to criminals. But the songs are as controversial as they are successful.

Critics say they celebrate violence and incite crime. In some states, they're banned, or boycotted by radio broadcasters, but CDs of the songs are widely available.

Some musicians reject the criticism that they're glorifying drug trafficking. Jorge Hernandez, of the popular band Los Tigres del Norte (The Tigers of the North) says that more than gangster balladeers, they see themselves as singing chroniclers of the country's woes.

'We are going to keep singing the stories we have always sung. If we stop singing, then you (journalists) would have to stop writing,' Hernandez told the press recently.

But rumours persist that drug lords are actually commissioning some of the songs. Musicians who strike the wrong note can get caught between the lines of the drug war. In recent years, some have been murdered.

And if the line separating narco-culture from the drug war is blurry, cartels in the infamous border city of Juarez have all but erased it.

When the city's drug gangs want to announce a murder, they hijack police radio frequencies to play out a narcocorrido - life, imitating art, imitating life.