![]() ![]() I kept track of the terms more for the range of terms than for their repetition. Narcomensaje or narco-message did, however, become a standard term, along with the closely related narcomanta (narco-blanket or narco-banner). There are a lot of forms that a message can take, but a narco-message has a characteristic form: mainly black text with some red letters or words for accent orthographic errors and/or colloquial expressions text printed on a portable, removable surface. This form helped settle the name, but the name also helped fix the form. I kept this list out of sense of the absurdity of this trend of narco-fying the world, but this process also does work in the world. It changes perceptions and shapes understanding. Adding narco- to the front of words like this creates the idea of a totally separate narco-world an underworld in which everything in the non-criminal world has its glamorous, dangerous, narco double. ![]() It inflates the threat of the “narco,” while at the same time setting it elsewhere. In part, this list is absurd to me because there is no separate world crime and all things narco are very much a part of this world. Narco-relative (as in familial relations).Narco-postmodernity (because one prefix is never enough).Narco-message (another way of saying this one way is not enough).Crime is not the product of some different or distant underworld, it is the result of processes and practices taking place here and now, in the society that is our society, in the world that is our world. When I am out and about during field research, I invariably have a roll of papers under my arm. If I don’t have a roll of papers, it is only because I’m en route to raid one of the local newsstands. The roll of papers is usually a mix of weekly or monthly political magazines, and daily newspapers and tabloids – the mags and the rags. I started poring over the mags and the rags to get a feel for the media landscape and style of reporting in Mexico. Media archives were my main source, in putting together a database of narco-messages, so I wanted some context for the sources I was using. Over time, however, digging into the papers has become its own activity. ![]() In this I have been inspired by ethnographers like Lisa Wedeen, who talk about coming back from the field with boxes of material to continue picking through. I’ve never kept track of how much of this material I work through, but on this current trip, I am spending at least an hour a day in the mags and rags.įor this summer research trip, I arrived with a different priority for my print ethnography (or whatever we’re going to call it). On past trips, I dipped into the nota roja – the notorious tabloid papers that show graphic photos of crime scenes on their front covers. I quickly learned not to open these over lunch, and made a point of not picking up these rags more than once or twice each week. This time around, however, I decided I was missing something important by not digging deeper into the nota roja. ![]() So I have started picking up Extra, one of Cuernavaca’s local rags, every day (despite the protestations of the vendor at my local newsstand). Why focus on these pages full of blood and violence (and football)? In previous interviews with journalists, I heard that Extra is less dependent on the government than most local papers. Extra has a huge circulation it funds itself. A lot of the other papers depend on government funding through purchase of advertising space and similar, in order to stay in circulation. ![]()
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