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The Media-Entertainment Industry
and the “War on Drugs” in Mexico
by
Julien Mercille

Since 2006, Mexico has militarized its “war on drugs,” backed by the United States.
Examination of this drug war from a critical political economic angle suggests that the
neoliberal reforms implemented in Mexico over the past several decades have increased the
size of the drug industry and that drug war rhetoric facilitates the containment of popular
opposition to neoliberal policies. U.S. popular culture has contributed to legitimizing the
drug war and making it more acceptable to the U.S. public. An analysis of selected movies,
television series, and a video game shows that the themes presented in these productions
are very similar to those conveyed by U.S. government officials and mainstream analysts.
Indeed, popular culture messages reflect elite views of U.S. foreign policy because the
media-entertainment industry is itself part of the corporate establishment.

Desde 2006, México, con el apoyo de los Estados Unidos, ha militarizado su “guerra
contra el narcotráfico.” Una crítica de esta guerra contra el narco de un punto de vista
político-económico sugiere que las reformas neoliberales implementadas en México
durante ya varias décadas han agrandado la industria de estupefacientes, y que la retórica
de la guerra contra el narco facilita la contención de la oposición popular que se opone a la
política neoliberal. Mientras tanto, en los Estados Unidos, la cultura popular ha contri-
buido a legitimar y hacer más aceptable la guerra contra el narco. Un análisis de películas
y series de televisión seleccionadas, más un juego de video, muestra que los temas presen-
tados en estas producciones son muy parecidos a los difundidos por oficiales del gobierno
de Estados Unidos y analistas convencionales. De hecho, los mensajes de la cultura popu-
lar reflejan las perspectivas de la élite con respecto a la política exterior de los Estados
Unidos porque los mismos medios de entretenimiento forman parte del establecimiento
corporativo.

Keywords: Mexico, War on drugs, U.S. foreign policy, Neoliberalism, Popular culture,
Media

Mexico is an important producer of cannabis, heroin, and methamphet-


amine and a transit country for cocaine and other drugs, the bulk of which is
consumed in the large U.S. market. It is estimated that drug trafficking activi-
ties account for about 3 to 4 percent of Mexico’s gross domestic product (Shirk,
2011: 7). For several decades the United States has supported drug wars in
Latin America, and since 2008 the Mérida Initiative has provided US$1.5 bil-
lion in military and police aid to Mexico. However, the strategy has been
unsuccessful, and trafficking has increased significantly. For instance, opium
production has increased from 71 tons in 2005 to 425 tons in 2009 as Mexico
Julien Mercille is a lecturer in the School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Policy at
University College Dublin and the author of Cruel Harvest: US Intervention in the Afghan Drug
Trade (2013).

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 195, Vol. 41 No. 2, March 2014 110-129
DOI: 10.1177/0094582X13509790
© 2013 Latin American Perspectives

110
Mercille / THE MEDIA AND MEXICO’S “WAR ON DRUGS”     111

has become the world’s second-largest producer, after Afghanistan. Cannabis


cultivation covered 5,600 hectares in 2005 but 16,500 hectares in 2010, while
methamphetamine production has been rising (Seelke and Finklea, 2011: 26;
UNODC, 2012: 28, 44; U.S. Department of State, 2011: 387). Most important,
50,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence since 2006, when
Mexico’s President Felipe Calderón militarized the “war on drugs” to an
unprecedented degree (Cave, 2012).
This article examines the ways in which U.S. popular culture legitimizes the
war on drugs in Mexico and normalizes mainstream views of the war. An anal-
ysis of representative films, television series, and a video game shows that the
images and meanings they convey about the drug war south of the border are
similar to those presented by U.S. government officials and mainstream ana-
lysts. A broader point is that U.S. intervention in Latin America and globally
thrives upon an elaborate set of “mythologies,” “signs,” and “simulations” that
support perceptions, prejudices, and attitudes that make such policies more
acceptable to the public (Barthes, 1972; Baudrillard, 1994; Debord, 1995).
Hollywood movies and television have been prominent in circulating images
and ideologies that reinforce acceptance of the role and purpose of the U.S.
government and military in the world. This, of course, is not specific to Mexico
and narcotics and has been examined in relation to U.S. patriotism, the benefits
of a “free-market” economy, the need for a strong military to protect the nation
and the world against a range of villains, and the benevolence and peacemak-
ing role of U.S. foreign policy (Andersen, 2007; Boggs and Pollard, 2007;
Franklin, 2008; Kellner, 1992; Martin and Petro, 2006; Nieborg, 2010; Stahl,
2010). In particular, the Pentagon’s involvement in movie making ensures that
Hollywood films present favorable views of the military (Suid, 2002). President
Eisenhower’s phrase “the military-industrial complex” could thus be amended,
to borrow James Der Derian’s (2001) words, to “the military-industrial-media-
entertainment network.” The result is that “popular culture has been and is
used to prepare the population to be receptive to war, to accept the need for war
on the eve of its outbreak, and to stay the course with all its sacrifices as the
wars drag on” (Martin and Steuter, 2010: 13).
This article conceives of the messages circulated by the media as ultimately
grounded in the political economic interests of U.S. elites. This interpretation
draws from theoretical work such as that of Robert McChesney (2000; 2004) on
the ways in which the political economic structure of the corporate media pro-
duces messages reflecting the priorities of U.S. corporate and governmental
elites (see also Herman and Chomsky, 2002). Douglas Kellner’s (1995) “multi-
perspectival” approach is also useful in that it is sensitive to the political eco-
nomic roots of media representations without neglecting their race and gender
aspects and other stereotypical depictions. H. Bruce Franklin (2008) and Carl
Boggs and Tom Pollard (2007) have presented similar interpretations from
which this article draws as well.
The profit-driven nature of today’s media is key. As a studio executive once
famously complained, “Rupert Murdoch isn’t looking at the quality of the
script, I promise you. He’s looking at the quality of return” (quoted in Boggs
and Pollard, 2007: 5). Media-entertainment firms are large conglomerates that
are part and parcel of the corporate world and thus fully enmeshed with other
economic sectors through common memberships on boards of directors and
112    LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

pressures for financial returns from investors and shareholders and from banks
from which they obtain loans. This means that the media and entertainment
industries tend to share the goals of the corporate sector as a whole: steady
profits, maximizing market share at home and globally, promoting “free-market”
and consumption values, and opposing income redistribution toward the
lower echelons of society. The industry’s concentration has increased over the
past few decades, while at the same time becoming more deregulated and com-
mercialized, especially after the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Through
mergers, acquisitions, and a shift to more transnationalized operations, media
culture has become more pervasive and oligarchical, although there has also
been movement in the opposite direction with the spread of the Internet and
new social media such as Facebook and YouTube. Therefore, it is to be expected
that investors and entertainment executives will be reluctant to support and
fund movies and television shows that are critical of the corporate world,
investigate taboos and injustices, or denounce social inequality and U.S. mili-
tarism (Boggs and Pollard, 2007: 2).
Although the corporate nature of the media-entertainment industry accounts
for its reflection of elite views, the nature, meaning, and impact of its cultural
products should not be reduced entirely to the bottom line. They serve a broader
function of cultural acceptance and normalization of U.S. foreign policy and
overseas intervention. As Boggs and Pollard (2007: 11) have noted, all “power
structures need systemic ideological and cultural supports,” in other words,
hegemony as theorized by Antonio Gramsci. Of course, media messages are
never fully absorbed by an uncritical mass audience, but message repetition
and the dominance of the airwaves make it more likely that audiences will
become more receptive to such ideas.
There have been a number of studies of the processes by which militaristic
values are conveyed by the media, but the case of the drug war in Mexico has
remained unexamined. What follows first discusses U.S. government and
mainstream interpretations of the war on drugs in Mexico and goes on to pres-
ent a more critical view. It is argued that mainstream perspectives can be
divided into two camps, “hawks” and “doves.” The hawks are more militaris-
tic and strongly favor tough enforcement of antidrug policies; the doves adopt
a softer line, sometimes mentioning the fact that drug consumption in the
United States is part of the problem and needs to be addressed. Nevertheless,
both focus on the Mexican cartels and the violence associated with them while
emphasizing tough policies such as drug seizures, arrests of kingpins, and bol-
stering of Mexico’s military and police forces. Neither hawks nor doves discuss
U.S. responsibility in the Mexican drug trade in any depth or the uses of drug
war rhetoric. In particular, they do not critically examine U.S. hegemony over
Mexico and the implementation of neoliberal reforms such as the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which have increased the size of
the drug industry, for example, by forcing millions of peasants in search of
work into the drug trade. Neoliberal projects have been partly protected and
policed in the guise of the war on drugs, which is used discursively to promote
closer bilateral relations between the U.S. and Mexican militaries. This allows
the latter to contain popular opposition to neoliberal policies and even some-
times to use counternarcotics missions to arrest individuals and groups who
resist those policies.
Mercille / THE MEDIA AND MEXICO’S “WAR ON DRUGS”     113

The article then examines a range of media-entertainment products contain-


ing references to drugs in Mexico that have been highly popular and successful
at the box office: two movies (Traffic and Fast & Furious), three television series
(Weeds, Breaking Bad, and CSI: Miami), and a video game (Call of Juarez: The
Cartel).1 A number of themes emerge, among them the celebration of gun cul-
ture and violence, an exclusive focus on tough and militaristic approaches to
drugs, corruption (especially in Mexico), and negative depictions of Mexicans.
These themes closely correspond to the views presented by the U.S. govern-
ment and mainstream commentary, supporting the claim that the media play
an important role in legitimizing those ideologies and interests. Cultural pro-
ductions can also be roughly divided into hawkish and dovish categories, nei-
ther of which highlights U.S. responsibility in the drug trade, for example, by
failing to implement stricter gun and banking regulations or by pushing for
neoliberal reforms. Finally, although militaristic approaches are emphasized to
deal with drug trafficking, treatment of addicts and prevention campaigns,
which have been shown conclusively to be the most effective methods to reduce
drug problems, are virtually never mentioned.

The Conventional View of the Drug War in Mexico

The conventional view of the drug war in Mexico can be found in the
speeches and writings of a number of government officials, journalists, and
scholars (Bonner, 2010; Chabat, 2002; Garzón, 2008; González, 2009; Grayson,
2009; Guillermoprieto, 2008; Kellner and Pipitone, 2010; McCaffrey, 2009;
O’Neil, 2009; Shifter, 2007; Shirk, 2011). It has the following components: (1)
The drug cartels are the main and often the only protagonists mentioned in
drug trafficking and related violence. (2) The Mexican government is waging a
drug war in Mexico in collaboration with the United States to weaken the car-
tels, and U.S. officials are concerned with drug use and crime. If no action is
taken, the cartels could capture the Mexican state, lawlessness would prevail,
and the United States could be flooded with refugees. (3) One key problem
faced by the United States in this benevolent task is corruption within Mexico’s
body politic, fueled by drugs and the cartels. (4) The favored solutions include
military aid, anticorruption campaigns, interdiction of drug shipments, arrests
of drug lords, and economic development through neoliberal reforms. (5) Part
of the problem (from the dovish perspective) is that drug consumption in the
United States sustains drug trafficking south of the border while firearms
smuggling into Mexico increases the violence, and therefore drug demand
reduction programs and tighter gun regulations should be implemented.
The focus is thus on the cartels’ role in spreading terror in Mexico and cor-
rupting its government and enforcement officials. As stated by General (ret.)
Barry McCaffrey (2009: 7), who was Bill Clinton’s drug czar, Mexico “is fight-
ing for survival against narco-terrorism” and we should support “the coura-
geous Mexican leadership of the Calderón Administration” because “the
violent, warring collection of criminal drug cartels could overwhelm the insti-
tutions of the state” and we could face “a surge of millions of refugees crossing
the U.S. border to escape the domestic misery of violence.” Robert Bonner
114    LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

(2010: 40–41), the former director of the Drug Enforcement Administration


(DEA) and chief of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, approves of Mexico’s
militarization of the drug war because he believes the Mexican military is “one
of the country’s few reliable institutions.” There have been 50,000 deaths since
2006, but Bonner claims that the “increase in the number of drug-related homi-
cides, although unfortunate, is a sign of progress” in demonstrating that the
Mexican government is disrupting the cartels. Good intentions are attributed
to U.S. leadership: Richard Haass, the Council on Foreign Relations’ president,
comments that “American efforts to . . . shore up the [Mexican] justice system
have been substantial” (Shirk, 2011: viii). Others correctly point to the need for
drug demand reduction and gun control in the United States but ignore or
support U.S. political, economic, and military hegemony over Mexico. For
example, a Council on Foreign Relations report asserts that “U.S. authorities
should make greater efforts to encourage NAFTA trade by facilitating legiti-
mate cross-border flows” to foster economic development in Mexico (Shirk,
2011: 23, 10; see also O’Neil, 2009).

U.S. Hegemony, Neoliberalism, and Drug Trafficking

The alternative view presented here is grounded in a critical political eco-


nomic perspective on U.S. foreign policy. For lack of space, it can only be sum-
marized, although more elaborated versions can be found elsewhere (Mercille,
2011; see also Watt and Zepeda, 2012). U.S. foreign policy, it is argued, is shaped
by corporate and government elites’ objectives of securing a profitable invest-
ment climate, markets, and a cheap labor pool in Latin America and elsewhere.
Geopolitics and military strategy are also important, notably to attempt to pre-
serve Latin America as a U.S. “backyard” free of European and, more recently,
Chinese interference through support for friendly but often authoritarian or
military regimes that repress domestic dissent that could steer the region on
paths independent of U.S. hegemony. Finally, ideology plays a role in making
U.S. policies acceptable to the populations of the United States and Latin
America, and popular culture is crucial to this process (Cockcroft, 1998; Faux,
2006; Harvey, 2005; McCormick, 1995).
Declassified national security documents outline U.S. objectives in Latin
America since World War II, and prominent among them is to ensure “adequate
production in Latin America of, and access by the United States to, raw materi-
als essential to U.S. security,” such as Mexico’s large oil reserves. Another goal
is the “standardization of Latin American military organization, training, doc-
trine, and equipment along U.S. lines,” implemented through security assis-
tance and training programs with Mexico. Furthermore, Washington should
encourage Latin American countries “to base their economies on a system of
private enterprise and, as essential thereto, to create a political and economic
climate conducive to private investment, of both domestic and foreign capital,
including . . . opportunity to earn and in the case of foreign capital to repatriate
a reasonable return” (U.S. National Security Council, 1954). It is such objectives—
not a desire to address drug problems—that shape U.S. policy toward Mexico.
The war on drugs has been used to facilitate intervention in support of those
Mercille / THE MEDIA AND MEXICO’S “WAR ON DRUGS”     115

fundamental goals. Of course, the specific tactics used to reach those objectives
have varied over the postwar period. For example, the cold-war years wit-
nessed a reliance on military regimes, while over the past few decades neolib-
eral economic policies have been emphasized (Faux, 2006).
The Mexican government acted historically as overseer of the drug indus-
try, but this did not prevent the United States from considering it a strong ally.
During the seven decades in power of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional
(Institutional Revolutionary Party—PRI), the military, traffickers, police, and
political officials all took a cut from the narcotics traffic passing through their
territory, keeping violence to relatively low levels because all groups had a
stake in a smoothly conducted business.2 Because the PRI and the Dirección
Federal de Seguridad (Federal Security Directorate—DFS—an intelligence
agency) were anticommunist allies during the cold war, Washington closed its
eyes to their involvement in narcotics and on electoral fraud keeping the PRI
in power. The drug war was also sometimes used in those years to repress dis-
sent. For example, from the late 1960s to early 1980s, the Mexican authorities
waged a “dirty war” on leftist guerrillas and dissidents during which the
majority of abuses were committed by the Mexican military (Human Rights
Watch, 2009: 22). Deteriorating economic conditions and an austerity program
led to a wave of rural and labor militancy in the 1970s. At the same time,
Mexico waged a war on drugs in the northern states of Chihuahua, Durango,
and Sinaloa, a poor region where many land occupations by peasants took
place. Operation Condor sent 7,000 soldiers there, assisted by over 200 DEA
advisers from the United States. The fact that not one key drug trafficker was
captured but hundreds of peasants were arrested, tortured, and jailed suggests
that this was more a war against peasants, guerrillas, and marginalized groups
than against drugs (Astorga, 1999; Craig, 1980: 355; McConahay, 1976; NACLA,
1978; Pyes, 1977). Today, the Mexican government no longer regulates the
drug trade as under the PRI—hence the violence—but key sectors of the state
and security forces are still involved in it (Astorga, 2004; Freeman and Sierra,
2005; Watt and Zepeda, 2012).
Since the 1980s, neoliberal reforms have contributed to increasing the size of
the industry (although there are other causes as well) (Watt and Zepeda, 2012).
First, drug smuggling has been facilitated by larger trade flows across the U.S.-
Mexico border. Cartels started shipping cocaine, cannabis, crystal meth, and
heroin on trucks going to the United States (Bowden, 2010). Second, reforms
such as NAFTA pushed more Mexicans toward the drug industry, both to find
work and out of desperation. Neoliberalism has had largely negative conse-
quences for the majority of Mexicans. Whereas before reforms were imple-
mented the economy grew at a rate of 3.5 percent between 1960 and 1979
(annual per capita rate), this dropped to a meager 0.1 percent in the 1980s and
1.6 percent from 1992 to 2007. NAFTA has not led to job growth or wage
increases: for example, in Juárez, the average wage decreased from US$4.50 a
day to US$3.70. Since NAFTA went into effect, the manufacturing sector has
added some 500,000 to 600,000 net jobs, but they have been offset by a loss of
around 2.3 million jobs in agriculture because of cheaper corn imports from
subsidized U.S. agrobusinesses. This has forced farmers to leave their land and
either migrate to the United States or move to cities in Mexico’s North, where
116    LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

many have become cheap labor in U.S. manufactures (maquiladoras). The size
of the informal economy, in which workers face worse conditions, has increased
from 53 percent of the workforce in 1992 to 57 percent in 2004 (Bowden, 2010:
98; Faux, 2006: 40; Zepeda, Wise, and Gallagher, 2009). Consequently, many
Mexicans had little choice but to participate in drug trafficking, often as low-
level dealers, to make ends meet. The supply of laborers for the cartels increased
again around 2000 as maquiladoras faced competition from China’s and India’s
cheaper labor. Some companies located in Mexico moved to Asia, leading to
further layoffs. Finally, the social dislocation and unemployment caused by
neoliberal reforms has increased Mexicans’ use of drugs to alleviate suffering,
thereby enlarging the market. Charles Bowden (2010: 55), a veteran analyst of
Mexico, speaking of Juárez, asks, “Who in their right mind would turn down a
chance to consume drugs in a city of poverty, filth, violence, and despair?”
The erosion of the PRI’s political monopoly started in the late 1980s and
culminated in 2000 when the Partido Acción Nacional (National Action Party—
PAN) won the presidency. Drug-related violence increased in parallel as the
traditional PRI regulation of the traffic faded away. The cartels have been fight-
ing over the newly unstable market since then, while drug control has been
militarized to new levels in recent years. The PAN government and the Mexican
military, responsible for countless human rights abuses and corrupted by
drugs, are nevertheless strongly supported by Washington. It has been asserted
that some cartel leaders might even be paid DEA and FBI informants. Although
reliable data are difficult to obtain, some have reported that the Mexican mili-
tary and government ally themselves with certain cartels against rival ones,
discrediting claims of a disinterested drug war. For example, a National Public
Radio investigation suggested that Mexican officials sometimes side with the
Sinaloa cartel against other ones (Burnett, Peñaloza, and Benincasa, 2010;
Hernandez, 2011; Roston, 2012; Serrano, 2011).

Armoring Nafta and Repressing Dissent

The larger narcotics traffic going through Mexico since the 1980s has flooded
the country and the cartels with drug money. This has increased corruption,
and many police, military, and government officials have been bought off by
the cartels. A recent analysis found that 400 public officials from local police to
army officers had been arrested between 2007 and 2010 for collaborating with
the cartels. Between 1997 and 2005, three generals were convicted of drug traf-
ficking, while more than 150 soldiers and officers underwent trial on drug-
related charges between 1995 and 2000 (Burnett, Peñaloza, and Benincasa, 2010;
Freeman and Sierra, 2005: 283). Moreover, a United Nations report estimated
that around 60 percent of all Mexican municipalities are infiltrated or controlled
by the cartels (Watt and Zepeda, 2012: 229).
But Washington has sidelined the fight against corruption and drugs and
prioritized the assertion of its hegemony in Mexico, and this has involved con-
trolling dissent. As a Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) report
reviewing U.S. military programs in the region concluded: “Too often in Latin
America, when armies have focused on an internal enemy, the definition of
Mercille / THE MEDIA AND MEXICO’S “WAR ON DRUGS”     117

enemies has included political opponents of the regime in power, even those
working within the political system such as activists, independent journalists,
labor organizers, or opposition political-party leaders” (Isacson, Olson, and
Haugaard, 2004: 1). The drug war, not unlike the “war on terror,” has deepened
bilateral security relations with Latin American countries. For instance, the
White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy stated that one achieve-
ment of the war on drugs is that the United States and Mexico “went from a
‘virtually nonexistent’ military-to-military relationship to the formation of a
bilateral military working group.” Thus, the “U.S. military took advantage of
the counterdrug mission to promote closer relations with the Mexican military”
(Freeman and Sierra, 2005: 280). Between 1981 and 1995, 1,488 Mexicans were
trained in U.S. military academies, and Phil Jordan, the DEA head in Dallas,
Texas, from 1984 to 1994, stated that the “intelligence on corruption, especially
by drug traffickers, has always been there [but] we were under instructions not
to say anything negative about Mexico. It was a no-no since NAFTA was a hot
political football” (quoted in Faux, 2006: 43).
The U.S.-Mexico military relationship has been upgraded over the past
decade. The Security and Prosperity Partnership was discussed from 2005 to
2009 (but never formally implemented), and the Mérida Initiative—the United
States’ counterdrug plan for Mexico—has been in place since 2008. The bulk of
its US$1.5 billion in aid goes to equipment and training for military and police
forces. For instance, Mexico received 26 armored vehicles, seven Bell helicop-
ters (valued at US$88 million) and three UH-60 helicopters (valued at US$76.5
million). Much equipment is provided by U.S. weapons manufacturers, subsi-
dizing the military-industrial complex (GAO, 2010: 8; Seelke and Finklea, 2011:
10). The official intention to “fight criminal organizations . . . [and] disrupt
drug-trafficking . . . weapons trafficking, illicit financial activities and currency
smuggling, and human trafficking” (U.S. Government and Government of
Mexico, 2007) cannot be reconciled with the Mexican military’s record of human
rights abuses or with the fact that money laundering and weapons trafficking
have never been tightly regulated by the United States. Rather, Washington has
strengthened its links with the Mexican military, attempting to protect hege-
monic projects like NAFTA. This was in fact conceded candidly by Thomas
Shannon, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, in
a 2008 speech discussing the Mérida Initiative’s importance. He said it should
be implemented to create “a space for economic reform to take root” over “this
$15 trillion economy” composed of Mexico, the United States, and Canada. He
went on to remark that it builds on the Security and Prosperity Partnership,
which “understands North America as a shared economic space and that as a
shared economic space we need to protect it. . . . To a certain extent, we’re
armoring NAFTA” (U.S. Department of State, 2008).
Neoliberal reforms have caused popular resentment, which is understand-
able given that NAFTA was “an accord among magnates and potentates: an
agreement for the rich and powerful in the United States, Mexico, and Canada,
an agreement effectively excluding ordinary people in all three societies”
(Castañeda, 1996: 69). As such, NAFTA was opposed by labor unions, environ-
mental organizations, and popular majorities in Mexico, the United States, and
Canada. Clinton’s undersecretary of commerce, Jeffrey Garten, remarked that
118    LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

U.S. firms had become “de facto agents of foreign policy” (Faux, 2006: 16).
Popular opposition to the privatization of state assets, deregulation of business,
and weakening of labor, as well as the breakdown of collective landholdings in
rural areas, has been met with forceful intervention from the authorities. For
instance, several counterinsurgency campaigns have been orchestrated in
Chiapas against the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (Zapatista Army
of National Liberation—EZLN). U.S. corporations were concerned that the
rebellion could set a precedent and threaten investment opportunities south of
the border: a leaked memo by a Chase Manhattan Bank analyst stated that the
Mexican government “will need to eliminate the Zapatistas to demonstrate
their effective control of the national territory and of security policy” (Silverstein
and Cockburn, 1995). Members of the Grupos Aeromóviles de Fuerzas
Especiales (air-mobile special forces), trained for counternarcotics missions by
the U.S. military, participated in some operations against the EZLN, blurring
the line between counterinsurgency and counternarcotics (Hart, 2002: 490).
More recently, over 200 police and soldiers were dispatched to the villages of
Hermenegildo Galeana and San Alejandro, ostensibly looking for drugs, even
though Zapatista communities strictly ban narcotics and alcohol. Laura Carlsen
has remarked that many targeted areas have been “areas like ecotourism sites,
water sources, and zones believed to contain important biodiversity resources,
all of which are of interest to developers,” suggesting that counterinsurgency
and counternarcotics operations are related to investment opportunities
(Carlsen, 2008: 21).
The militarization of domestic repression has increased in recent years.
President Calderón dispatched 40,000 police and soldiers throughout the coun-
try, and they sometimes arrested and harassed individuals and groups opposed
to government policies under the cover of drug control operations. A recent
Human Rights Watch report documents abuses committed by the military
while on counternarcotics, public security, and counterinsurgency missions
and shows that the targets are often vulnerable or dissident individuals not
involved in drugs or terrorism. It states that the “abuses detailed in this report
include an enforced disappearance, the rape of indigenous women during
counterinsurgency and counternarcotics operations in Southern Mexico, the
torture and arbitrary detention of environmental activists during counternar-
cotics operations. . . . Many victims of the abuses documented in this report had
no connection to the drug trade or insurgencies” (Human Rights Watch, 2009:
2–3). In fact, “torture is part of the modus operandi of counternarcotics opera-
tions in Mexico,” and “its incidence has increased significantly in the context of
[Calderón’s] ‘war on drugs’” (Human Rights Watch, 2011: 28).
A Mexican Defense Ministry document (quoted in Freeman and Sierra, 2005:
290–291)3 explicitly confirmed the policy of using drug control missions to sup-
press dissent. It outlined a strategy to establish counternarcotics working
groups that “will adopt the measures necessary to obtain information on the
existence of armed groups, subversive activities, unjustifiable presence of for-
eigners, organizations, proselytizing by priests or leaders of religious sects,
ecological groups, political propaganda, [and] the presence and activities of
bands or gangs of criminals.” For instance, the environmental activists Rodolfo
Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera angered local caciques (political bosses) when
Mercille / THE MEDIA AND MEXICO’S “WAR ON DRUGS”     119

they organized an antilogging and deforestation campaign in Guerrero against


multinational corporations. The caciques reportedly told military commanders
that they were drug traffickers, and the soldiers then arrested them; they con-
fessed under torture that they were hiding drugs and guns, although it was
later found that the military had planted the evidence (Freeman and Sierra,
2005: 291; Human Rights Watch, 2009: 29; see also Delgado-Ramos and Romano,
2011; Wise, Alazar, and Carlsen, 2003).

The Media-Entertainment Complex


and the Drug War in Mexico

The cultural productions examined here correspond closely to the conven-


tional view on the drug war outlined above. Mexican cartels are the main pro-
tagonists south of the border, and their association with drugs is constantly
underlined. Mexico is depicted as chaotic and lawless, implying that outside
intervention is legitimate and warranted. Mexicans, cartel members or not, are
often depicted as crooked, corrupt, mischievous, and in general less worthy
than the U.S. officers chasing them. Guns and violence are invariably central to
the story, implying that drug dealers will not answer to anything other than a
bigger gun. High-tech U.S. weapons and equipment are featured prominently.
Military and police solutions to drug problems are the only ones presented;
treatment and prevention are virtually never mentioned.
Fast & Furious is a Hollywood blockbuster and the fourth film in the Fast
and Furious series that started in 2001. The film, produced by Universal
Pictures, grossed US$363 million worldwide while its production budget has
been estimated at US$85 million. The series has also led to the release of video
racing games in arcades and on PlayStation 2.4 The story has Dominic Toretto
(played by Vin Diesel) looking for the murderer of his girlfriend, killed while
working as a courier for a Mexican drug lord called Braga to transport his
heroin across the U.S.-Mexico border. Dominic wants to find the murderer
and decides to join Braga’s operations as a courier to find him. Meanwhile,
Dominic’s former friend and now FBI agent Brian Conner (played by Paul
Walker) is assigned to investigate and arrest Braga. Dominic and Brian, both
highly skilled race drivers, manage to earn spots on Braga’s courier team
using fast cars to transport heroin across the U.S.-Mexico border, hoping that
this will lead them to him. Following many treacherous car chase scenes, the
final race involves Dominic and Brian capturing Braga in Mexico, putting
him in their car, and racing back across the border to the United States, where
they hope he will be tried for drug trafficking. However, the drug lord’s
henchmen jump in their own vehicles to rescue their boss, leading to one last
race before Braga is finally arrested by the FBI on the U.S. side of the border.
The film is filled with violence, muscle cars, and villains on both sides of the
border. If one were to look exclusively at this film to understand the drug war
in Mexico, the definite impression would be one of Mexican gangsters living
in a lawless land who must be stopped to prevent the chaos from spreading
to the United States. Only heroes and high-tech equipment will save the
homeland from the scourge of drugs.
120    LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

Traffic is a crime drama about drug trafficking across the U.S.-Mexico border,
drug consumption, and enforcement. The film has been very successful at the
box office, grossing US$207.5 million worldwide, well above its US$48 million
production budget. It has won many prestigious awards, among them four
Academy Awards including Best Director and Best Supporting Actor (Benicio
del Toro).5 The film is at the dovish end of mainstream representations of the
drug war and interweaves several parallel stories. One takes place in Mexico
and shows two Mexican police officers called Javier Rodriguez and Manolo
Sanchez stopping a shipment of drugs. Their operation is interrupted by the
Mexican General Salazar, who decides to hire Javier to find and arrest Frankie
Flowers, a hit man working for the Tijuana cartel. The cartel in the film is led
by the Obregón brothers (in reference to the Arellano Félix brothers, leaders of
the Tijuana cartel in real life). Flowers, the hit man, is finally caught, and under
torture by Salazar’s men he reveals the names of the leaders of the Tijuana car-
tel, who are then arrested in a large-scale operation by the Mexican police and
military. This weakens the Tijuana cartel’s cocaine trafficking, but we soon
learn that General Salazar is corrupt and is in fact in the pocket of the rival
Juárez cartel. Thus what seemed like a clean drug control operation was actu-
ally an attack by one cartel on another. The story ends when Javier, the Mexican
cop, disgusted by all this corruption, decides to provide information to the
DEA against Salazar, leading to the latter’s arrest and eventual death in jail.
A second story is set in San Diego and follows two DEA agents in their inves-
tigation of Eduardo Ruiz, a major trafficker, together with his boss, the drug
kingpin Carlos Ayala, who is the main distributor for the Obregón brothers in
the United States. The U.S. authorities indict Ayala and try to send a strong
message to Mexican drug cartels that they will be prosecuted. However, during
Ayala’s trial, his wife attempts to save him by hiring an assassin to murder
Eduardo Ruiz, who is testifying against Ayala. The hired assassin is Frankie
Flowers, who plants a car bomb that kills a DEA agent and later is shot dead by
a sniper working for the Obregón brothers in retaliation for his collaboration
with General Salazar.
A third story is that of Robert Wakefield (played by Michael Douglas), a
conservative judge appointed U.S. drug czar while his own teenage daughter
is becoming a cocaine addict. This sets the stage for the film’s more dovish com-
mentary on the war on drugs. For example, there is some talk about treatment,
although it is never clearly stated that this is the most effective method to
reduce drug consumption. Judge Wakefield comes to realize that some aspects
of the war on drugs are wrong because they attack individuals such as his
daughter. However, Traffic presents a rather mild questioning of the drug war,
not a clear indictment—and the mild interrogations are drowned out by
repeated scenes showing violence, explosions, corruption, and crooked cartels,
along with numerous police operations.
Weeds is a satirical television series about a suburban mother called Nancy
Botwin who decides to become a drug dealer in order to support her family
when her husband dies unexpectedly. Produced in association with Lions Gate
Entertainment, the series started running on cable television (Showtime) in
2005 and was in its eighth season as of 2012. The fifth season’s debut attracted
over 1.3 million viewers, a four-year record for Showtime. The series has
Mercille / THE MEDIA AND MEXICO’S “WAR ON DRUGS”     121

received many awards, including a Golden Globe Award, an Emmy Award, a


Writers’ Guild of America Award, a Young Artist Award, and two Satellite
Awards (Zap2it, 2008). The series has a number of themes. In seasons 3 and 4,
Nancy associates herself with Mexican gangs and drug dealers both in the
United States and Mexico. The initial contact is prompted by her need for pro-
tection when her son is attacked by rival drug dealers. The Mexicans agree to
provide her with security in return for a percentage of her business. Their asso-
ciation evolves, and she ends up working in a maternity dress shop serving as
a front for drug money laundering and trafficking. The store is located near San
Diego close to the Mexican border, and there is a tunnel in the back room that
extends across the border all the way to Tijuana and is used by the Mexicans to
smuggle narcotics and even young girls into the United States. The violence
associated with the cartels is featured when the gangs start using the tunnel to
ship weapons and when the Mexicans torture a DEA agent to death in an
extremely bloody fashion and hang him. Mexican corruption is central to the
plot. The cartel leader is revealed to be the mayor of Tijuana, who simultane-
ously engages in drug trafficking, politics, and counterdrug operations in col-
laboration with the DEA. The Mexican police are shown to be directly involved
in large-scale drug smuggling across the border.
Weeds is a satire on some aspects of the drug war, but it nevertheless falls
squarely within mainstream interpretations, although perhaps slightly more
toward the dovish side. Corruption and crime control actions are prominent,
while more peaceful and effective methods of winning the drug war are
neglected. Treatment is discussed in a few episodes when one of the characters
undergoes therapy, but the subject is turned into farce. The therapist leading
the group sessions is shown as hopelessly melodramatic and inefficient, just
like the addicts. The effect, intended or not, is to ridicule treatment services.
Neoliberal reforms and their impact do not seem to be even known to the
show’s scriptwriters, a statement that applies to all mainstream cultural pro-
ductions.
Breaking Bad tells the story of Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher
who learns he has advanced lung cancer. This leads him to start producing
high-quality methamphetamines with the help of a former student in order to
pay for his expensive medical treatments and secure a stable financial future
for his family before he dies, and this involves him and his family in a number
of criminal networks and plots. The series started in 2008, and a fifth and final
season was in production as of 2012. It is broadcast on the cable channel AMC
and produced by Sony Pictures. It has received widespread praise, and the
American Film Institute listed it in the top 10 television series for 2010 and
2011. It has won six Emmy Awards in addition to nominations for Golden
Globe Awards. Season 4’s finale reached 2.9 million viewers (Hollywood
Reporter, 2011).
A number of episodes explore themes related to drugs and Mexico. In
season 3, a good-natured, down-to-earth DEA agent is ambushed in a parking
lot by two Mexican hit men working for the cartels. A number of stereotypes
are presented, from close-up shots of their cowboy boots adorned with a silver
skull to the random shooting of an innocent bystander, interspersed with a few
exchanges in Spanish. To emphasize the cartels’ cruelty, when the DEA agent is
122    LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

lying on the ground after having been shot several times a cartel hit man decides
not to finish him off with a bullet because he says this would be “too easy.”
Instead, he goes to fetch a well-sharpened axe to kill the agent in brutal fashion.
However, this gives the latter time to reload his gun despite his bloodied hands
and shoot the hit man in the head just as he comes back. There are also nego-
tiations between Walter White’s team and Mexican cartels to attempt to strike
deals over the methamphetamine traffic and explore possible collaboration in
production. When one such deal seems finalized, a reception takes place around
the swimming pool of the cartel boss, Don Eladio, and his capos (enforcers) in
the Mexican desert. Girls are brought in to entertain the guests, and all are
drinking the tequila brought by White’s team as a gift to the cartel. However,
the tequila is poisoned and designed to kill Don Eladio and his capos in retribu-
tion for a murder they committed some years previously. All the cartel mem-
bers die of poisoning or in the subsequent shooting before White’s team escapes
to the United States.
Breaking Bad tends toward the hawkish side of mainstream representations
of the drug war, mostly because of its violent nature. In the crime genre, it may
be considered of good quality, but as a commentary on drug problems, Mexico,
and the war on drugs it has the effect of reinforcing tough, militaristic values
and concealing U.S. responsibility in the drug trade and effective methods of
responding to it.
CSI: Miami (Crime Scene Investigation: Miami) is a popular series now in its
tenth season coproduced by Jerry Bruckheimer Productions, CBS, and Alliance
Atlantis, with each episode drawing up to over 20 million viewers.6 A few epi-
sodes revolve around the fictitious “Mala Noche” drug gang operating in
Mexico and Miami. The series gives the impression that Mexican/Latino drug
gangs are roaming free, sowing terror north and south of the border, and that
the only solution to the problem is for heroic police officers to tackle them
against all odds. In one episode, Mexican sheriff Anita Torres sees her hus-
band’s car explode and suspects the Mala Noche to be behind the attack.
Because Horatio Caine (played by David Caruso), the series’ main character
and accomplished detective, has had experience with the gang, Anita flies to
Miami to consult with him and his team. Horatio’s savvy team uses high-tech
devices to investigate the crime and find the guilty—even though in reality
such enforcement tactics are relatively ineffective. CSI: Miami viewers enjoy
intrigues and gun fights, judging by the show’s high ratings, but the hawkish
views it presents on drugs give a very distorted picture of a reality for which
the U.S. government shares responsibility.
Call of Juarez: The Cartel is a video game released in 2011 with a plot set in
Mexico and Los Angeles. The story is about a Vietnam veteran now working
for the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), a DEA agent, and an FBI agent
following the tracks of the fictitious Mexican Mendoza cartel, led by Juan
Mendoza. On its way to the cartel, the LAPD-DEA-FBI trio fights with street
gangs in the United States, burns a cannabis field, disrupts a sex trafficking
organization linked to drugs, and intercepts a cash shipment after a long car
chase. The three eventually find an underground passage used for smuggling
that leads them to Mexico. They make their way to Juan Mendoza’s hacienda,
where they kill his men in a furious battle to reach him.
Mercille / THE MEDIA AND MEXICO’S “WAR ON DRUGS”     123

The game’s official web site speaks for itself. Under the heading “Welcome
to the New Wild West,” it tells the player: “As you fight to dismantle the Cartel
. . . you’ll embark on an epic, bloody road trip from the streets of Los Angeles
to Ciudad Juarez. Experience the lawlessness of today’s Wild West as you hunt
down the Cartel before the violence escalates north of the border.” The game
boasts a “huge selection of weapons, including pistols, machine guns, sniper
rifles, anti-air weapons, and more” and a variety of missions, including raids
and “shooting in a crowd.” It takes the player to a number of locations, includ-
ing a gentlemen’s club where the female workers “would never judge a man by
the size of his pistol,” ensuring that a good dose of sexual imagery and mascu-
linist values are inherent in the game. Players will also confront East Los
Angeles, “home to over three dozen active street gangs,” and of course, Ciudad
Juárez, which is very dangerous because the “Mexican cartels use it as a main
hub for controlling every dark vice moving north and south across the border.
The city attracts people looking for drugs, guns, prostitution, . . . and even
revenge.”7
Violence is everywhere in the game, which has been criticized as “perhaps
the most racist game” made by a major publisher (Ubisoft): “The entire game
is about the evils of minorities, about their criminal behavior and how we
should put them down”; the player spends “the entire game shooting waves of
African Americans and Latinos . . . to the point where it’s dehumanizing”
(Penny Arcade, n.d.). This has even prompted some Mexican politicians to call
for a boycott of the game because of its “the large-scale demonization of Mexico
and the Mexican people” and the potential impact it could have on the normal-
ization of blood, death, and violence among children who play it (Mandell,
2011). In short, Call of Juarez: The Cartel is a hawkish representation of Mexico
and drug wars—ultraviolent, racist, sexist, and misleadingly inaccurate, but
popular. If one consulted only this game to understand the drug problem in
Mexico and the United States, one would be justified in thinking that the con-
tinent would soon be flooded with drugs and lawless thugs roaming the streets
and shooting bystanders randomly.
In sum, cultural productions’ portrayals of the drug war in Mexico and
Washington’s involvement in it closely reflect U.S. government and main-
stream views. Thus, intervention in Mexico’s affairs is seen as legitimate, mili-
taristic solutions to drug problems are emphasized, Mexicans are shown in a
bad light, and beyond cartels, street gangs, and cops there is not much else to
be discussed. Such productions make U.S. foreign policy more acceptable to the
public by neglecting to mention key aspects of U.S. responsibility in drug traf-
ficking, notably, the failure to implement tight gun control and money launder-
ing regulations and to support more treatment and prevention programs, in
addition to the negative consequences of neoliberal reforms. Estimates put at
87 percent the proportion of cartels’ firearms that originate in the United States,
but Washington “lacks a comprehensive strategy to combat arms trafficking to
Mexico” and reduce the size of this “iron river” of weapons flowing south
(GAO, 2009: 52).
President Obama has declared that he is “putting unprecedented pressure
on cartels and their finances here in the United States,” but in fact the U.S.
124    LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

financial community has been lightly regulated for decades (Obama and
Calderón, 2011). The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC,
2011: 7, 32) estimates that the global financial system launders some US$220
billion of drug money annually and only about 0.2 percent of all laundered
criminal money is seized and frozen. UNODC head Antonio Maria Costa said
that at “a time of major bank failures, money doesn’t smell, bankers seem to
believe” (Reuters, 2009; UNODC, 2009: 3). In the case of Mexico, the U.S. bank
Wachovia (now part of Wells Fargo) had to forfeit to U.S. authorities US$110
million in 2010 for having allowed financial transactions related to narcotics of
the same amount, together with US$50 million for having failed to monitor
funds that were used to transport 22 tons of cocaine. The federal prosecutor,
Jeffrey Sloman, said that “Wachovia’s blatant disregard for our banking laws
gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their opera-
tions” (Vulliamy, 2011).
Finally, the solutions presented by the media-entertainment industry and
mainstream analysts—interdiction and seizure of drug shipments, arrests of
drug kingpins, military and police operations—in fact have been shown by
scholarly research to be relatively ineffective. There is broad consensus among
researchers that the two most effective methods are treatment of addicts and
prevention. For example, an often-cited RAND Corporation report estimates
that treatment is the most effective way to reduce cocaine use in the United
States and missions in “source countries” like Mexico are 23 times less effective,
interdiction of drug shipments 11 times less effective, and domestic enforce-
ment in the United States 7 times less effective (Rydell and Everingham, 1994).
The Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, conceived by for-
mer presidents Zedillo of Mexico, Gaviria of Colombia, and Cardoso of Brazil,
agrees and asserts that the “long-term solution for the drug problem is to
reduce drastically the demand for drugs in the main consumer countries,”
namely, the United States and Europe (LACDD, 2009: 7). Unfortunately,
Washington allocates only 36 percent of its drug control budget to demand
reduction activities like treatment (ONDCP, 2010: 109).

Conclusion

The cultural productions of the media-entertainment industry reflect the


U.S. government’s and mainstream analysts’ views on the war on drugs in
Mexico. They focus overwhelmingly on cartels and depict Mexicans in a nega-
tive light while failing to examine U.S. responsibility in the drug trade, in par-
ticular, the role neoliberal reforms have played in increasing its size. The drug
consumption in the United States that is fueling trafficking and the role of U.S.
banks in laundering narcotic money are rarely addressed. Similarly, the role of
the war on drugs in facilitating U.S. intervention south of the border and
repressing opposition to projects like NAFTA is not mentioned. Thus movies,
television, and video games contribute to supporting U.S. foreign policy. In the
case of Mexico, the predominant objective of the past few decades has been the
implementation of neoliberal reforms that benefit the U.S. corporate sector by
Mercille / THE MEDIA AND MEXICO’S “WAR ON DRUGS”     125

giving it access to cheap Mexican labor in maquiladoras, expanded markets,


and investment opportunities, all in a climate of weaker environmental and
labor regulation. Because such policies have had negative consequences for a
majority of the Mexican population, the Mexican authorities have sought to
contain popular opposition. The war on drugs is not the only scheme that facil-
itates this, but it is one important one. By representing Mexico as a lawless land
where chaos reigns and bloodthirsty drug traffickers roam free, the media-
entertainment industry normalizes U.S. intervention through programs like
the Mérida Initiative.

Notes

1. Traffic (2000, USA Films), directed by Steven Soderbergh; Fast & Furious (2009, Universal
Pictures), directed by Justin Lin; Weeds (2005–, Lions Gate Television), created by Jenji Kohan;
Breaking Bad (2008–, Sony Pictures Television), created by Vince Gilligan; CSI: Miami (2002–, CBS
Paramount Network Television and Alliance Atlantis Television), created by Ann Donahue, Carol
Mendelsohn, and Anthony Zuiker; Call of Juarez: The Cartel (2011, Ubisoft), developed by Techland.
As this article was going to press, another film on drugs and Mexico was released, entitled Savages,
directed by Oliver Stone. It focuses on two American pot growers chasing Mexican cartel leaders
who have kidnapped their girlfriend.
2. The PRI dominated Mexican politics until 2000, when it lost the presidency to the Partido
Acción Nacional (PAN).
3. The 2000 document concerned operations in the state of Chihuahua.
4. See Fast & Furious’s Internet Movie Database (IMDb) web page at http://www.imdb.com/
title/tt1013752/.
5. See Traffic’s IMDb web page at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181865/.
6. See ratings data compiled by season at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSI:_Miami.
7. See the game’s official web site at http://callofjuarez.ubi.com/the-cartel/en-GB/home/.

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