Drug cartels are becoming pop culture brands.
You can now listen to narco gangster rap
while sporting El Chapo-branded clothes.
But this is not just random product placement.
This is propaganda.
Jamie: When we think of propaganda, the picture is usually of
governments trying to brainwash their populations,
particularly during war.
And like any war,
the use of propaganda is just as crucial in the war on drugs.
Controlling the flow of information and public opinion
is equally important to drug cartels
as it is to actual governments.
And this can work in some pretty surprising ways.
From inventing entire new music genres
to brutally murdering journalists who report their crimes,
this is how drug cartels use propaganda to cement their power
and how their reach has gone global in the age of TikTok and Instagram.
[Dramatic music playing]
[Car horns beeping]
In April 2008,
a huge banner appeared over a busy highway in Nuevo Laredo,
a key drug trafficking city on the US-Mexico border.
This turned out to be a recruitment poster
for the ultra-violent Zetas cartel,
offering men with military experience
good salaries, food, and benefits
for joining their emerging criminal army.
Jamie: As the Mexican war on drugs
intensified over the following decade,
these banners or
became a surreal but common form of messaging all over Mexico.
Jamie: Cartels would use them to claim credit for murders,
to mock and intimidate their rivals,
or to distance themselves from massacres that had gone too far.
And perhaps most importantly,
many
and government officials of actually working with competing cartels
and trafficking groups.
As the drug war in Mexico has dragged on, however,
cartels have moved with the times.
Now criminal groups spread their message
less through bedsheets draped over highway bridges
and more through Instagram Stories and TikTok videos.
[Gunfire]
Back in the 2010s,
a Twitter account claiming to be run by El Chapo’s son Archivaldo
started posting pictures of expensive sports cars
and gold-plated assault rifles.
This trend has continued
with more and more Instagram and TikTok accounts
claiming to be narcos showing off their wealth and power.
But it’s often hard to tell where real cartel social media ends
and pop culture fantasy begins.
Many accounts, like these featured here,
put on a show of narco mafia swag
but may well just be wannabe imitators.
[Aircraft engines droning]
[Thud]
Ow!
Drug traffickers using popular culture
to brag about their exploits and glamorize their lifestyle
is, in fact, an old tradition in Mexico.
And before the age of TikTok,
they went viral the old-fashioned way
by being immortalized in ballads known as
a specifically Mexican form of songwriting,
which takes traditional folk music but adapts the lyrics
to talk about the realities of smuggling cocaine and heroin
and murdering rival cartel bosses.
And although not all
the line between singing about crime and actual crime
can often get pretty blurry.
Often, particular
become associated with specific cartel leaders,
winding up as their in-house songwriters.
For instance, the singer Luis Conriquez
had hits with songs about Double R,
the Jalisco commander known as “The YouTuber,”
though he’s denied any official link with the cartel.
This leaked video of Conriquez
allegedly playing in one of Double R’s parties went viral.
[Gunfire]
We can assume those aren’t firecrackers we’re hearing there.
Police were then able to follow the band,
eventually leading to them catching Double R,
who'd eluded them for years.
But just like the narco banners, times change,
and a new generation of narco musicians is emerging
who draw less from traditional Mexican mariachi bands
and more from American gangster rap and trap music,
creating a whole new genre known as
Trapteño
When the Zetas murdered a Gulf Cartel boss in 2011,
this track named “Comandante Metro 3”
describing the events
racked up over 3 million views on YouTube.
This all raises the question,
why would cartels who regularly engage in open warfare
on the streets of Mexico
actually care about what people think of them?
The answer is that, like businesses, cartels are trying to make a profit,
and that means paying attention to PR.
During the COVID pandemic,
several cartels undertook serious social aid programs,
distributing food and toys for kids.
Reporter: Outside the northern city of Juarez,
children who have nothing
get their food from the man in the mask.
Thank you.
Reporter: He’s not from the government.
He’s a member of La Nueva Empresa drug cartel.
Of course, the main reason
the cartels are able to occupy these positions in society
is that the government itself is failing to.
But narco propaganda also has a much, much darker side.
Cartels put a lot of effort into making sure that
people hear the right messages about them,
but they put just as much effort into making sure
they don’t hear the wrong ones.
And they do that largely by intimidating
and murdering journalists.
Reporter: Tonight, more bloodshed in Mexico.
Another journalist killed this week in the country.
Five reporters have now been killed there
less than two months into the new year.
Jamie: Mexico is one of the deadliest countries
in the world for journalists,
even more so than some active war zones.
In 2022, at least 13 journalists were murdered in Mexico.
By comparison, at least 12 were killed in Ukraine
in the midst of the Russian invasion.
This is journalist Lourdes Maldonado
directly addressing President López Obrador
on national TV in 2019,
pleading for protection.
Last January, Maldonado was murdered,
the third journalist that month.
Today, just as we are protesting here in Mexico City,
in Tijuana, and in Sinaloa,
we learned the sad news that two of our colleagues
were taken from their lives in Veracruz.
Jamie: Perhaps most disturbingly,
it is specifically when journalists start digging into narco corruption
amongst the police and local politicians
that they’re often most in danger.
Propaganda in the war on drugs works in many ways.
When the mainstream press
recycle nonsense drug stories about rainbow fentanyl
or bath salts turning people into cannibals,
they’re spreading the propaganda of prohibition.
And when cartels inspire trap videos and TikToks
or murder journalists,
they’re fighting the same propaganda war in their own way.
And as long as the war on drugs keeps raging,
the propaganda from both sides will keep hitting our screens,
and the blood will keep hitting our streets.
Computerized voice: We’d like to congratulate drugs
for winning the war on drugs.