Protests have erupted all over Mexico in the last month after the probable massacre of 43 student protesters by a drug gang affiliated with police. The national government has blamed a corrupt local police force, but the protests are powered by rage over the way drug cartels have infiltrated every level of government and every aspect of life in in Mexico, forming a virtual narco state.

As long as traffickers have been a fact of life in that country, pop music has reflected grim reality. “Contrabando y Traicion” ("Contraband and Betrayal") was a big hit for Los Tigres del Norte in 1973. Songs that tell the stories of traffickers are called narcocorridos, and like gangster movies in the US, they walk a fine line between judging and affirming their subjects. “There’s a little bit of the underdog, the outlaw rebel” quality in the figure of the narco, says Carolina Miranda, a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times. Narcocorridos are enormously popular in Mexico and in the US, played on Spotify and sold at Walmart. Miranda says there’s another connection to the US: many are created at a Burbank music studio called Twins Group. 

But the narcocorridos have changed. In the last few years, the alterado movimiento trend is toward extreme violence. These are “narcocorridos that don’t tell cinematic, poetic stories about smuggling, the way Los Tigres did,” says Miranda. “They’re about chopping heads off, they’re about killing. The singers carry bazookas.” Some songwriters work on commission from drug lords. Miranda feels that the alterado culture has become a form of propaganda for the narco state. 

“The music is a symptom of a much larger problem, and the culture is a reflection of that” she says. “But we as consumers of culture can take a step back and think about what we’re buying, what we’re listening to, what we’re celebrating every time we hit play on iTunes.” 

→ Should Mexican artists draw some lines?  Does pop culture ever bear responsibility for inciting violence?