Shaul Schwarz Explores The Narcocorrido The Film, 'Narco Cultura'

In a scene from the TV series Breaking Bad, the meth-dealing Walter White's alter ego, Heisenberg, is the star of a narcocorrido -- a popular type of Mexican song that glamorizes and celebrates outlaw drug traffickers. The narcocorrido is the subject of Shaul Schwarz's film, Narco Cultura.

In an interview with Soundcheck host John Schaefer, Schwarz talks about the burgeoning genre, its history, and the Mexican drug war. 

This segment originally aired on Nov. 19, 2013.

Interview Highlights

Shaul Schwarz on the popularity of narcocorridos:

They're very popular. Their popularity in the U.S. specifically has grown a lot in the past couple of years. The style of it has changed, because narcocorridos go back to bands that today almost seem classical. [For example], Los Tigres Del Norte, Chalino Sanchez, these kind of legends that really hinted more of corruption rather than what these corridos of today do which is really strong-hitting. 

On narcocorridos' ties to Mexican pop culture:

It's totally in their pop culture. For Americans, we've had this thing going on and we've heard about this drug war for 30 years and we kind of stick our head in the sand. But you have to understand, what we've seen in Mexico since 2006 has shaken the ground so violently and so crazy that everything's changed. It's in the media everyday, it's in the gossip, it's in crazy popular blogs like Blog Del Narco. Which are so much more than blogs now, they are able to influence actual politics, and who stays in power and who doesn't, that it's not surprising to me to see young teenage girls say, "I'd like to date a narco." 

On riding-along in a narco convoy:

We had this access that very few journalists had, and certainly not with a film camera in their hand, to the actual people. It was short, it was scary. We shot more than we could put out there. We saw a lot more. We [went] to a private party, we saw the meth labs, we [saw] the infamous graveyard of the big, celebrated traffickers with their million-dollar bulletproof mausoleum. It sounds so shocking now, but I think as you go through the progression of the film, by then you get how much this is ingrained in every day life.