By Juan Larrosa, July 7, 2025
The debate around narcocorridos has been present in the media, opinion columns, and policymaking forums. This raises many questions. Two seem especially relevant to me: What exactly are narcocorridos? And should the State regulate or even ban them? Here, I propose approaching the issue through the lens of propaganda.
From my perspective, a helpful way to understand this phenomenon is to think of it as a form of propaganda. I do so based on a recent Spanish translation of an article I wrote on the subject (insert article). This translation was published in the book The Circulation of Information and Truth: Keys to Understanding It, published by CALAS and CLACSO. In that piece, I analyze narcocorridos dedicated to Chapo Guzmán as a propaganda communication strategy.
Propaganda is a (political) communication practice whose goal is to generate persuasive effects on people’s opinions and actions. Propaganda aims to persuade people to support an ideology, a political project, or a figure with vested interests in power. Many communicative practices seek to persuade. What distinguishes propaganda is its ethically problematic nature: it aims to convince, but not necessarily through truth. It may rely on half-truths, deliberate distortions, or the intentional omission of information. In that sense, it is an act of manipulation.
Anthropologists and researchers have documented that many drug cartels, much like formal companies, have communications teams that monitor the media, develop strategies, and build narratives to influence public opinion. Based on these findings, my starting point for analyzing narcocorridos was a specific question: How did Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán come to be more widely recognized than some presidents and former presidents, despite having a very low public profile?
The answer I arrived at is that one of the strategies that earned him such public recognition was precisely the narcocorridos that narrate his life. DuringGuzmán’ss trial, it was documented that he paid significant sums of money to have songs written and performed about him.
When I analyzed the lyrics of these songs, I found that they contained no criticism ofGuzmán’ss actions. His story was told like a tale of cops and robbers, never mentioning drugs, addiction, murder, disappearances, or displacement caused by violence. The portrait was that of a successful, wealthy, and brave” “mach”” who defended his people.
To be clear: not all narcocorridos are propaganda, and not all are commissioned by organized crime. But some certainly are—and this should be part of the public debate. Because in Mexico, we are not only facing a war of weapons, but also a war in the realms of communication and culture.
So, what can be done? Banning these songs is a poor strategy: prohibition often attracts more attention, and there is a real risk of censoring expressions that are not propaganda. At the same time, I believe it’s appropriate for governments not to use public funds to promote or hire bands that glorify drug trafficking.
This debate is complex and must remain open. What matters most is recognizing that communication and culture are also battlegrounds—and that they are deeply entangled with the violence and conflicts we live through every day in our country.