{"id":2469,"date":"2025-07-08T05:32:22","date_gmt":"2025-07-08T11:32:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juan-larrosa.com\/?p=2469"},"modified":"2025-07-08T05:37:04","modified_gmt":"2025-07-08T11:37:04","slug":"narcocorridos-as-a-form-of-propaganda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juan-larrosa.com\/en\/narcocorridos-as-a-form-of-propaganda\/","title":{"rendered":"Narcocorridos as a Form of Propaganda"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Juan Larrosa, July 7, 2025<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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 Guzm\u00e1n as a propaganda communication strategy.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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 Joaqu\u00edn “El Chapo” Guzm\u00e1n come to be more widely recognized than some presidents and former presidents, despite having a very low public profile?<\/p>\n

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. DuringGuzm\u00e1n’ss trial, it was documented that he paid significant sums of money to have songs written and performed about him.<\/p>\n

When I analyzed the lyrics of these songs, I found that they contained no criticism ofGuzm\u00e1n’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.<\/p>\n

To be clear: not all narcocorridos are propaganda, and not all are commissioned by organized crime. But some certainly are\u2014and 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

This debate is complex and must remain open. What matters most is recognizing that communication and culture are also battlegrounds\u2014and that they are deeply entangled with the violence and conflicts we live through every day in our country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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… Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[153,145,371],"tags":[163],"class_list":["post-2469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-communication","category-political-economy-of-communication-and-culture","category-propaganda-2","tag-political-communication","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2902,"url":"https:\/\/www.juan-larrosa.com\/en\/the-communicational-power-of-cartels\/","url_meta":{"origin":2469,"position":0},"title":"The Communicational Power of Cartels","author":"Juan S. Larrosa-Fuentes","date":"9 March, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"By Juan Larrosa, March 9, 2026 Two weeks after #22F in Guadalajara, there is still much to analyze. In recent times, it has been said\u2014rightly so\u2014that criminal cartels have developed a high level of sophistication in their capacity for force and violence: they possess weaponry comparable to, and sometimes more\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Political Communication"","block_context":{"text":"Political Communication","link":"https:\/\/www.juan-larrosa.com\/en\/category\/political-communication\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":976,"url":"https:\/\/www.juan-larrosa.com\/en\/una-agenda-para-los-observatorios-de-medios-en-mexico\/","url_meta":{"origin":2469,"position":1},"title":"A Research-Agenda for Media Observatories in Mexico","author":"Juan S. Larrosa-Fuentes","date":"30 April, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"This article was published in Revista Z\u00f3calo (May, 2017). If you want to read the article, click here. \u00a0 In historical terms, media observatories were born in the late 1990s in Brazil and at the beginning of the following decade, in 2002, at the World Social Forum. 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Towards Hybrid Political Communication","author":"Juan S. Larrosa-Fuentes","date":"24 March, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"In recent weeks the Catalonian journal Tripods published the monograph \"Social Networks, Politics and Democracy. Towards Hybrid Political Communication,\" where was released my article \"Deliberation and Conversation between Political Elites and Social Media Users during Guadalajara\u2019s Election: a Political Communication Systems\u2019 Approach.\" The abstract of the article is the following:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Electoral Campaigns in Mexico"","block_context":{"text":"Electoral Campaigns in Mexico","link":"https:\/\/www.juan-larrosa.com\/en\/category\/political-communication\/electoral-campaigns-in-mexico\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Revista Tr\u00edpodos","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.juan-larrosa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/cover_issue_12_es_ES.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":843,"url":"https:\/\/www.juan-larrosa.com\/en\/making-sense-of-election-2016-a-political-communication-perspective\/","url_meta":{"origin":2469,"position":3},"title":"“Making Sense of Election 2016”: a Political Communication Perspective","author":"Juan S. 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