Visualizing Narcocultura: Violent Media,the Mexican Military’s Museum of Drugs,

and Transformative Culture

ETHAN SHARP

In recent years, as the drug war has intensified, the Mexican military has allowed media professionals to explore itsMuseum of Drugs, which is used primarily to train soldiers, and to introduce the Museum’s exhibits of narcocultura,or drug trafficking culture, to the larger public. Drawing on observations in the Museum, this article argues that theexhibits of narcocultura, by authorizing visualizations of drug traffickers for the military and the larger public andmodeling the transformative logic of culture, both support the military’s professionalization and serve as the basis fora campaign that calls for the watchfulness and support of civilians. [cultural knowledge, drug wars, exhibit design,militarization, modernization, museum studies, narcocultura, narco saints, self-reform, visualization]

T he Mexican military’s Museo de Enervantes(Museum of Drugs) is housed in a large, window-less room on the seventh floor of the Secretaría

de la Defensa Nacional (Ministry of National Defense, orSEDENA) in Mexico City.1 The Museum’s collection ofvisual media includes photographs, maps, and dioramasthat employ miniature soldiers to re-create drugenforcement operations as well as displays of drugs,paraphernalia employed in the production of drugs, andother objects that the military has confiscated from drugtraffickers. The military has used the collection, which ithas been developing since 1985, for training militarypersonnel, and relatively few civilians have entered theMuseum.2 In recent years, as the military has becomemore involved in the provision of domestic security andthe pursuit of drug traffickers, several journalists,videographers, and other media professionals havereceived permission to explore the Museum, and haveintroduced its exhibits to the larger public, mostlythrough television news programs and Internet reportsand videos. The exhibits that have received the mostattention across these media formats are dedicated towhat the Museum identifies as la narcocultura (the drugtrafficking culture). They include installations that re-create full-scale, colorful scenes from the lives of drugtraffickers, and displays of various weapons that once

belonged to drug traffickers, including gold-platedpistols (Figure 1).3

The Museum’s exhibits of narcocultura are bothpuzzling and alluring. Instead of contributing to a senseof “intense vulnerability” (Orr 2004:472), which hasbeen one of the techniques of militarization in theUnited States and other countries, the exhibits invitecontemplations of the vernacular aesthetics of drugtraffickers, and while they are evidence of successfuldrug enforcement operations, the exhibits raise ques-tions about the military’s success in thwarting drugtraffickers’ pursuits of wealth and influence. In thisarticle, referring to observations that I made during atour of the Museum, under the guidance of ArmyCaptain Claudio Montane, I attempt to draw out and tocritique the objectives that the military has pursuedthrough visualizations of narcocultura. For the purposesof this article, visualizations of narcocultura involvearranging, viewing, and interpreting displays of mate-rials confiscated from drug traffickers in ways thatallow these displays to become effective and highlyvalued instruments for encountering, reflecting upon,and making sense of drug traffickers’ beliefs and values.The article describes the organization of the media inthe Museum’s collection, and explores how these mediasupport interrelated narratives about the military, drug

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Visual Anthropology Review, Vol. 30, Issue 2, pp. 151–163, ISSN 1058-7187, online ISSN 1548-7458. © 2014 by the American Anthropological Association. DOI: 10.1111/var.12045.

traffickers, and the Mexican nation. It demonstrates thatthe military purposefully enhances the “visuality” ofnarcocultura (Pink 2012:126), by drawing attention tothe exhibits of narcocultura in the Museum and ensur-ing that these exhibits become the focus of many pho-tographs and videos that have circulated across a rangeof sites. The article is primarily concerned, then, withvisualizations of narcocultura by and for the military,but it takes into account how these visualizations haveadjusted to mediatization as media professionals haveintroduced these displays to diverse audiences.4 Indi-viduals who have acquired virtual access to the Muse-um’s exhibits of narcocultura through television or theInternet have been able to participate in the Museum’svisualizations of narcocultura along with soldiers withdirect access to the exhibits.

As a form of visual governance that authorizes“modes of seeing” drugs and drug traffickers (Feldman2005:224), the Museum has prepared soldiers in directand practical ways for the use of force against drugtraffickers in different theaters, but as an educationalinstitution that promotes the culture of drug traffickersas a useful form of knowledge and specialization, theMuseum has become a more dynamic resource, thebenefits of which are subject to continuous reassess-

ments. In recent years, the Museum has developed intoa means of inviting soldiers and civilians to identifywith each other, and to foster solidarity between the twogroups amid a series of violent events that media pro-fessionals have called la guerra del narco (drug war). Forthese reasons, the visualizations of narcocultura thathave occurred in and through the Museum have soughtto demonstrate the military’s capacities to gather, toreflect upon, and to repurpose the materials of drugtraffickers, creating a background against which themilitary can reinforce its sacrificial service to thenation, and continue to garner trust and respect fromcivilians. These visualizations respond to the differentimages of drug traffickers—including humorous andromantic images—that are produced and reproduced intelenovelas (television soap operas) and other mediaformats. Indeed, the Museum has allowed the military tobuild up its expertise in drug enforcement through andagainst this array of images.

The main argument of the article is that the Muse-um’s authority to mediate perceptions of drug traffick-ers resides both in its establishment as an apparatus ofwarfare, which the military uses to commemorate and toplan for heroic actions in the face of the many problemsposed by drug traffickers, and its transformation into animportant cultural institution, through which the mili-tary has organized different kinds of violent media intoexhibits that support instructive narratives and hasdrawn the larger public into these narratives throughthe mediatization of the exhibits. To support this argu-ment, I address the ways in which the Museum respondsto and facilitates a “transformative logic of culture,” asit intertwines the modernization of the military withactivities that take place in national museums in Mexico(Bennett 2006:52). The term transformative culture sug-gests connections between the military’s deployment ofthe Museum and the formation of museums in England,as Tony Bennett has described it. Drawing on MichelFoucault’s analyses of modern modalities of power,Bennett contends that in museums, culture became a“resource” for changing “acceptable norms and forms ofbehavior and consolidating those norms as self-acting imperatives” (Bennett 1995:22–23). By makingnarcocultura into a resource for reflection and self-reform, the military has heightened the importance of

Ethan Sharp teaches in the Department of Anthropology at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia. He received the Ph.D.in folklore from Indiana University. His dissertation research addressed the relationships between religious practice andtransnational migration in Mexican communities. From August 2009 to June 2010, he conducted ethnographic research on drugaddiction, drug addiction treatment, and the drug war in Monterrey, Mexico, with a Fulbright fellowship. During this time, he wasaffiliated with the Programa Noreste of the Centro de Investigaciones y de Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS).

FIGURE 1. A gold-plated pistol on display in the Museum. Thispistol once belonged to a leader of one of the largest drugtrafficking organizations in Mexico. The image of Pancho Villa,the popular leader of the Mexican Revolution, is engraved on the

pistol grip.

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the training that soldiers experience in the Museum, andhas made the Museum into the basis of a campaign thatcalls for self-discipline from all Mexicans. By focusingon representations of narcocultura, and the military’sdeployment of these representations as powerful instru-ments, this article bypasses questions about how themilitary or social scientists define or should defineculture. Rather, it recognizes that there is a widelyshared sense in Mexican society that culture is a usefulconcept for indicating and explaining difference amongmembers of the society, and it pursues insights into theinstitutional dynamics that have mobilized this sense ofculture for specific purposes. The different references toculture in this article, then, point to aspects of or devel-opments in a “culture complex” (Bennett 2013:25),privileging a focus on the formation of cultural insti-tutions and the production of knowledge about culture.

In the next section, I turn to a discussion of how themilitary’s use of the Museum in recent years has beeninterconnected with other mediations of violence andpower associated with the drug war, incorporatinginformation that I gathered in the course of ethno-graphic research in northeastern Mexico in 2006 and2010.5 The article then turns to a description of theMuseum’s collection, which is divided into three stages.The first stage features media that frame the Museum asan authoritative resource. The second stage, the core ofthe Museum, provides vistas on the different drugenforcement operations in which the military has beenengaged. The third stage offers encounters with visuallycaptivating, multifaceted representations of narcocul-tura. The last section highlights some of Captain Mon-tane’s comments on the exhibits of narcocultura, whichshow clearly that the military has insisted on the use-fulness of visualizing narcocultura as an exercise inboth self-reform and national preservation.

Dimensions of the Drug War

The evolution of the Museum from a secret depositoryinto an educational and cultural institution that servesdiverse audiences has overlapped with the following:the expansion and transformation of different kinds ofmarkets in Mexico, including markets for illegal drugs,markets for digital technologies, and markets for mediaprogramming; the reinstitution of competitive elections,a process that some have called “democratization”; andthe intensification of the drug war. The adoption ofneoliberal programs at different levels of government inMexico in the 1980s and 1990s curtailed governmentalsupport for small-scale agriculture, stimulated thegrowth of manufacturing and service sectors, and facili-

tated the exportation and importation of various com-modities (see Harvey 2007). These changes createdincentives for transferring investments from legitimatesmall-scale agriculture to the production of marijuanaand methamphetamines (see Maldonando Aranda 2012),expanded the possibilities for moving cocaine fromcountries to the south through Mexico as cross-bordermovements and exchanges increased, and contributedto increases in competition among drug traffickers. Inturn, the Mexican federal government began to devoteincreasingly more resources to drug enforcement yearafter year. At the same time, the democratization ofMexico’s electoral system in the 1990s and 2000sundermined traditional systems of interjurisdictionalaccountability (see Astorga and Shirk 2010), and inmany areas of Mexico, the military emerged as the onlyinstitution that was widely trusted to confront drugtraffickers (Camp 2010:307). As the military has becomemore involved in the provision of domestic security andthe pursuit of drug traffickers, however, it has directlycontributed to an increase in violent events associatedwith the drug war.

As I have addressed elsewhere (Sharp 2009), theadoption of neoliberal programs, amid the creation of amore competitive electoral system, has involved greateremphases in public discourse on entrepreneurship andcreative governance in Mexico. The greater emphaseson these values have coincided with—and to a degree,have supported—the expansion of institutions andmedia dedicated to culture as well as an increase inaccess to and reliance on digital technologies amongmany segments of Mexican society. Although the dis-course that promotes entrepreneurship and creativegovernance is not especially novel or crucial to theimplementation of neoliberal reforms, it has taken ongreater urgency amid the economic and politicalrestructurings that have occurred in Mexico in recentyears. As educational and cultural institutions haveadjusted to these changes, they have reinforced thetransformative logic that has been integral to their for-mation over the course of many decades and sustainedthe ongoing revival of interest in culture as a domain ofcommercial innovation and market development as wellas a resource for self-reform. In this regard, they havebenefited from innovations in and the growth of tele-vised and digital media in Mexico, which have requiredadaptations across a range of institutions and socialgroups. As more people in Mexico have gained access toa broader array of television programming, the Internet,and mobile operating systems, it has become possiblefor them to watch and to rewatch the drug war as itunfolds and for representations of drug traffickers andnarcocultura to develop into lucrative enterprises.

Visualizing Narcocultura SHARP 153

According to some observers, the series of eventsthat became known as the drug war began in 2005, inthe city of Nuevo Laredo, just across the Rio Grandefrom Laredo, Texas (see Grillo 2011). As drug traffickersfought among themselves and with local authorities,they dumped dead bodies on the city’s streets andengaged in other public acts of intimidation. Drug traf-ficking organizations suppressed coverage of manydemonstrations of violence in local newspapers, butthey attracted the attention of media professionals inthe United States, central Mexico, and elsewhere. In thefollowing years, as drug traffickers carried out similarcampaigns in Ciudad Juárez, Acapulco, Monterrey, andother cities, the violence shaped the storylines that thenews media developed in and about Mexico and becamea point of reference for conversations in homes andneighborhoods. It also spurred individuals to documentevents on their own, and generated a boom in theproduction and promotion of narcocorridos (drug traf-ficking ballads) on the Internet. Across media formats,the photographs and videos that have mediated theviolence have featured not only bullet-riddled buildingsand dead bodies, but also clothes, weapons, and vehiclesthat drug traffickers have owned as well as messagesand logos that drug traffickers have inscribed on wallsand hand-painted banners (Campbell 2009:25). Becausethe circulation of images about the drug wars has beenintegrated into complex communication networks, ithas provided possibilities for drug traffickers to addressthe military, other drug traffickers, and national andinternational publics, and to craft messages in onemedium that respond to or cross-reference messages inanother medium. Indeed, in the drug war, both drugtraffickers and military have made clothes, weapons,and vehicles into forms of media unto themselves, withthe capacity to convey multiple messages as they arerepresented in different contexts. The circulation ofinformation, images, and objects within and acrossthese complex communication networks has beenessential for generating interest in the Museum.6

In response to events in Nuevo Laredo, the Mexicanmilitary became a more palpable, if contentious, pres-ence in many areas of Mexico. In 2006, PresidentVicente Fox increased the number of troops that werestationed in and around Nuevo Laredo, and from 2006to 2012, during the administration of President FelipeCalderón, soldiers, often wearing black masks andholding automatic assault rifles, patrolled the streets ofcities in northern and central Mexico. The military alsoparticipated in events that the federal governmentstaged for the news media, in which armed soldiersstood guard over stashes of weapons and ammunitionthat the military had confiscated or paraded drug traf-

fickers whom it had apprehended before a bevy ofcameras. As the military assumed more prominent rolesin the drug war, however, some soldiers becameinvolved in shootouts with drug traffickers in urbanareas, in which several soldiers and innocent bystanderswere killed. Drug traffickers also taunted the militaryand attempted to use the mobilization of the military totheir advantage. In 2006, for example, the Zetas—amilitary-like group founded by men who had desertedthe military and aligned themselves with the Cartel delGolfo, an organization that manages trafficking net-works in northeastern Mexico—responded to theincreased presence of soldiers in Nuevo Laredo byhanging a banner over one of the city’s main roads, inwhich they disparaged the military and invited soldiersto join the Zetas. With this banner, the Zetas indicatedtheir capacity to undermine the military, which wasbecoming ever more vulnerable to threats of corruptionand desertion (see Astorga and Shirk 2010). In the faceof these threats, military personnel forged temporaryalliances with media professionals in and around theMuseum, and through the Museum, they offered upframes of reference for following and making sense ofthe drug war. For media professionals, the Museumprovided safe opportunities to explore the history andrange of the military’s drug enforcement operations,and to examine the weapons and other media that drugtraffickers employed. Moreover, the reports and pro-grams that media professionals generated in theMuseum were broadly appealing and could seeminglyresolve some of the mysteries surrounding drug traf-fickers.7 The military also benefited from these reports,through which it demonstrated its visual command ofthe theaters in which it had been engaged and itscapacity to see into the world of drug traffickers.

Long-standing popular understandings of culture inMexico, as well as new developments in the represen-tation of drug traffickers, also contributed to the interestin exhibits of narcocultura. Throughout the 20thcentury, national and regional cultural stereotypesacquired a “particular vigor” in Mexico (Pérez Montfort2000:16), which were represented in different forms ofdress and music, and these stereotypes have provided afoundation for assembling narcocultura into an easilyidentifiable form and linking it to certain areas of thecountry. In recent years, telenovelas, narcocorridos, andother genres of popular entertainment have generatedwidespread familiarity with a variety of realistic andfictitious versions of drug traffickers, ensuring thatmany people across different areas of Mexico havelearned to live with narcocultura (Valenzuela Arce2002:220). At the same time, some social scientificstudies have reinforced a sense that narcocultura is a

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verifiable reality, reducible to a map or another type ofimage, by framing their studies as explorations ofnarcocultura.

The representations and interpretations of drugtrafficking culture across these different formats are inagreement with the representations that occur in theMuseum on certain points. For one, the origins ofnarcocultura are associated with a particular ranchero(country or rural) style or way of life in mountainousregions of northwestern Mexico, where the military wasengaged in the eradication of poppies and marijuanaplants in the 1970s and 1980s. Furthermore, it is inter-twined with a devotion to Jesús Malverde, who is oftenreferred to as a narco saint in English (Graziano2007:13). According to legend, Jésus Malverde lived asa bandit and friend of the poor in the state of Sinaloa,until authorities captured and killed him in 1909 (seeCórdova Solís 2012). Although the Catholic Church doesnot recognize Jesús Malverde as a saint, he has becomethe recipient of petitions and displays of gratitudefrom drug traffickers. Even as telenovelas have offeredvisions of more urbane drug traffickers, the notion thatthe culture of drug traffickers is essentially a northernranchero way of life is at work in many social scientificdefinitions of narcocultura, in which coherent systemsof representations mark off an alternate world for drugtraffickers. These definitions suggest that drug traffick-ers do not represent a tremendous threat to the largersociety but belong to a distinct subculture that invitesfurther exploration and evaluation (Benavides 2008:15;Valenzuela Arce 2002:220).

The Media of the Museum

In 2010, during the course of ethnographic researchamong men who were receiving treatment for drugaddiction in northeastern Mexico, I submitted a requestfor a tour of the Museum so I could understand better itsappeal for the military and media professionals, andexamine more closely the ways in which the exhibitsdictate perceptions of drugs and drug traffickers.Through the tour, I focused on the intent, or logic,involved in the representations that occur in theMuseum. I found that the process of gaining access tothe SEDENA and the Museum, which involves interac-tions with many uniformed soldiers, ensures that the actof entering the Museum is recognized as one that canlead to a deeper respect for the military’s heroic disci-pline. On the day of the tour, Captain Montane, who wasthe Museum’s administrator and curator at the time, metme at the gates to the SEDENA and escorted me throughthe building. Beside the modest wooden door that leads

to the Museum, we encountered a display of plaques, onwhich the names of hundreds of soldiers killed in drugenforcement operations are engraved. Under largegolden letters that read, “they gave their life in fulfill-ment of their duty,” the display offers up the soldiers asmodels of sacrificial service and discipline.

The initial tour involved lengthy explanations byCaptain Montane and lasted more than an hour. Afterthis tour, Captain Montane allowed me to spend moretime in the Museum revisiting many of the exhibits andasking him questions. I also communicated with CaptainMontane by e-mail after the tour. The Museum’s collec-tion of media makes evident the military’s commitmentto professionalization and modernization (BenítezManaut 2010:168) and guides visitors through a kind ofritual by which they identify more strongly with themilitary and participate directly in the military’stransformation into a more modern institution (seeMacdonald 2005). Walking through the Museum’sexhibits, visitors retrace and integrate themselves into“evolutionary” narratives about drugs, drug trafficking,and the military as well as narratives about the Museumitself (Coffey 2003:2012). The incorporation of visuallyintriguing representations of narcocultura into theMuseum invites reflections about drug traffickers for thepurposes of reaffirming the military’s command ofnational and domestic security matters and permittingcollaborations between soldiers and civilians.

As we entered the Museum, we encountered a largemural on a bowed wall that gives shape to a semi-circular anteroom. The mural depicts a scene that over-lays an outline of the map of Mexico, in which soldiersin green fatigues are moving across a field of poppies, asairplanes and helicopters hover in the sky, and a motor-boat speeds across a sea in the distance. In one hand, thesoldier at the center of the mural carries a torch, whichhe is using to set the field on fire, and in the other hand,he carries the flag of Mexico, which blends into thephantasm-like image of an eagle descending on the fieldof poppies (Figure 2). This mural suggests that theMuseum is like other well-known museums in Mexico,which have incorporated murals into their exhibit inorder to engage the public and to “instill a Mexicanidentity, modern subjectivity and a civic consciousness”(Coffey 2012:22). The mural, however, does not containany hints of a radical potential. It represents the soldiersin an idealized operation that brings to bear an improb-able array of resources, and it obscures the threatagainst which the military has mobilized. The mainpurpose of the mural, it seems, is to invite individualswho enter the Museum to assume the perspective oftrainees and to join the military’s struggle against drugtraffickers. In this way, the mural directs individuals to

Visualizing Narcocultura SHARP 155

further explorations of the different theaters in whichdrug enforcement operations occur from the vehicles,techniques, and tools that these operations require tothe importance of these operations for the nation.

The Museum’s first sala (showroom) explores the“history of drugs.” In the center of this room, a largedisplay case, similar to a case found in jewelry stores,allows soldiers to recognize the various drugs that areillegally produced, shipped, and sold in Mexico. Thedrugs, including different forms of marijuana, opiates,and cocaine, are presented in several carefully arrangedglass dishes, amid devices for measuring weight, as ifthey were being subjected to scientific analysis. Eachdish holds a sample of a drug, and a small sign in frontof each dish identifies the drug. Nearby this case, thereis a set of shelves, encased in glass, on which there arereplicas of objects that bring to mind the indigenouscivilizations of Mesoamerica, including objects used toconsume drug-like substances (Figure 3). Offering evi-dence of a primitive drug culture, this display is similarto displays in other museums throughout Mexico, whichfeature objects recovered and identified by archaeolo-gists (Coffey 2003).

In this room, and throughout the Museum, there areplates along the walls, with short texts and illustrationsrelated to objects on display. One of the texts explainsthat the drugs consumed in indigenous civilizationsincluded peyote and hallucinogenic mushrooms. Thetexts do not provide information that could answer suchquestions as: How are the objects in the case differentfrom one another? How often and during which periodof history did indigenous communities use the objects?What is the significance of the objects for existingindigenous communities in Mexico? Like the mural, thedisplay of objects from indigenous civilizations is more

concerned with establishing that the Museum is animportant cultural institution, which can offer a pan-oramic appreciation of drugs, drug trafficking, and themilitary’s capacities to deal with and move beyondthese threats, than it is with providing detailed infor-mation. The lighting in and around the case, as a formof media that modulates “pacing and mood” (Kratz2011:33), affirms the importance of the display as astarting point for the narratives that are developed inthe Museum, as soldiers and civilians contemplate andreject different kinds of drugs and drug-related pursuits.In sum, the exhibits in the first stage of the Museumparticipate in the ongoing development of the military’sknowledge and discipline at the vanguard of a modern-izing nation, in which the consumption of only certain,largely taken-for-granted drugs is permitted.

Beyond the display of pre-Hispanic objects, thereare a series of plates and photographs that address druguse in the 20th century and a series of plates that citethe Mexican constitution and other legal documents inorder to justify the military’s involvement in drugenforcement operations. Captain Montane explained

FIGURE 2. A mural that surrounds visitors as they enter theMuseum. The mural directs visitors to the Museum’s first show-

room, which is dedicated to the history of drugs.

FIGURE 3. A display case featuring replicas of objects that indig-enous peoples used for the consumption of drug-like substances,including hallucinogenic mushrooms, before the arrival of the

Europeans.

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that drug use had evolved from a “threat to publichealth” in the 1930s and 1940s into a “threat to publicsafety” in the 1960s. He noted that drug enforcementhad become a matter of “national security” in recentyears, requiring the military to devote many moreresources to drug enforcement. With this explanation,we moved into the second stage of the Museum, the coreof the museum, which offers detailed information on thedrug enforcement operations that the military hasengaged in. This stage includes exhibits that featurephotographs, maps, and dioramas representing the areaswhere marijuana and poppies are grown and the stepsthat the military has taken to interrupt the cultivationand harvesting of these plants; exhibits that provideinformation about production facilities and feature anassortment of materials used in these facilities; andexhibits that address the interception of aircraft andwatercraft used for drug shipments and feature a largemap of the areal and marine routes for the shipment ofdrugs into and from Mexico. There are also exhibitsdedicated to the interception of drug shipments throughrevisions at checkpoints along highways and at thenation’s borders, which are very popular among soldierswho tour the Museum, according to Captain Montane.They feature an array of confiscated objects that drugtraffickers modified in order to store drugs, many ofwhich the museum’s administrators have partially dis-mantled in order to reveal packets of drugs inside andprovide military personnel the means to see the creativeways in which drugs are concealed in vehicles, objects,and people. The exhibits also include displays of thetools and techniques that the military has used to dis-cover hidden drugs, which prepare military personnel touse these tools and techniques.

This stage also includes an “in situ installation,” thefirst exhibit in the Museum that shifts attention fromthe military to drug traffickers (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett1998:20). The installation features a mannequin dressedas a campesino (farm worker or peasant) and establishesthat the beliefs and aspirations of drug traffickers arerooted in a rural way of life (Figure 4). Sitting on a pileof rocks and keeping watch over a campfire, the man-nequin has a shotgun in his lap, a cigarette in one hand,and a can of beer in the other hand. On the wall behindhim, an artist has painted a field of poppies in bloom onone side and a field of full-grown marijuana plants onthe other side. On the ground, there are several emptycans of beer and Coca-Cola, and a bust of JesúsMalverde. Although the installation is focused on anindividual who occupies a lowly place in the drug trade,the image of Jesús Malverde links the campesino toother drug traffickers in a romanticized, alternate worldmarked by backwardness and violent rivalries. For

according to Captain Montane, the campesino is notprotecting his fields from the military; he is protectingthem from other drug traffickers who want to steal hiscrops.

This installation, like other exhibits of narcocultura,makes the Museum into a more complete resource thatcan support the military’s evolution into a more profes-sional force, by allowing soldiers to develop a culturalexpertise that complements their technical and tacticalexpertise. As Captain Montane made clear, the installa-tion is not directly concerned with preparing the mili-tary for engagements with drug producers or traffickerslike the campesino; rather, it is a means of recognizingthe contrasts between the drug industry and the mili-tary, whose sophistication is on display throughout theMuseum, and interpreting drug traffickers’ motivationsin view of these contrasts. If individuals who encounterthe installation follow Captain Montane’s example, theywill acknowledge the military’s capacities to manipulatedifferent cultural symbols and to create elaborate edu-cational instruments that permit encounters with the

FIGURE 4. An installation that features a full-size mannequindressed as a campesino, with a cowboy-like hat on his head andsandals on his feet, amid fields of marijuana and poppies. The bustof the narco saint Jesús Malverde sits on the ground, to the right

of the mannequin.

Visualizing Narcocultura SHARP 157

world of drug traffickers. And as they participate inthese visualizations of narcocultura, they can appreciatethe world of drug traffickers as entertaining and edify-ing, while accepting that this world is problematic andundesirable, and thus will commit themselves to themilitary’s leadership and programs of modernization.

Transformations of Narcocultura

Captain Montane, who at the time of the tour hadcompleted 27 years of service in the army and had beenoverseeing the museum for two years, explained thatthe original purpose of the Museum had been to teachmilitary personnel to identify drugs and to learn aboutdrug traffickers’ modes of hiding drugs, but as themilitary learned more about drug trafficking itexpanded the Museum’s collection of media in order tooffer a “broader spectrum” of information. He remarked,“We need to know our enemy to be able to combat itefficiently.” This explanation suggests that the collec-tion expanded according to the logic that the Museum,as a museum, must be comprehensive and adaptive andrequires the ongoing development and reinterpretationof its collection. This logic, however, has required themilitary to trace the evolution of drug traffickers from aregional and easily managed problem into a nationaland much more complex problem. Captain Montanecommented that the Museum has more recentlyacquired a new purpose: to serve as a “bridge forinforming the civilian population about our advancesand the risks to national security that drug traffickingand organized crime presents.” This comment indicatesthat as the struggle against drug traffickers has inten-sified, the military has opened up the Museum’s collec-tion in order to build confidence in the military’sknowledge and leadership and to guide civilians inreflections about the drug war.

For the exhibits that are organized under the title“La Narcocultura,” the third stage of the Museum,Captain Montane provided more extensive explanationsthan he did for any of the other exhibits, demonstratingthe kinds of reflections and interpretations thatnarcocultura requires. The exhibits begin with a man-nequin that represents a narcotraficante (drug traf-ficker). He is dressed like a sophisticated cowboy, in bluejeans and an expensive shirt, with gold chains aroundhis neck and gold bracelets on his wrist (Figure 5). Themannequin is positioned between two horse saddles,with large silver-plated horns, which the military con-fiscated from drug traffickers. The clothing of the man-nequin, along with the saddles, establishes connectionsbetween the exhibits of narcocultura and the installa-

tion that features the campesino, offering evidence of afidelity to a ranchero style, and facilitating visualiza-tions that demonstrate and enhance the military’s cul-tural expertise. Like the installation with the campesino,the mannequin dressed as a narcotraficante is a form ofmedia that permits an appreciation of the beliefs andaspirations of drug traffickers. Captain Montaneexplained that the mannequin and the other exhibitsreveal “the way in which drug traffickers think” and“their values.” According to him, the desire to show off,which he described as “rayando en lo ridículo” (vergingon ridiculousness), is the most important value of drugtraffickers, and Captain Montane associated this desireto show off with drug traffickers’ abilities to build up afollowing among young people and other segments ofsociety.

A plate behind the narcotraficante includes the fol-lowing explanation of narcocultura: “Drug traffickinghas allowed for the formation of a subculture with itsown literature, style, symbols, music and even ‘saints.’ ”Although Captain Montane noted that the exhibits

FIGURE 5. A mannequin dressed as a drug trafficker, with a gold-plated cellular telephone in his hand. The mannequin marks thebeginning of a series of displays dedicated to narcocultura. Thetext on the plate behind the mannequin identifies different ele-

ments of narcocultura.

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mostly reflected the information that the militarypersonnel had gathered about drug traffickers “in thefield,” this explanation of narcocultura resonates withdiscussions of narcocultura in social scientific literature.Indeed, it is likely that the military personnel who haveworked in the Museum have referred to publications byJosé Manuel Valenzuela Arce and others, just as theauthors of a recent report for the Secretaría deSeguridad Pública (Ministry of Public Safety) did inrecommending policies that could prevent young peoplefrom becoming involved in drug trafficking. Both thedisplays in the Museum and the report intertwineknowledge practices that concern culture in Mexicowith the federal government’s security apparatuses, andapproach narcocultura as a set of expressions, values,and attitudes that mark off a group of people from thelarger society and locate this group at specific sites(Secretaría de Seguridad Pública del Gobierno Federal2010:3). For Captain Montane, however, this approachserves as a starting point for reflecting on and reassess-ing narcocultura as a frame of reference. In this way, hedemonstrates the kind of reflexivity that is essential formaking encounters with narcocultura into transforma-tive exercises and he moves toward a view ofnarcocultura as an array of objects and mimetic prac-tices that circulate in wider fields of media and areavailable for appropriation across many more sites thanthe military can account for.

Displays and interpretations of narco saints offerexamples of some of the ways in which narcocultura asa frame of reference, or concept, can be reconfigured inthe Museum. Just past the mannequin dressed as anarcotraficante, the Museum’s administrators have re-created a small roadside shrine in which flowers andcandles are arrayed in front of the bust of JesúsMalverde alongside a small framed image of the Virginof Guadalupe, the officially recognized “Queen ofMexico.” Captain Montane explained that drug traffick-ers visit shrines like this one—a primitive, invertedversion of the display of plaques near the Museum’sentrance, which honors the heroes of a modernnation—in order to pray for protection from rival drugtraffickers and governmental authorities. Adjacent tothe shrine in honor of Jesús Malverde, however, adisplay case holds small images of La Santa Muerte(Holy Death or the Death Saint) that could be placed ona shelf or small altar amid compact discs that featurerecordings of narcocorridos. These images of La SantaMuerte, a narco saint that has been linked to the Zetasand other emergent drug trafficking organizations, takethe form of a complete feminine skeleton, wearing ablack veil and holding a scythe in her hand. CaptainMontane noted that devotion to La Santa Muerte has

become increasingly popular among drug traffickers,suggesting that devotion to La Santa Muerte haseclipsed devotion to Jesús Malverde. Even though theculture of drug traffickers may be rooted in colorfuldistortions of official Catholic practice or folkloricinversions of a civil religion, the Museum reveals thatnarcocultura has adapted to and shaped the urban, moresophisticated cult of La Santa Muerte, which drawstogether diverse groups of people. As narcocultura hasbecome dedicated to an image that is potentially moresubversive than Jesús Malverde, it demands from themilitary and other observers a greater awareness of andreadiness to respond to the different activities that canbe inspired by this image.

The Museum provides other glimpses of the devel-opment of the drug industry into an enterprise that haslittle to do with a rural way of life, exposing the chal-lenges involved in visualizations of drug traffickersthrough the Museum. These challenges—which ulti-mately make the exercises that take place in theMuseum more meaningful and effective as they allowfor the development of more reflexive approachesto narcocultura—are intertwined with the“museumification” of Mexico, through which culturalinstitutions have proliferated in order to informMexican citizens about their heritage and establish aMexican national identity (Coffey 2012:21) and themilitary’s “aspiration to a totalizing vision” (Mirzoeff2009:1743), which has involved creating more complexsystems of surveillance and education in order topredict and to adjust to the enemy’s increasing sophis-tication. On the one hand, several representations ofnarcocultura in the Museum, such as cartoon-like man-nequins, convey a sense that the military has effectivelyneutralized drug traffickers as it transforms them into“historical representations of themselves” (Bennett2006:52). On the other hand, displays of weapons andother dangerous items associated with narcoculturareveal that drug traffickers, as they have evolved inresponse to the military’s operations, pose a majorthreat to the nation.

The display cases near the Museum’s exit providethe most glaring evidence of drug traffickers’ evolutioninto a complex array of sophisticated enterprises, witharmies of their own. These cases—many of which alsoincorporate specialized lighting in order to underscorethe value of the objects on display—contain carefullydecorated and expensive guns, including a pistol withthe image of Pancho Villa engraved on it as well asmilitary-grade assault rifles. For Captain Montane, theseguns are the evidence of simple-minded efforts to amassoutrageous arsenals and provide further insights intothe decadence of drug traffickers; but these guns also

Visualizing Narcocultura SHARP 159

point to the ways in which drug traffickers exercisepower and influence across different arenas by acquir-ing and refashioning weapons of different kinds andintegrating these weapons into their personas. In addi-tion, the display cases hold personal effects that oncebelonged to members of the Zetas, which have receivedextensive attention from media professionals because inrecent years the Zetas have become one of the mostfeared drug trafficking organizations. They include agold-plated, diamond-encrusted cellular telephone andlarge gold medals that hang from gold chains (Figure 6).According to a sign placed behind the telephone, whichaffirms the military’s knowledge of drug traffickingorganizations, the military recovered the telephone in2007 from “El Cachetes,” who deserted the military tobecome a leader of the Zetas. Although this telephone isconsistent with the style of drug traffickers on display inother exhibits, it tracks the adaptation of drug traffick-ing organizations to emergent technologies, organiza-tional models, and markets like legitimate corporations(Marez 2004:18).

The medals feature nationalistic symbols andprovide opportunities to engage in reflexive exercisesthat attend to the direct connections between the devel-opment of the military and the development of drugtrafficking organizations. On one side of the medal,there is an engraving of a map of Mexico, which over-lays a large letter Z. Nineteen stars surround the mapalong the edge of the medal, which represent the 19founders of the Zetas. On the other side of the medal,there is a group of four men, who appear to be dressedfor combat, aiming rifles toward the same target. Theword comandos (commandos) is engraved across the

top. As we inspected the medals, Captain Montanepointed out that military units give out similar medalsto soldiers who have accomplished an important feat.He took out a medal from his wallet, announcing, “I alsocarry with me the medal of my unit.” Viewed alongsideCaptain Montane’s medal, the Zetas’ medals are evi-dence of the respect that the Zetas and the larger publichave for the military’s superior training, skills, andorganization. By creating and giving out medals, theZetas presumably attempted to re-create the esprit decorps and sense of service that their leaders had foundin the military. Taking into account the heinous deedsthat the media has associated with the Zetas, however,the medals confirm that the Zetas are more interested inbuilding a vast, diversified organization than in carvingout a niche in the drug industry or laying claim to arural domain and that they are capable of killing morepeople, and more indiscriminately, than other drugtraffickers.

Explaining that the medals were for “criminal”achievements, that the Zetas are “traitors” and “pursuedby everyone,” Captain Montane sought to relegate theZetas to the same culture of backwardness and violencethat is on display in other exhibits of narcocultura.8

Then, as we moved toward the exit, he took the oppor-tunity to deliver a somber message. He contradicted thenotion that the military had effectively confronted andcontrolled the Zetas by admitting that as the militaryhad acquired more knowledge of drug traffickers, it hadrecognized that narcocultura could overwhelm the mili-tary without the help of civilians. He began by notingthat “all of this”—pointing to the weapons and otheritems on display—is possible because of “the consum-ers,” and added,

It’s important that the young people who arealready in the world of drugs know that the moneythat they are spending on drugs costs lives inMexico; and that the young people who are at thepresent time, fortunately, not using drugs, that theystay as far away as possible from them. Because themore money that they give to drug traffickers, themore possibilities there are to have violence onthe doorstep of their own house. And if this doesn’tdiminish, then no army, not to mention the police,will be sufficient to stop it. . . . In the army, we arevery aware that we have to win, to triumph overdrug trafficking, so our country will continue toexist.

Captain Montane’s message has several surprisingelements. For the purposes of this article, I noteonly that by developing this message at the end of a

FIGURE 6. A display of medals and a cellular telephone that oncebelonged to men affiliated with the Zetas, a drug traffickingorganization founded by former members of the military. The textexplains that the Zetas awarded the medals to “recognize a sig-

nificant illegal action.”

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ritualistic tour through the Museum, which explored thedifferent facets of the military’s knowledge of the drugindustry, he was able to argue forcefully that visualiza-tions of narcocultura through the Museum are essentialfor the nation. According to his argument, as individualsoldiers and civilians recognize and reflect on theculture of drug traffickers, they can anticipate and adaptto the challenges presented by drug traffickers, andmove the nation toward a future in which narcoculturabecomes another colorful, interesting, and slowly dis-appearing dimension of a modern Mexican nationalidentity.

Conclusions

The images of and information about the drug war thathave recently circulated and shaped an interest in drugtraffickers have included scenes and news of assassina-tions, shootouts, and other violent acts in newspapersand on the Internet, representations of drug traffickersin telenovelas and narcocorridos, and the rumors anddescriptions of drug traffickers’ extravagance thatpeople share with one another in face-to-face interac-tions. Amid these circulations, photographs and videosof the Museum’s exhibits of narcocultura have beenespecially valuable, deriving authority from both themilitary’s commitment to modernization and its suc-cessful deployment of the “museum idea” (Buntix andKarp 2006:208), and they have become points of refer-ence for many different projects. As they are repre-sented across different formats and contexts, however,some of these photographs and videos suggest that theMuseum commemorates the way of life and achieve-ments of drug traffickers as a kind of national heritage,as the National Museum of Anthropology does for theindigenous peoples of Mexico (Coffey 2003:220). As Itoured the Museum, I found that the military has, infact, made the exhibits of narcocultura more elaborateand captivating than the Museum’s other exhibits inorder to make the Museum into a more comprehensiveand appealing resource, one that can participate in theshaping of a national identity as it traces the develop-ment of both the military and drug trafficking organi-zations. As individuals move through the Museum orreview a series of images that feature the Museum’sexhibits on television or the Internet, they can surveyand identify the different landscapes, structures, objects,techniques, and personalities that military personnelhave encountered in the course of drug enforcementoperations. As these visual exercises focus on expres-sions of narcocultura—from images of sloppy campe-sinos keeping watch in the mountains to images of

well-organized commandos firing on a target—theynecessarily give way to interpretive exercises, wherebyindividuals can recognize how they are different fromdrug traffickers, strengthen their commitment to themilitary’s vision of a secure and modern society, andanticipate and respond to the problems that drug traf-fickers offer up. These problems include not only thetactics and weaponry to which drug traffickers resort inconfrontations with the military and the demonstrationsof violence that they stage in order to intimidate rivalsand the larger public but also their offerings of drug andmoney bribes by which they corrupt institutions andpurportedly threaten the existence of the Mexicannation.

By enhancing the visuality of narcocultura, themilitary has also shifted attention away from the oftenfruitless and sometimes disastrous maneuvers that it hasundertaken in urban areas—as well as that of thefederal government’s inabilities to create an effectivecoalition of law enforcement agencies and to strengthenthe country’s criminal justice systems—and it hasdirected attention to the military’s discipline and therisks that it has bravely assumed as it has become moredeeply involved in the struggle against drug traffickers.By framing the exhibits of narcocultura as the productof sacrificial service to the nation, the military hasturned visualizations of narcocultura into the basis of acultural campaign that appeals to the sympathies ofcivilians and asks them to share the responsibilities ofrecognizing and rejecting drug traffickers. This cam-paign also reveals a commitment within the military tothe values of entrepreneurship and creative governance.For while this kind of campaign is similar to the coun-terinsurgency that the U.S. military carried out inIraq—in that it involves improving the military’s visu-alizing techniques, deepening its cultural expertise, anddeploying visual media to shore up its legitimacy(Mirzoeff 2009)—it is different from the U.S. military’scounterinsurgency in that the Mexican military hasfound strategic advantages in the fact that the peopleagainst which the military has mobilized are sources ofinspiration for the media and entertainment industries.In addition, the military has achieved advantages in theorganization and promotion of the Museum’s collectionas a museum. Without making any significant invest-ments, it has transformed the collection into an authori-tative resource, generated interest in this resource inpartnership with media professionals, and involvedcivilians in its transformative logic.

Because the military’s campaign is interconnectedwith the cultural infrastructure of Mexico and providesa space for purposefully reflexive exercises, it permitscollaborations and the sharing of concepts and

Visualizing Narcocultura SHARP 161

approaches among the military, other federal agencies,nongovernmental organizations, media professionals,and social scientists. As they work in concert to identifyelements of and demarcate the world of drug traffickers,these various institutions and groups continue to facili-tate a sense that drug traffickers are a distinct class ofpeople, recognizable for their peculiar clothes, saints,and weapons and that this distinct class of people can inand of itself be held accountable for the violence thathas spread across the national landscape. In this way,they suggest that the solution to the violence caninvolve not only more effective enforcement operationsbut also targeted educational and social initiatives thatfacilitate self-reform—of the kind that members of themilitary embody—among people who are susceptible toinvolvement in drug trafficking and drug use. Thereality, however, is that drug trafficking and drug useare very much entangled with the commodity fetishism,precarious labor markets, and structural violence thatare integral and enduring features of the economic andpolitical restructurings in Mexico. Pursuing an under-standing of drug traffickers through a focus on culturecan result in a closer examination of these entangle-ments, but this result will require not only overlookingthe violence and extravagance of drug traffickers butalso establishing a critical distance from the practicesand values of the military.

Notes

1 This article refers to the Museum of Drugs as the Museum.2 I use the term military to refer to all of Mexico’s armed

forces, including the army and navy. The army is mostlyresponsible for the Museum. In the field, the army hasbeen more involved in patrols and checkpoints; whileunits within the navy have been responsible for raids andarrests in recent years. The navy is not part of theSEDENA.

3 A program that appeared on a Mexican cable televisionchannel dedicated to rock music videos provides a thor-ough introduction to the Museum. The actor who guidesviewers through the Museum becomes much more ani-mated as the tour turns to exhibits of narcocultura.See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLttafcZpqU. Clipsproduced for news programs in Mexico often featureonly these exhibits. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7qDSyP_PzA.

4 I use the term media to refer to material, objects, and textsas well as images, which are fashioned, wielded, or dis-tributed in order to convey information and to shapeidentities. Mediation involves the processes of creating andusing media in order “to formulate a bridge or connectionamong those they link” (Agha 2011:163). Mediatization isa form of mediation that links “communication to pro-cesses of commoditization” (Agha 2011:163).

5 I am grateful for the support of a Fulbright fellowship,which allowed me to conduct research in northeasternMexico for nine months, from 2009 to 2010.

6 John McDowell illuminates the complexities of these net-works in an article in which he discusses the ways in whichthe production of narcocorridos has become intertwinedwith digital media, the dress and lifestyles of drug traf-fickers, and critiques of the different groups of peopleinvolved in the drug wars, including politicians and jour-nalists (McDowell 2012).

7 I first learned about the Museum from William Booth’sreport on the website of the Washington Post in 2010(Booth 2010). I am grateful to Booth for providing meinformation via e-mail about procedures for requestingpermission to tour the Museum.

8 At the time of the tour, the Zetas had recently separatedfrom the Cartel del Golfo and was engaged in a war withthis cartel and other drug trafficking organizations.

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