Three weeks ago I wrote a column in Chile that has sparked all kinds of responses.
I pointed out that Peso Pluma is invited to the main event in Chile, the Viña del Mar Festival. And I believe that that invitation and that contract should be reversed, that Peso Pluma should not be presented.
I think it is relevant to point out the reason for my judgment and respond to columnist Dahlia de la Cerda, who spent 4,000 words saying that Peso Pluma should be defended because it is the voice of young people, that criticism of him is class criticism ( high), that my proposal is the typical prohibition of a countercultural artistic movement, that if Peso Pluma is banned, García Márquez will have to be banned (I almost fell off my chair when reading this, I add), that narco corridos are stories of personal improvement, which are rebellious songs against the State.
I intend to provide sufficient background to discredit all of these criticisms.
And by the way, to make it clear that Dahlia did not read what I published, because she attacks a measure that is not the one proposed.
It seemed important to me (not an obvious issue) to address the banalities established in the aforementioned column.
I will explain as briefly as I can that the argument about the countercultural nature of Peso Pluma's work is absurd.
And I will take on the problem of unfulfilled hopes and the State as a problem or opportunity.
Let's begin the path of the answer.
First: the original argument from my January 8, 2024 column.
A cultural movement is based on a prolific generation of content whose values are dissident with respect to the dominant culture.
This is what happened with punk or the hippie movement.
The punk
movement
denounced mass society, the
hippie
movement wanted the end of war and class society.
Feminism is countercultural, because it wants to combat patriarchy.
The labor movement was countercultural, as it discussed how to read the legitimacy of economic success.
What is countercultural about narco culture?
The narco culture accepts all the values of current society, that of the 21st century.
We live in an era that assumes that power is in money, that loves disruptive processes, that believes in quick success, in a life of pleasure and frenzy, that values hedonism, that beyond squeamishness continues to believe that A woman is a sexual object, that consumption is the best way to integrate into society, that wealth is the main power.
And it is also fashionable to have a critical discourse towards institutions and the State.
The idea that individuals are responsible for their destiny and if they fail to take charge, the State has no reason to be there has also grown a lot.
It is social Darwinism in its everyday practice, which means that it is the dominant values.
This is what our society says.
And what does narcoculture say?
What do the war corridos say?
Money is power.
Money is the most valuable thing.
With money they buy women.
Wills are changed with money.
Money is obtained from drugs.
With money you can access luxury cars (brands are named).
With money you can access luxury clothing (brands are named).
With money you can access luxury jewelry.
The other is your competition.
The ban is just a suggestion.
The risk is exciting.
The pleasure is exciting.
Nothing is more important than an exciting life.
Young people are expendable.
Early death is not a problem if you lived intensely.
What you see there is exactly the same as what our society says.
There is a bit of ultra-liberal business culture (anarcho-capitalist), another part of hard machismo, another part of valorization of weapons and violence, a lot of consumer culture, a lot of fantasy ideology about social advancement and the cult of money.
What is the countercultural part of all this?
Dahlia can't explain it in her 4,000 words.
She just confuses countercultural with illegal.
And it's only because he likes her and it makes sense to him.
And she says that if that makes sense to young people, you have to listen to them.
But of course you have to listen to them!
Of course, States must understand what happened to rural and urban design in areas that were first slowly and then quickly penetrated by drug trafficking.
But listening to them is not applauding them.
What has opened is a conversation that, I promise you Dahlia, is very worthwhile.
Young people should reflect on the following.
What are the five fundamental problems of the drug industry?
Transport the drug.
Launder illegally earned money.
Avoid leaks of information to prosecutors, police or other state entities.
Get young people for very high-risk jobs.
Reduce the power of the State so that it must act in a limited or timorous manner.
Drug trafficking is a type of company that works in a high-risk area and must solve these main problems.
He uses young people to transport drugs.
But these young people, if they are detained, become a problem, because they can provide relevant information.
So young people are indispensable, but only in two ways: very motivated and risk-taking (very alive) or very silent and quiet (very dead).
Drug trafficking needs businesses to launder money.
And the State needs to be the least powerful possible, the most defenseless, the most delegitimized, the most underfunded.
I tell it simply.
Narcocorridos are functional in all points of this industry.
They allow young people to be motivated to join this risky industry.
They glorify and make drug transportation fashionable.
The music industry is used to launder drug money.
Young people learn that there is no limbo (there is no prison), that there are only two states of matter: free life and war death.
The songs attack the value of the State and support a cycle of delegitimization (based, by the way, on real failures of the States) that allows for more unpunished actions.
And they are even more functional because they solve the
cartel's
human resources problem by maintaining the
morale of the troops
;
and also, being massive, they serve to present new drugs (that is, it is an advertising tool).
I still don't see the countercultural thing.
The narco culture wants more war, more young deaths (it needs them, wounded or prisoners are of no use) and the
work
operation of a cartel is something very close to slavery.
The countercultural movements were fundamentally a movement in favor of freedom.
What freedom is obtained by entering the world of drug trafficking?
The narco cultural movement is completely
mainstream
, completely related to the dominant culture.
What he is against is an effective State to stop them, but he also needs drugs to be prohibited, but not in practice.
And it needs a society that ignores this issue, lets the matter go, assumes that the State must seek a solution without collaboration from the rest.
I finish by explaining what I said in my first column.
The Viña del Mar Festival is the Latin American music festival with the greatest global impact.
And the festival is owned by the State of Chile, through the Municipality of Viña del Mar, the entity that licenses this event to television broadcasting.
The concessionaires have decided that the star artist of the festival should be Peso Pluma.
His enormous success precedes him, without a doubt.
But there is a problem, which is what I raised in the original column: the Viña del Mar Festival, I have pointed out, belongs to the State.
In 2023, Chile made official the need for an effort to increase the security budget by an unprecedented amount.
Well, how is it possible for the State to fight against drug trafficking by increasing its public spending significantly and, at the same time, inviting an artist who advocates drug trafficking?
And beyond the stories and rumors about Peso Pluma, there are clear issues: a significant percentage of Peso Pluma's songs make a clear vindication of the lifestyle of drug trafficking soldiers, raise their benefits, judge and evaluate without regard. in favor and has even made specific tributes in his lyrics and presentations to a particular drug trafficker.
The rest are rumors and I am not responsible, although they are rumors of such relevance that they should motivate us to demand that at least the artist deny them.
But what cannot happen is that someone uses public resources to promote narco culture.
And the State cannot assume the mandate to do one thing and its opposite at the same time.
It cannot combat drug trafficking and promote it.
This is not a theoretical problem.
On October 4, 2022, the following news was published in this newspaper: “El
Chapo
returned to Culiacán for a few minutes (he had residence there) and controversy broke out.
The Mexican singer Peso Pluma (…) projected an image of the drug trafficker Joaquín
El Chapo
Guzmán during his performance at the 8 Music Fest, a festival that is part of the celebrations of the 491st anniversary of the City Council of Culiacán, a municipality in the State of Sinaloa, the "last October 1."
That's right, the image of
Chapo
Guzmán was projected by Peso Pluma while he sang “Siempre Pendientes” (in reference to the work of the soldiers).
It is true that young people have grown up with this epic, that of the narco world.
And we live in a time where economic success is everything.
They also called Chapo Guzmán
701
in reference to his appearance in that place in the Forbes ranking.
Is there anything more decadent and at the same time procultural than that?
The drug trafficker wants to appear in Forbes.
Well, this is what the culture of drug trafficking says.
With all due respect, can we really say that a narcocorrido is countercultural?
Narcoculture is not counterculture.
It is a challenge to the State in the name of the values of the consumer society.
Alberto Mayol
is a Chilean sociologist and writer.
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