Arraigo Histórico del Narcocorrido en Culiacán

Abstract

“Narcocorridos” are ballads about the traffic in drugs, and in a musical form chronicle the fate of two social actors: the protagonists of the production, distribution and consumption of hard drugs extracted from opium poppy, coca leaves, and marijuana, and of the government agents responsible for combating the former. In Sinaloa, along with the commercial production of drugs since 1940, encouraged by the US government, a musical movement has been generated which records the vicissitudes of drug dealers and the police and military agents who combat them as well as the conflicts surrounding the control of a multibillion dollar business. This essay provides data dealing with the origins and developmentof the illegal drug traffic in both Culiacán and Badiraguato; analyzes the context of its explosive growth in the 1970s, and the campaigns in the 1960s and 1970s to combat it; and finally, proposes a means of classifying the musical messages of the “narcocorridos”.