Cartel Hero Worship is Real and Deadly for Women
Narcocultura, the not-so-new normal, glamorizes the drug-trafficking lifestyle. But it can kill those women who embrace it.
CULIACÁN, Sinaloa, Mexico - Yazmín Esmeralda isn’t alive today to reveal what she was thinking when she picked up an Uzi submachine gun in northwestern Sinaloa in late January.
The 15-year-old was killed instantly when the gun went off as she posed for what she hoped would be the “best TikTok video” of her life, according to local media. Her younger brother was filming her at the time. She had found the weapon at the bottom of a closet in her grandmother’s house.
Death by gunfire in Mexico, especially in the context of the country’s crime wars, has become depressingly common. Perhaps that’s why it took for me to be in Sinaloa, talking to the state prosecutor, to hear about this story. It’s likely that this kind of tragedy actually happens more than we hear about.
But there are some things that we shouldn’t get used to, and kids shooting themselves by mistake is one of them.
I’m going to hazard a guess at what might have been going through Yazmín’s mind as she struck a pose that night. She was likely trying to emulate the latest narco badass she’d seen on the internet.
Narcocultura - images and content that promote the lifestyle and values of drug-trafficking - are all over social media across Latin America, and especially in the state of Sinaloa, the heart of the eponymous drug cartel. It’s “cool.” As well as deeply misogynist.
Think hip-hop, high on peyote. Or fucked up on mezcal.
Gold-embossed handguns, AK47s or Barrett rifles. Everything Gucci or YSL or Versace. The fastest, bestest cock-cars. Women with the tiniest waists, the whitest skin, the biggest boobs and the highest, fullest bums, collectively known as “buchonas.” Or girls brandishing guns. And then there’s the violence. Shootings. Beheadings. Dismemberments. The worse, the better. The social media networks - YouTube, IG, TikTok - struggle to keep up with taking it down.
“Narco culture is aspirational,” said Siria Gastelum, who was born in Culiacán, Sinaloa’s capital city. She has studied mafias for most of her working life and currently works for the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GITOC). “Way before social media existed we had narcocorridos. It was all about showing off, being a legend. Youth is always shopping for heroes, rockstars, and role models.”
I’m so used to the abundance of narcoculture in Mexico that I was surprised that my reporting on that story went around the world. It seemed like an opportune moment to elaborate a little on how these narco values affect women.
Despite the U.S-Mexico “drug war” rhetoric of the good fighting the bad, many Mexicans see the drug trade as populated by Robin-Hood-esque heroes. Joaquín “el Chapo” Guzmán is, for many, a rags-to-riches success story. The man went from being a peso-less farmer from a rural backwater to being a billionaire on the Forbes rich list. There is a “chapel” in Culiacán dedicated to the “narco saint” Jesus Malverde, where you can buy mini statues and key rings of Malverde as well as El Chapo himself (a recent addition to their line-up).
“That [Yazmín] chose to record a clip [in that way] shows that our youth is immersed in that culture,” said Sara Bruna Quiñonez Estrada, Sinaloa’s attorney general. “It’s what they hear about at all hours.”
People like Yazmín, who are from a similar socio-economic background as some of the world’s most legendary drug traffickers, and even those who aren’t, respect the narco life, and its frills and spoils. They want that, despite the consequences.
“There are a lot of things going wrong with the establishment, with much of Mexico’s youth living at the margins of everything - poverty, a lack of education, etc. They would rather be aligned with the values of criminal gangs. This happens in Sinaloa, and happens everywhere,” said Gastelum.
In Sinaloa, narcocultura is mainstream. People who have nothing to do with the drug trade walk the walk and talk the talk. Women want to look like Chapo’s wife Emma Coronel and men want to be El Chapo, or his young sons, known as Los Chapitos. They want to live that life.
Speaking to women all week here in Sinaloa, a comment from Janet Martinez Quintero, now 38, who has had some 15 plastic surgery procedures, really stuck with me.
When I asked her what she thought of Emma Coronel, she replied: “Emma’s an artist.”
She shrugged, as though it was almost too obvious to say.
“On top of all that, she’s also one of the most beautiful women from here.”
Coronel was very much the influencer until she was recently incarcerated. There are carbon copies of her and the buchona look she typifies sitting in traffic in SUV’s and strutting shopping malls all over Culiacán. The fact that women who get involved romantically with men in the drug trade frequently end up dead doesn’t seem to discourage them from emulating their look.
Many women who do become the wives or girlfriends of male drug-traffickers are killed with their partners, but many are killed by them, especially if they express a desire to end the relationship, according to María Teresa Guerra Ochoa, head of the state’s women’s ministry, who I spoke to this week. She spent decades in feminist activism before joining the government.
To return to Yazmín, the fact that there was an Uzi sitting in her abuela’s house, within her reach, speaks to the proliferation of illegal weapons in Mexico. That has made it easier to turn narco fantasy into reality - with devastating consequences for some.
“There are more guns, more drugs, more players,” said Gastelum. Even though it is difficult and rare for Mexicans to legally own guns, there is a steady flow of illegal weapons filtering through the U.S-Mexico border into the hands of the cartels and, well, 15-year-old girls. Who are also embracing the “look” of killers who work for the cartels, not just the images of the women they desire.
But it’s not emancipating.
“We see more women in this scene now, rocking accordions or singing corridos, or ladies showing off cash and guns as men always did,” said Gastelum. “But this is just repeating male models.”
The hero worship of Mexican organized crime can be explained and understood. But for women, there is little to celebrate.