Drug Cartels Don’t Exist: Drug Trafficking in the US and Mexican Culture

Through political and cultural analyses of representations of the so-called war on drugs, Oswaldo Zavala argues that the terms we use to describe drug traffickers are a constructed ruse for the real narcos: politicians, corporations, and the military. While Donald Trump’s inflammatory remarks and monstrous border policies reveal the character of a deeply depraved leader, state violence on both sides of the border is nothing new. Immigration is a common news topic, but it is a fixture of modern society in the neoliberal era; the future will be one of exile caused by state violence and the plundering of our natural resources to feed capitalist greed. Yet the realities of violence in Mexico and along the border are obscured by the books, films, and television series we consume. In reality, works like Sicario, The Queen of the SouthAnd Narcos hide the political reality of Mexico. In addition to these examples, Zavala discusses Charles Bowden, 2666 by Roberto Bola隳, and other important Latin American writers as examples of works that do capture the reality of the drug war. Translated into English by William Savinar, Drug cartels do not exist will be useful to journalists, political scientists, philosophers and writers of any kind who want to break down the physical and mental barriers erected by those in power around the reality of the Mexican drug trade.