ABSTRACT
The narcotraficante economy has also transformed the coyote and pollero system for transporting people across the border. There are other ways that narcos seek to construct a facade of the outlaw-hero that naturalizes their daily terrorizing and exploiting of civilians. This includes bank-rolling careers of narcocorridodistas—singers who specialize in creating songs that glorify the narco life. Latinx Studies scholars have sought to understand better the interrelationship between the violence of the narco economy alongside the rise of narco cultural phenomena that sentimentalizes and heroizes its violence, exploitation, and oppression of regular, common people. Latinx Studies scholars have begun to delve into the difficult topic of the culture that has grown in and around cartel drug trade and human trafficking along the US/Mexico border. Alfredo Rios fills stadiums in Mexico and Central America; his fans fill huge ten-thousand-plus-person arenas in places such as Fresno and Bakersfield.
