Links and Notes

Mexico’s thriving drug trade has produced not only a wave of increasingly shocking violence but a durable imprint on the culture, reports visiting scholar Alma Guillermoprieto. “The drug trade is creating a new cultural soup,” the award-winning Mexican reporter said in a March 18 campus lecture about “The New Narcocultura.” Popular recordings use traditional Mexican song forms to glorify drug gangsters like Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán. El Chapo is the inspiration for some 60 music videos and mini-documentaries on YouTube.