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Visualizing Narcocultura: Violent Media,

the Mexican Militarys Museum of Drugs,
and Transformative Culture
ETHAN SHARP

In recent years, as the drug war has intensified, the Mexican military has allowed media professionals to explore its
Museum of Drugs, which is used primarily to train soldiers, and to introduce the Museums exhibits of narcocultura,
or drug trafficking culture, to the larger public. Drawing on observations in the Museum, this article argues that the
exhibits of narcocultura, by authorizing visualizations of drug traffickers for the military and the larger public and
modeling the transformative logic of culture, both support the militarys professionalization and serve as the basis for
a campaign that calls for the watchfulness and support of civilians. [cultural knowledge, drug wars, exhibit design,
militarization, modernization, museum studies, narcocultura, narco saints, self-reform, visualization]

he Mexican militarys Museo de Enervantes

(Museum of Drugs) is housed in a large, windowless room on the seventh floor of the Secretara
de la Defensa Nacional (Ministry of National Defense, or
SEDENA) in Mexico City.1 The Museums collection of
visual media includes photographs, maps, and dioramas
that employ miniature soldiers to re-create drug
enforcement operations as well as displays of drugs,
paraphernalia employed in the production of drugs, and
other objects that the military has confiscated from drug
traffickers. The military has used the collection, which it
has been developing since 1985, for training military
personnel, and relatively few civilians have entered the
Museum.2 In recent years, as the military has become
more involved in the provision of domestic security and
the pursuit of drug traffickers, several journalists,
videographers, and other media professionals have
received permission to explore the Museum, and have
introduced its exhibits to the larger public, mostly
through television news programs and Internet reports
and videos. The exhibits that have received the most
attention across these media formats are dedicated to
what the Museum identifies as la narcocultura (the drug
trafficking culture). They include installations that recreate full-scale, colorful scenes from the lives of drug
traffickers, and displays of various weapons that once

belonged to drug traffickers, including gold-plated

pistols (Figure 1).3
The Museums exhibits of narcocultura are both
puzzling and alluring. Instead of contributing to a sense
of intense vulnerability (Orr 2004:472), which has
been one of the techniques of militarization in the
United States and other countries, the exhibits invite
contemplations of the vernacular aesthetics of drug
traffickers, and while they are evidence of successful
drug enforcement operations, the exhibits raise questions about the militarys success in thwarting drug
traffickers pursuits of wealth and influence. In this
article, referring to observations that I made during a
tour of the Museum, under the guidance of Army
Captain Claudio Montane, I attempt to draw out and to
critique the objectives that the military has pursued
through visualizations of narcocultura. For the purposes
of this article, visualizations of narcocultura involve
arranging, viewing, and interpreting displays of materials confiscated from drug traffickers in ways that
allow these displays to become effective and highly
valued instruments for encountering, reflecting upon,
and making sense of drug traffickers beliefs and values.
The article describes the organization of the media in
the Museums collection, and explores how these media
support interrelated narratives about the military, drug

Visual Anthropology Review, Vol. 30, Issue 2, pp. 151163, ISSN 1058-7187, online ISSN 1548-7458.

2014 by the American Anthropological Association. DOI: 10.1111/var.12045.

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VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW Volume 30 Number 2 Fall 2014

FIGURE 1. A gold-plated pistol on display in the Museum. This

pistol once belonged to a leader of one of the largest drug
trafficking organizations in Mexico. The image of Pancho Villa,
the popular leader of the Mexican Revolution, is engraved on the
pistol grip.

traffickers, and the Mexican nation. It demonstrates that

the military purposefully enhances the visuality of
narcocultura (Pink 2012:126), by drawing attention to
the exhibits of narcocultura in the Museum and ensuring that these exhibits become the focus of many photographs and videos that have circulated across a range
of sites. The article is primarily concerned, then, with
visualizations of narcocultura by and for the military,
but it takes into account how these visualizations have
adjusted to mediatization as media professionals have
introduced these displays to diverse audiences.4 Individuals who have acquired virtual access to the Museums exhibits of narcocultura through television or the
Internet have been able to participate in the Museums
visualizations of narcocultura along with soldiers with
direct access to the exhibits.
As a form of visual governance that authorizes
modes of seeing drugs and drug traffickers (Feldman
2005:224), the Museum has prepared soldiers in direct
and practical ways for the use of force against drug
traffickers in different theaters, but as an educational
institution that promotes the culture of drug traffickers
as a useful form of knowledge and specialization, the
Museum has become a more dynamic resource, the
benefits of which are subject to continuous reassess-

ments. In recent years, the Museum has developed into

a means of inviting soldiers and civilians to identify
with each other, and to foster solidarity between the two
groups amid a series of violent events that media professionals have called la guerra del narco (drug war). For
these reasons, the visualizations of narcocultura that
have occurred in and through the Museum have sought
to demonstrate the militarys capacities to gather, to
reflect upon, and to repurpose the materials of drug
traffickers, creating a background against which the
military can reinforce its sacrificial service to the
nation, and continue to garner trust and respect from
civilians. These visualizations respond to the different
images of drug traffickersincluding humorous and
romantic imagesthat are produced and reproduced in
telenovelas (television soap operas) and other media
formats. Indeed, the Museum has allowed the military to
build up its expertise in drug enforcement through and
against this array of images.
The main argument of the article is that the Museums authority to mediate perceptions of drug traffickers resides both in its establishment as an apparatus of
warfare, which the military uses to commemorate and to
plan for heroic actions in the face of the many problems
posed by drug traffickers, and its transformation into an
important cultural institution, through which the military has organized different kinds of violent media into
exhibits that support instructive narratives and has
drawn the larger public into these narratives through
the mediatization of the exhibits. To support this argument, I address the ways in which the Museum responds
to and facilitates a transformative logic of culture, as
it intertwines the modernization of the military with
activities that take place in national museums in Mexico
(Bennett 2006:52). The term transformative culture suggests connections between the militarys deployment of
the Museum and the formation of museums in England,
as Tony Bennett has described it. Drawing on Michel
Foucaults analyses of modern modalities of power,
Bennett contends that in museums, culture became a
resource for changing acceptable norms and forms of
behavior and consolidating those norms as selfacting imperatives (Bennett 1995:2223). By making
narcocultura into a resource for reflection and selfreform, the military has heightened the importance of

Ethan Sharp teaches in the Department of Anthropology at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia. He received the Ph.D.
in folklore from Indiana University. His dissertation research addressed the relationships between religious practice and
transnational migration in Mexican communities. From August 2009 to June 2010, he conducted ethnographic research on drug
addiction, drug addiction treatment, and the drug war in Monterrey, Mexico, with a Fulbright fellowship. During this time, he was
affiliated with the Programa Noreste of the Centro de Investigaciones y de Estudios Superiores en Antropologa Social (CIESAS).

Visualizing Narcocultura

the training that soldiers experience in the Museum, and

has made the Museum into the basis of a campaign that
calls for self-discipline from all Mexicans. By focusing
on representations of narcocultura, and the militarys
deployment of these representations as powerful instruments, this article bypasses questions about how the
military or social scientists define or should define
culture. Rather, it recognizes that there is a widely
shared sense in Mexican society that culture is a useful
concept for indicating and explaining difference among
members of the society, and it pursues insights into the
institutional dynamics that have mobilized this sense of
culture for specific purposes. The different references to
culture in this article, then, point to aspects of or developments in a culture complex (Bennett 2013:25),
privileging a focus on the formation of cultural institutions and the production of knowledge about culture.
In the next section, I turn to a discussion of how the
militarys use of the Museum in recent years has been
interconnected with other mediations of violence and
power associated with the drug war, incorporating
information that I gathered in the course of ethnographic research in northeastern Mexico in 2006 and
2010.5 The article then turns to a description of the
Museums collection, which is divided into three stages.
The first stage features media that frame the Museum as
an authoritative resource. The second stage, the core of
the Museum, provides vistas on the different drug
enforcement operations in which the military has been
engaged. The third stage offers encounters with visually
captivating, multifaceted representations of narcocultura. The last section highlights some of Captain Montanes comments on the exhibits of narcocultura, which
show clearly that the military has insisted on the usefulness of visualizing narcocultura as an exercise in
both self-reform and national preservation.

Dimensions of the Drug War

The evolution of the Museum from a secret depository
into an educational and cultural institution that serves
diverse audiences has overlapped with the following:
the expansion and transformation of different kinds of
markets in Mexico, including markets for illegal drugs,
markets for digital technologies, and markets for media
programming; the reinstitution of competitive elections,
a process that some have called democratization; and
the intensification of the drug war. The adoption of
neoliberal programs at different levels of government in
Mexico in the 1980s and 1990s curtailed governmental
support for small-scale agriculture, stimulated the
growth of manufacturing and service sectors, and facili-

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153

tated the exportation and importation of various commodities (see Harvey 2007). These changes created
incentives for transferring investments from legitimate
small-scale agriculture to the production of marijuana
and methamphetamines (see Maldonando Aranda 2012),
expanded the possibilities for moving cocaine from
countries to the south through Mexico as cross-border
movements and exchanges increased, and contributed
to increases in competition among drug traffickers. In
turn, the Mexican federal government began to devote
increasingly more resources to drug enforcement year
after year. At the same time, the democratization of
Mexicos electoral system in the 1990s and 2000s
undermined traditional systems of interjurisdictional
accountability (see Astorga and Shirk 2010), and in
many areas of Mexico, the military emerged as the only
institution that was widely trusted to confront drug
traffickers (Camp 2010:307). As the military has become
more involved in the provision of domestic security and
the pursuit of drug traffickers, however, it has directly
contributed to an increase in violent events associated
with the drug war.
As I have addressed elsewhere (Sharp 2009), the
adoption of neoliberal programs, amid the creation of a
more competitive electoral system, has involved greater
emphases in public discourse on entrepreneurship and
creative governance in Mexico. The greater emphases
on these values have coincided withand to a degree,
have supportedthe expansion of institutions and
media dedicated to culture as well as an increase in
access to and reliance on digital technologies among
many segments of Mexican society. Although the discourse that promotes entrepreneurship and creative
governance is not especially novel or crucial to the
implementation of neoliberal reforms, it has taken on
greater urgency amid the economic and political
restructurings that have occurred in Mexico in recent
years. As educational and cultural institutions have
adjusted to these changes, they have reinforced the
transformative logic that has been integral to their formation over the course of many decades and sustained
the ongoing revival of interest in culture as a domain of
commercial innovation and market development as well
as a resource for self-reform. In this regard, they have
benefited from innovations in and the growth of televised and digital media in Mexico, which have required
adaptations across a range of institutions and social
groups. As more people in Mexico have gained access to
a broader array of television programming, the Internet,
and mobile operating systems, it has become possible
for them to watch and to rewatch the drug war as it
unfolds and for representations of drug traffickers and
narcocultura to develop into lucrative enterprises.

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According to some observers, the series of events

that became known as the drug war began in 2005, in
the city of Nuevo Laredo, just across the Rio Grande
from Laredo, Texas (see Grillo 2011). As drug traffickers
fought among themselves and with local authorities,
they dumped dead bodies on the citys streets and
engaged in other public acts of intimidation. Drug trafficking organizations suppressed coverage of many
demonstrations of violence in local newspapers, but
they attracted the attention of media professionals in
the United States, central Mexico, and elsewhere. In the
following years, as drug traffickers carried out similar
campaigns in Ciudad Jurez, Acapulco, Monterrey, and
other cities, the violence shaped the storylines that the
news media developed in and about Mexico and became
a point of reference for conversations in homes and
neighborhoods. It also spurred individuals to document
events on their own, and generated a boom in the
production and promotion of narcocorridos (drug trafficking ballads) on the Internet. Across media formats,
the photographs and videos that have mediated the
violence have featured not only bullet-riddled buildings
and dead bodies, but also clothes, weapons, and vehicles
that drug traffickers have owned as well as messages
and logos that drug traffickers have inscribed on walls
and hand-painted banners (Campbell 2009:25). Because
the circulation of images about the drug wars has been
integrated into complex communication networks, it
has provided possibilities for drug traffickers to address
the military, other drug traffickers, and national and
international publics, and to craft messages in one
medium that respond to or cross-reference messages in
another medium. Indeed, in the drug war, both drug
traffickers and military have made clothes, weapons,
and vehicles into forms of media unto themselves, with
the capacity to convey multiple messages as they are
represented in different contexts. The circulation of
information, images, and objects within and across
these complex communication networks has been
essential for generating interest in the Museum.6
In response to events in Nuevo Laredo, the Mexican
military became a more palpable, if contentious, presence in many areas of Mexico. In 2006, President
Vicente Fox increased the number of troops that were
stationed in and around Nuevo Laredo, and from 2006
to 2012, during the administration of President Felipe
Caldern, soldiers, often wearing black masks and
holding automatic assault rifles, patrolled the streets of
cities in northern and central Mexico. The military also
participated in events that the federal government
staged for the news media, in which armed soldiers
stood guard over stashes of weapons and ammunition
that the military had confiscated or paraded drug traf-

fickers whom it had apprehended before a bevy of

cameras. As the military assumed more prominent roles
in the drug war, however, some soldiers became
involved in shootouts with drug traffickers in urban
areas, in which several soldiers and innocent bystanders
were killed. Drug traffickers also taunted the military
and attempted to use the mobilization of the military to
their advantage. In 2006, for example, the Zetasa
military-like group founded by men who had deserted
the military and aligned themselves with the Cartel del
Golfo, an organization that manages trafficking networks in northeastern Mexicoresponded to the
increased presence of soldiers in Nuevo Laredo by
hanging a banner over one of the citys main roads, in
which they disparaged the military and invited soldiers
to join the Zetas. With this banner, the Zetas indicated
their capacity to undermine the military, which was
becoming ever more vulnerable to threats of corruption
and desertion (see Astorga and Shirk 2010). In the face
of these threats, military personnel forged temporary
alliances with media professionals in and around the
Museum, and through the Museum, they offered up
frames of reference for following and making sense of
the drug war. For media professionals, the Museum
provided safe opportunities to explore the history and
range of the militarys drug enforcement operations,
and to examine the weapons and other media that drug
traffickers employed. Moreover, the reports and programs that media professionals generated in the
Museum were broadly appealing and could seemingly
resolve some of the mysteries surrounding drug traffickers.7 The military also benefited from these reports,
through which it demonstrated its visual command of
the theaters in which it had been engaged and its
capacity to see into the world of drug traffickers.
Long-standing popular understandings of culture in
Mexico, as well as new developments in the representation of drug traffickers, also contributed to the interest
in exhibits of narcocultura. Throughout the 20th
century, national and regional cultural stereotypes
acquired a particular vigor in Mexico (Prez Montfort
2000:16), which were represented in different forms of
dress and music, and these stereotypes have provided a
foundation for assembling narcocultura into an easily
identifiable form and linking it to certain areas of the
country. In recent years, telenovelas, narcocorridos, and
other genres of popular entertainment have generated
widespread familiarity with a variety of realistic and
fictitious versions of drug traffickers, ensuring that
many people across different areas of Mexico have
learned to live with narcocultura (Valenzuela Arce
2002:220). At the same time, some social scientific
studies have reinforced a sense that narcocultura is a

Visualizing Narcocultura

verifiable reality, reducible to a map or another type of

image, by framing their studies as explorations of
narcocultura.
The representations and interpretations of drug
trafficking culture across these different formats are in
agreement with the representations that occur in the
Museum on certain points. For one, the origins of
narcocultura are associated with a particular ranchero
(country or rural) style or way of life in mountainous
regions of northwestern Mexico, where the military was
engaged in the eradication of poppies and marijuana
plants in the 1970s and 1980s. Furthermore, it is intertwined with a devotion to Jess Malverde, who is often
referred to as a narco saint in English (Graziano
2007:13). According to legend, Jsus Malverde lived as
a bandit and friend of the poor in the state of Sinaloa,
until authorities captured and killed him in 1909 (see
Crdova Sols 2012). Although the Catholic Church does
not recognize Jess Malverde as a saint, he has become
the recipient of petitions and displays of gratitude
from drug traffickers. Even as telenovelas have offered
visions of more urbane drug traffickers, the notion that
the culture of drug traffickers is essentially a northern
ranchero way of life is at work in many social scientific
definitions of narcocultura, in which coherent systems
of representations mark off an alternate world for drug
traffickers. These definitions suggest that drug traffickers do not represent a tremendous threat to the larger
society but belong to a distinct subculture that invites
further exploration and evaluation (Benavides 2008:15;
Valenzuela Arce 2002:220).

The Media of the Museum

In 2010, during the course of ethnographic research
among men who were receiving treatment for drug
addiction in northeastern Mexico, I submitted a request
for a tour of the Museum so I could understand better its
appeal for the military and media professionals, and
examine more closely the ways in which the exhibits
dictate perceptions of drugs and drug traffickers.
Through the tour, I focused on the intent, or logic,
involved in the representations that occur in the
Museum. I found that the process of gaining access to
the SEDENA and the Museum, which involves interactions with many uniformed soldiers, ensures that the act
of entering the Museum is recognized as one that can
lead to a deeper respect for the militarys heroic discipline. On the day of the tour, Captain Montane, who was
the Museums administrator and curator at the time, met
me at the gates to the SEDENA and escorted me through
the building. Beside the modest wooden door that leads

SHARP

155

to the Museum, we encountered a display of plaques, on

which the names of hundreds of soldiers killed in drug
enforcement operations are engraved. Under large
golden letters that read, they gave their life in fulfillment of their duty, the display offers up the soldiers as
models of sacrificial service and discipline.
The initial tour involved lengthy explanations by
Captain Montane and lasted more than an hour. After
this tour, Captain Montane allowed me to spend more
time in the Museum revisiting many of the exhibits and
asking him questions. I also communicated with Captain
Montane by e-mail after the tour. The Museums collection of media makes evident the militarys commitment
to professionalization and modernization (Bentez
Manaut 2010:168) and guides visitors through a kind of
ritual by which they identify more strongly with the
military and participate directly in the militarys
transformation into a more modern institution (see
Macdonald 2005). Walking through the Museums
exhibits, visitors retrace and integrate themselves into
evolutionary narratives about drugs, drug trafficking,
and the military as well as narratives about the Museum
itself (Coffey 2003:2012). The incorporation of visually
intriguing representations of narcocultura into the
Museum invites reflections about drug traffickers for the
purposes of reaffirming the militarys command of
national and domestic security matters and permitting
collaborations between soldiers and civilians.
As we entered the Museum, we encountered a large
mural on a bowed wall that gives shape to a semicircular anteroom. The mural depicts a scene that overlays an outline of the map of Mexico, in which soldiers
in green fatigues are moving across a field of poppies, as
airplanes and helicopters hover in the sky, and a motorboat speeds across a sea in the distance. In one hand, the
soldier at the center of the mural carries a torch, which
he is using to set the field on fire, and in the other hand,
he carries the flag of Mexico, which blends into the
phantasm-like image of an eagle descending on the field
of poppies (Figure 2). This mural suggests that the
Museum is like other well-known museums in Mexico,
which have incorporated murals into their exhibit in
order to engage the public and to instill a Mexican
identity, modern subjectivity and a civic consciousness
(Coffey 2012:22). The mural, however, does not contain
any hints of a radical potential. It represents the soldiers
in an idealized operation that brings to bear an improbable array of resources, and it obscures the threat
against which the military has mobilized. The main
purpose of the mural, it seems, is to invite individuals
who enter the Museum to assume the perspective of
trainees and to join the militarys struggle against drug
traffickers. In this way, the mural directs individuals to

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FIGURE 2. A mural that surrounds visitors as they enter the

Museum. The mural directs visitors to the Museums first showroom, which is dedicated to the history of drugs.

further explorations of the different theaters in which

drug enforcement operations occur from the vehicles,
techniques, and tools that these operations require to
the importance of these operations for the nation.
The Museums first sala (showroom) explores the
history of drugs. In the center of this room, a large
display case, similar to a case found in jewelry stores,
allows soldiers to recognize the various drugs that are
illegally produced, shipped, and sold in Mexico. The
drugs, including different forms of marijuana, opiates,
and cocaine, are presented in several carefully arranged
glass dishes, amid devices for measuring weight, as if
they were being subjected to scientific analysis. Each
dish holds a sample of a drug, and a small sign in front
of each dish identifies the drug. Nearby this case, there
is a set of shelves, encased in glass, on which there are
replicas of objects that bring to mind the indigenous
civilizations of Mesoamerica, including objects used to
consume drug-like substances (Figure 3). Offering evidence of a primitive drug culture, this display is similar
to displays in other museums throughout Mexico, which
feature objects recovered and identified by archaeologists (Coffey 2003).
In this room, and throughout the Museum, there are
plates along the walls, with short texts and illustrations
related to objects on display. One of the texts explains
that the drugs consumed in indigenous civilizations
included peyote and hallucinogenic mushrooms. The
texts do not provide information that could answer such
questions as: How are the objects in the case different
from one another? How often and during which period
of history did indigenous communities use the objects?
What is the significance of the objects for existing
indigenous communities in Mexico? Like the mural, the
display of objects from indigenous civilizations is more

concerned with establishing that the Museum is an

important cultural institution, which can offer a panoramic appreciation of drugs, drug trafficking, and the
militarys capacities to deal with and move beyond
these threats, than it is with providing detailed information. The lighting in and around the case, as a form
of media that modulates pacing and mood (Kratz
2011:33), affirms the importance of the display as a
starting point for the narratives that are developed in
the Museum, as soldiers and civilians contemplate and
reject different kinds of drugs and drug-related pursuits.
In sum, the exhibits in the first stage of the Museum
participate in the ongoing development of the militarys
knowledge and discipline at the vanguard of a modernizing nation, in which the consumption of only certain,
largely taken-for-granted drugs is permitted.
Beyond the display of pre-Hispanic objects, there
are a series of plates and photographs that address drug
use in the 20th century and a series of plates that cite
the Mexican constitution and other legal documents in
order to justify the militarys involvement in drug
enforcement operations. Captain Montane explained

FIGURE 3. A display case featuring replicas of objects that indigenous peoples used for the consumption of drug-like substances,
including hallucinogenic mushrooms, before the arrival of the
Europeans.

Visualizing Narcocultura

that drug use had evolved from a threat to public

health in the 1930s and 1940s into a threat to public
safety in the 1960s. He noted that drug enforcement
had become a matter of national security in recent
years, requiring the military to devote many more
resources to drug enforcement. With this explanation,
we moved into the second stage of the Museum, the core
of the museum, which offers detailed information on the
drug enforcement operations that the military has
engaged in. This stage includes exhibits that feature
photographs, maps, and dioramas representing the areas
where marijuana and poppies are grown and the steps
that the military has taken to interrupt the cultivation
and harvesting of these plants; exhibits that provide
information about production facilities and feature an
assortment of materials used in these facilities; and
exhibits that address the interception of aircraft and
watercraft used for drug shipments and feature a large
map of the areal and marine routes for the shipment of
drugs into and from Mexico. There are also exhibits
dedicated to the interception of drug shipments through
revisions at checkpoints along highways and at the
nations borders, which are very popular among soldiers
who tour the Museum, according to Captain Montane.
They feature an array of confiscated objects that drug
traffickers modified in order to store drugs, many of
which the museums administrators have partially dismantled in order to reveal packets of drugs inside and
provide military personnel the means to see the creative
ways in which drugs are concealed in vehicles, objects,
and people. The exhibits also include displays of the
tools and techniques that the military has used to discover hidden drugs, which prepare military personnel to
use these tools and techniques.
This stage also includes an in situ installation, the
first exhibit in the Museum that shifts attention from
the military to drug traffickers (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett
1998:20). The installation features a mannequin dressed
as a campesino (farm worker or peasant) and establishes
that the beliefs and aspirations of drug traffickers are
rooted in a rural way of life (Figure 4). Sitting on a pile
of rocks and keeping watch over a campfire, the mannequin has a shotgun in his lap, a cigarette in one hand,
and a can of beer in the other hand. On the wall behind
him, an artist has painted a field of poppies in bloom on
one side and a field of full-grown marijuana plants on
the other side. On the ground, there are several empty
cans of beer and Coca-Cola, and a bust of Jess
Malverde. Although the installation is focused on an
individual who occupies a lowly place in the drug trade,
the image of Jess Malverde links the campesino to
other drug traffickers in a romanticized, alternate world
marked by backwardness and violent rivalries. For

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157

FIGURE 4. An installation that features a full-size mannequin

dressed as a campesino, with a cowboy-like hat on his head and
sandals on his feet, amid fields of marijuana and poppies. The bust
of the narco saint Jess Malverde sits on the ground, to the right
of the mannequin.

according to Captain Montane, the campesino is not

protecting his fields from the military; he is protecting
them from other drug traffickers who want to steal his
crops.
This installation, like other exhibits of narcocultura,
makes the Museum into a more complete resource that
can support the militarys evolution into a more professional force, by allowing soldiers to develop a cultural
expertise that complements their technical and tactical
expertise. As Captain Montane made clear, the installation is not directly concerned with preparing the military for engagements with drug producers or traffickers
like the campesino; rather, it is a means of recognizing
the contrasts between the drug industry and the military, whose sophistication is on display throughout the
Museum, and interpreting drug traffickers motivations
in view of these contrasts. If individuals who encounter
the installation follow Captain Montanes example, they
will acknowledge the militarys capacities to manipulate
different cultural symbols and to create elaborate educational instruments that permit encounters with the

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world of drug traffickers. And as they participate in

these visualizations of narcocultura, they can appreciate
the world of drug traffickers as entertaining and edifying, while accepting that this world is problematic and
undesirable, and thus will commit themselves to the
militarys leadership and programs of modernization.

Transformations of Narcocultura
Captain Montane, who at the time of the tour had
completed 27 years of service in the army and had been
overseeing the museum for two years, explained that
the original purpose of the Museum had been to teach
military personnel to identify drugs and to learn about
drug traffickers modes of hiding drugs, but as the
military learned more about drug trafficking it
expanded the Museums collection of media in order to
offer a broader spectrum of information. He remarked,
We need to know our enemy to be able to combat it
efficiently. This explanation suggests that the collection expanded according to the logic that the Museum,
as a museum, must be comprehensive and adaptive and
requires the ongoing development and reinterpretation
of its collection. This logic, however, has required the
military to trace the evolution of drug traffickers from a
regional and easily managed problem into a national
and much more complex problem. Captain Montane
commented that the Museum has more recently
acquired a new purpose: to serve as a bridge for
informing the civilian population about our advances
and the risks to national security that drug trafficking
and organized crime presents. This comment indicates
that as the struggle against drug traffickers has intensified, the military has opened up the Museums collection in order to build confidence in the militarys
knowledge and leadership and to guide civilians in
reflections about the drug war.
For the exhibits that are organized under the title
La Narcocultura, the third stage of the Museum,
Captain Montane provided more extensive explanations
than he did for any of the other exhibits, demonstrating
the kinds of reflections and interpretations that
narcocultura requires. The exhibits begin with a mannequin that represents a narcotraficante (drug trafficker). He is dressed like a sophisticated cowboy, in blue
jeans and an expensive shirt, with gold chains around
his neck and gold bracelets on his wrist (Figure 5). The
mannequin is positioned between two horse saddles,
with large silver-plated horns, which the military confiscated from drug traffickers. The clothing of the mannequin, along with the saddles, establishes connections
between the exhibits of narcocultura and the installa-

FIGURE 5. A mannequin dressed as a drug trafficker, with a goldplated cellular telephone in his hand. The mannequin marks the
beginning of a series of displays dedicated to narcocultura. The
text on the plate behind the mannequin identifies different elements of narcocultura.

tion that features the campesino, offering evidence of a

fidelity to a ranchero style, and facilitating visualizations that demonstrate and enhance the militarys cultural expertise. Like the installation with the campesino,
the mannequin dressed as a narcotraficante is a form of
media that permits an appreciation of the beliefs and
aspirations of drug traffickers. Captain Montane
explained that the mannequin and the other exhibits
reveal the way in which drug traffickers think and
their values. According to him, the desire to show off,
which he described as rayando en lo ridculo (verging
on ridiculousness), is the most important value of drug
traffickers, and Captain Montane associated this desire
to show off with drug traffickers abilities to build up a
following among young people and other segments of
society.
A plate behind the narcotraficante includes the following explanation of narcocultura: Drug trafficking
has allowed for the formation of a subculture with its
own literature, style, symbols, music and even saints.
Although Captain Montane noted that the exhibits

Visualizing Narcocultura

mostly reflected the information that the military

personnel had gathered about drug traffickers in the
field, this explanation of narcocultura resonates with
discussions of narcocultura in social scientific literature.
Indeed, it is likely that the military personnel who have
worked in the Museum have referred to publications by
Jos Manuel Valenzuela Arce and others, just as the
authors of a recent report for the Secretara de
Seguridad Pblica (Ministry of Public Safety) did in
recommending policies that could prevent young people
from becoming involved in drug trafficking. Both the
displays in the Museum and the report intertwine
knowledge practices that concern culture in Mexico
with the federal governments security apparatuses, and
approach narcocultura as a set of expressions, values,
and attitudes that mark off a group of people from the
larger society and locate this group at specific sites
(Secretara de Seguridad Pblica del Gobierno Federal
2010:3). For Captain Montane, however, this approach
serves as a starting point for reflecting on and reassessing narcocultura as a frame of reference. In this way, he
demonstrates the kind of reflexivity that is essential for
making encounters with narcocultura into transformative exercises and he moves toward a view of
narcocultura as an array of objects and mimetic practices that circulate in wider fields of media and are
available for appropriation across many more sites than
the military can account for.
Displays and interpretations of narco saints offer
examples of some of the ways in which narcocultura as
a frame of reference, or concept, can be reconfigured in
the Museum. Just past the mannequin dressed as a
narcotraficante, the Museums administrators have recreated a small roadside shrine in which flowers and
candles are arrayed in front of the bust of Jess
Malverde alongside a small framed image of the Virgin
of Guadalupe, the officially recognized Queen of
Mexico. Captain Montane explained that drug traffickers visit shrines like this onea primitive, inverted
version of the display of plaques near the Museums
entrance, which honors the heroes of a modern
nationin order to pray for protection from rival drug
traffickers and governmental authorities. Adjacent to
the shrine in honor of Jess Malverde, however, a
display case holds small images of La Santa Muerte
(Holy Death or the Death Saint) that could be placed on
a shelf or small altar amid compact discs that feature
recordings of narcocorridos. These images of La Santa
Muerte, a narco saint that has been linked to the Zetas
and other emergent drug trafficking organizations, take
the form of a complete feminine skeleton, wearing a
black veil and holding a scythe in her hand. Captain
Montane noted that devotion to La Santa Muerte has

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159

become increasingly popular among drug traffickers,

suggesting that devotion to La Santa Muerte has
eclipsed devotion to Jess Malverde. Even though the
culture of drug traffickers may be rooted in colorful
distortions of official Catholic practice or folkloric
inversions of a civil religion, the Museum reveals that
narcocultura has adapted to and shaped the urban, more
sophisticated cult of La Santa Muerte, which draws
together diverse groups of people. As narcocultura has
become dedicated to an image that is potentially more
subversive than Jess Malverde, it demands from the
military and other observers a greater awareness of and
readiness to respond to the different activities that can
be inspired by this image.
The Museum provides other glimpses of the development of the drug industry into an enterprise that has
little to do with a rural way of life, exposing the challenges involved in visualizations of drug traffickers
through the Museum. These challengeswhich ultimately make the exercises that take place in the
Museum more meaningful and effective as they allow
for the development of more reflexive approaches
to
narcoculturaare
intertwined
with
the
museumification of Mexico, through which cultural
institutions have proliferated in order to inform
Mexican citizens about their heritage and establish a
Mexican national identity (Coffey 2012:21) and the
militarys aspiration to a totalizing vision (Mirzoeff
2009:1743), which has involved creating more complex
systems of surveillance and education in order to
predict and to adjust to the enemys increasing sophistication. On the one hand, several representations of
narcocultura in the Museum, such as cartoon-like mannequins, convey a sense that the military has effectively
neutralized drug traffickers as it transforms them into
historical representations of themselves (Bennett
2006:52). On the other hand, displays of weapons and
other dangerous items associated with narcocultura
reveal that drug traffickers, as they have evolved in
response to the militarys operations, pose a major
threat to the nation.
The display cases near the Museums exit provide
the most glaring evidence of drug traffickers evolution
into a complex array of sophisticated enterprises, with
armies of their own. These casesmany of which also
incorporate specialized lighting in order to underscore
the value of the objects on displaycontain carefully
decorated and expensive guns, including a pistol with
the image of Pancho Villa engraved on it as well as
military-grade assault rifles. For Captain Montane, these
guns are the evidence of simple-minded efforts to amass
outrageous arsenals and provide further insights into
the decadence of drug traffickers; but these guns also

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VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW Volume 30 Number 2 Fall 2014

FIGURE 6. A display of medals and a cellular telephone that once

belonged to men affiliated with the Zetas, a drug trafficking
organization founded by former members of the military. The text
explains that the Zetas awarded the medals to recognize a significant illegal action.

point to the ways in which drug traffickers exercise

power and influence across different arenas by acquiring and refashioning weapons of different kinds and
integrating these weapons into their personas. In addition, the display cases hold personal effects that once
belonged to members of the Zetas, which have received
extensive attention from media professionals because in
recent years the Zetas have become one of the most
feared drug trafficking organizations. They include a
gold-plated, diamond-encrusted cellular telephone and
large gold medals that hang from gold chains (Figure 6).
According to a sign placed behind the telephone, which
affirms the militarys knowledge of drug trafficking
organizations, the military recovered the telephone in
2007 from El Cachetes, who deserted the military to
become a leader of the Zetas. Although this telephone is
consistent with the style of drug traffickers on display in
other exhibits, it tracks the adaptation of drug trafficking organizations to emergent technologies, organizational models, and markets like legitimate corporations
(Marez 2004:18).
The medals feature nationalistic symbols and
provide opportunities to engage in reflexive exercises
that attend to the direct connections between the development of the military and the development of drug
trafficking organizations. On one side of the medal,
there is an engraving of a map of Mexico, which overlays a large letter Z. Nineteen stars surround the map
along the edge of the medal, which represent the 19
founders of the Zetas. On the other side of the medal,
there is a group of four men, who appear to be dressed
for combat, aiming rifles toward the same target. The
word comandos (commandos) is engraved across the

top. As we inspected the medals, Captain Montane

pointed out that military units give out similar medals
to soldiers who have accomplished an important feat.
He took out a medal from his wallet, announcing, I also
carry with me the medal of my unit. Viewed alongside
Captain Montanes medal, the Zetas medals are evidence of the respect that the Zetas and the larger public
have for the militarys superior training, skills, and
organization. By creating and giving out medals, the
Zetas presumably attempted to re-create the esprit de
corps and sense of service that their leaders had found
in the military. Taking into account the heinous deeds
that the media has associated with the Zetas, however,
the medals confirm that the Zetas are more interested in
building a vast, diversified organization than in carving
out a niche in the drug industry or laying claim to a
rural domain and that they are capable of killing more
people, and more indiscriminately, than other drug
traffickers.
Explaining that the medals were for criminal
achievements, that the Zetas are traitors and pursued
by everyone, Captain Montane sought to relegate the
Zetas to the same culture of backwardness and violence
that is on display in other exhibits of narcocultura.8
Then, as we moved toward the exit, he took the opportunity to deliver a somber message. He contradicted the
notion that the military had effectively confronted and
controlled the Zetas by admitting that as the military
had acquired more knowledge of drug traffickers, it had
recognized that narcocultura could overwhelm the military without the help of civilians. He began by noting
that all of thispointing to the weapons and other
items on displayis possible because of the consumers, and added,
Its important that the young people who are
already in the world of drugs know that the money
that they are spending on drugs costs lives in
Mexico; and that the young people who are at the
present time, fortunately, not using drugs, that they
stay as far away as possible from them. Because the
more money that they give to drug traffickers, the
more possibilities there are to have violence on
the doorstep of their own house. And if this doesnt
diminish, then no army, not to mention the police,
will be sufficient to stop it. . . . In the army, we are
very aware that we have to win, to triumph over
drug trafficking, so our country will continue to
exist.
Captain Montanes message has several surprising
elements. For the purposes of this article, I note
only that by developing this message at the end of a

Visualizing Narcocultura

ritualistic tour through the Museum, which explored the

different facets of the militarys knowledge of the drug
industry, he was able to argue forcefully that visualizations of narcocultura through the Museum are essential
for the nation. According to his argument, as individual
soldiers and civilians recognize and reflect on the
culture of drug traffickers, they can anticipate and adapt
to the challenges presented by drug traffickers, and
move the nation toward a future in which narcocultura
becomes another colorful, interesting, and slowly disappearing dimension of a modern Mexican national
identity.

Conclusions
The images of and information about the drug war that
have recently circulated and shaped an interest in drug
traffickers have included scenes and news of assassinations, shootouts, and other violent acts in newspapers
and on the Internet, representations of drug traffickers
in telenovelas and narcocorridos, and the rumors and
descriptions of drug traffickers extravagance that
people share with one another in face-to-face interactions. Amid these circulations, photographs and videos
of the Museums exhibits of narcocultura have been
especially valuable, deriving authority from both the
militarys commitment to modernization and its successful deployment of the museum idea (Buntix and
Karp 2006:208), and they have become points of reference for many different projects. As they are represented across different formats and contexts, however,
some of these photographs and videos suggest that the
Museum commemorates the way of life and achievements of drug traffickers as a kind of national heritage,
as the National Museum of Anthropology does for the
indigenous peoples of Mexico (Coffey 2003:220). As I
toured the Museum, I found that the military has, in
fact, made the exhibits of narcocultura more elaborate
and captivating than the Museums other exhibits in
order to make the Museum into a more comprehensive
and appealing resource, one that can participate in the
shaping of a national identity as it traces the development of both the military and drug trafficking organizations. As individuals move through the Museum or
review a series of images that feature the Museums
exhibits on television or the Internet, they can survey
and identify the different landscapes, structures, objects,
techniques, and personalities that military personnel
have encountered in the course of drug enforcement
operations. As these visual exercises focus on expressions of narcoculturafrom images of sloppy campesinos keeping watch in the mountains to images of

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161

well-organized commandos firing on a targetthey

necessarily give way to interpretive exercises, whereby
individuals can recognize how they are different from
drug traffickers, strengthen their commitment to the
militarys vision of a secure and modern society, and
anticipate and respond to the problems that drug traffickers offer up. These problems include not only the
tactics and weaponry to which drug traffickers resort in
confrontations with the military and the demonstrations
of violence that they stage in order to intimidate rivals
and the larger public but also their offerings of drug and
money bribes by which they corrupt institutions and
purportedly threaten the existence of the Mexican
nation.
By enhancing the visuality of narcocultura, the
military has also shifted attention away from the often
fruitless and sometimes disastrous maneuvers that it has
undertaken in urban areasas well as that of the
federal governments inabilities to create an effective
coalition of law enforcement agencies and to strengthen
the countrys criminal justice systemsand it has
directed attention to the militarys discipline and the
risks that it has bravely assumed as it has become more
deeply involved in the struggle against drug traffickers.
By framing the exhibits of narcocultura as the product
of sacrificial service to the nation, the military has
turned visualizations of narcocultura into the basis of a
cultural campaign that appeals to the sympathies of
civilians and asks them to share the responsibilities of
recognizing and rejecting drug traffickers. This campaign also reveals a commitment within the military to
the values of entrepreneurship and creative governance.
For while this kind of campaign is similar to the counterinsurgency that the U.S. military carried out in
Iraqin that it involves improving the militarys visualizing techniques, deepening its cultural expertise, and
deploying visual media to shore up its legitimacy
(Mirzoeff 2009)it is different from the U.S. militarys
counterinsurgency in that the Mexican military has
found strategic advantages in the fact that the people
against which the military has mobilized are sources of
inspiration for the media and entertainment industries.
In addition, the military has achieved advantages in the
organization and promotion of the Museums collection
as a museum. Without making any significant investments, it has transformed the collection into an authoritative resource, generated interest in this resource in
partnership with media professionals, and involved
civilians in its transformative logic.
Because the militarys campaign is interconnected
with the cultural infrastructure of Mexico and provides
a space for purposefully reflexive exercises, it permits
collaborations and the sharing of concepts and

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VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW Volume 30 Number 2 Fall 2014

approaches among the military, other federal agencies,

nongovernmental organizations, media professionals,
and social scientists. As they work in concert to identify
elements of and demarcate the world of drug traffickers,
these various institutions and groups continue to facilitate a sense that drug traffickers are a distinct class of
people, recognizable for their peculiar clothes, saints,
and weapons and that this distinct class of people can in
and of itself be held accountable for the violence that
has spread across the national landscape. In this way,
they suggest that the solution to the violence can
involve not only more effective enforcement operations
but also targeted educational and social initiatives that
facilitate self-reformof the kind that members of the
military embodyamong people who are susceptible to
involvement in drug trafficking and drug use. The
reality, however, is that drug trafficking and drug use
are very much entangled with the commodity fetishism,
precarious labor markets, and structural violence that
are integral and enduring features of the economic and
political restructurings in Mexico. Pursuing an understanding of drug traffickers through a focus on culture
can result in a closer examination of these entanglements, but this result will require not only overlooking
the violence and extravagance of drug traffickers but
also establishing a critical distance from the practices
and values of the military.

Notes
1
2

This article refers to the Museum of Drugs as the Museum.

I use the term military to refer to all of Mexicos armed
forces, including the army and navy. The army is mostly
responsible for the Museum. In the field, the army has
been more involved in patrols and checkpoints; while
units within the navy have been responsible for raids and
arrests in recent years. The navy is not part of the
SEDENA.
A program that appeared on a Mexican cable television
channel dedicated to rock music videos provides a thorough introduction to the Museum. The actor who guides
viewers through the Museum becomes much more animated as the tour turns to exhibits of narcocultura.
See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLttafcZpqU. Clips
produced for news programs in Mexico often feature
only these exhibits. See http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=s7qDSyP_PzA.
I use the term media to refer to material, objects, and texts
as well as images, which are fashioned, wielded, or distributed in order to convey information and to shape
identities. Mediation involves the processes of creating and
using media in order to formulate a bridge or connection
among those they link (Agha 2011:163). Mediatization is
a form of mediation that links communication to processes of commoditization (Agha 2011:163).

I am grateful for the support of a Fulbright fellowship,

which allowed me to conduct research in northeastern
Mexico for nine months, from 2009 to 2010.
John McDowell illuminates the complexities of these networks in an article in which he discusses the ways in which
the production of narcocorridos has become intertwined
with digital media, the dress and lifestyles of drug traffickers, and critiques of the different groups of people
involved in the drug wars, including politicians and journalists (McDowell 2012).
I first learned about the Museum from William Booths
report on the website of the Washington Post in 2010
(Booth 2010). I am grateful to Booth for providing me
information via e-mail about procedures for requesting
permission to tour the Museum.
At the time of the tour, the Zetas had recently separated
from the Cartel del Golfo and was engaged in a war with
this cartel and other drug trafficking organizations.

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