Drug cartel rivalry has been on the public agenda in Latin America for decades. Thousands of people have already been slaughtered, whereas bilions of dollars are made and laundered. Jup, the drug wars are still going strong. With the recent release of the Netflix original series 'narco's', portraying the lavendish lifestyle of the most famous druglord in history: Pablo Escobar, the narco's are even gaining popularity. In addition, the Pablo Escobar of today listens to the name of El Chapo, who managed to escape from a Mexican prison a couple of months ago (for the second time). El Chapo is the leader of the Sinaloa cartel, one of the leading organized crime syndicates in Latin America. Cartels seem to have picked up their battles again, and started another war. However, this time the war is a little bit more adapted to the era of social media.
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| A gold-plated AK-47 in a red Ferrari seems tempting |
Recently, the children of the aforementioned drug lord El Chapo started to post pictures of their lavendish and luxury lifestyle on Instragram. As of today, everyone in the world can enjoy Latina girls in string bikini's, gold plated Kalashnikov's, luxury merchandise, expensive mansions and even exotic animals such as tigers, lions and reptiles on the Instagram account called 'Narcos. It might even not surprise you, as estimates say that El Chapo has a gross worth of 2.7 bilion euro's. However, the popularity of these Insta-braggers is rising and accounts such as @AlfreditoGuzma (El Chapo's son), @miauuu5_7_ (Jose Rodrigo, another famous 'narco') and @_IvanGuzman_ (another of El Chapo's sons) already have been copied dozens of times. The hashtags #narcolifsteyle, #narcos, #narcogram and #narcostyle have thousands of posts and appear to be inspiring to Mexican youngsters.
In my opinion, the Mexican government fanned the flames by calling Mexican teens not to respond to these gangsters who brag about the profits of crime. There have already even been messages of young Mexicans 'reposting' the #narcolifestyle pictures. One user named @Arturo5_7, states he himself is not a narco, but is happy to promote the narco lifestyle, as "the Mexican drugcartels are more trustworthy than the local government". The question that rises is what people can do to stop this. Do we need interference from the Mexican government? Does Instagram have to do something against these posh-criminals? You tell me. I, myself, am actually quite worried that social media will become the new way of recruiting young gangsters. For now, as nobody acts we still can enjoy the luxury lifestyle of the biggest criminals in te world. What do you think?
André Duijkers
Very interesting case. And as I believe I argued in class, I do think that the Mexican government has a role to play on social media in cases like this. And I share with you the worry of this becoming a new way of recruiting new ambitious criminals. However I do not believe that an authoritarian attitude will do the government any good among the public on Instagram. I would say; fight them hard but do so with equal resources. I propose that the Mexican government launches an Instagram account that uses the exact same hashtags: #narcolife, #narcogram and #narcostyle. Yet, in stead of posting pictures of tigers at a pool, voluptuous ladies in string bikinis and golden AK74's, I propose they post pictures of arrests, miserable Mexican prison cells and maybe even results of gang shootouts (though maybe not the ones that are too vulgar). This might alarm the public that is clearly interested in extreme wealth and seems to care less about the manner of obtaining this wealth. Making them very aware of the flip side of this gangster lifestyle: it is very risky. The intrinsic message should be: in the worst case you'll get kidnapped or killed and at best you'll end up in one of our not so glamorous prisons.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree Andre! The Mexican government certainly exacerbated the situation by telling teens not to view them, it inherently makes the accounts more interesting and even teens who perhaps had not heard of these accounts would certainly take a look at them after the government told them not to. The problem is that the government believe that saying all of this almost has the feel of telling people what to see and what not to see. By criticising these posts, it draws attention to the lifestyle that will be more attractive to those who find themselves in a poor socio economic status and with little chance of social progression. Instead of just denouncing drug dealers and these instagram accounts, their resources should not be spent telling people not to view these accounts, but by helping communities to create opportunities away from the drug and gang culture and telling them to aspire to the greatness of Ferraris and mansions (though obviously not the AK47s) but through fair means not foul means. Community projects to target those will be far more successful than telling people not to view certain instagram accounts.
ReplyDeleteAndrei Rydzkowski