Narco-Literature: The Genre That Resists Violence

"Sol Prendido" for Borderland Beat

As organized crime has established itself in every corner of Mexico, a new literary movement has emerged that seeks to preserve the truth and memory of all that has been disrupted by the brutality of a nation in flames.

In Culiacán, a city where reality has long surpassed fiction, hundreds of teenagers sing about chrome-plated rifles, armored vehicles, and blood loyalties. The scene isn't set in a Netflix series, but at a concert of corridos tumbados, a genre that blends regional Mexican music with trap music and which stars like Peso Pluma and Natanael Cano have turned into generational anthems.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum launched a movement months ago to ban these songs from public events, claiming they glorify organized crime. But if the problem is the message, what happens when that same story appears in books? When is it no longer presented as entertainment, but as a chronicle, investigation, or testimony?

Mexico is experiencing such deep-rooted violence that it no longer shocks, it only tires. And in the face of this exhaustion, there are authors who are unwilling to remain silent and, through narrative journalism, construct a literature that doesn't glamorize the horror, but rather names it.

A new movement has emerged in recent years: texts that straddle the line between reportage, memory, and denunciation. They are neither novels nor pamphlets: they are narrative artifacts with a clear ethic and a latent urgency. These are voices like those of Anabel Hernández, whose investigation in Emma y Las Otras Señoras del Narco (Emma and the Other Ladies of the Drug Trade) reveals the links between spectacle, drug trafficking, and political elites; Fernanda Melchor, who in Aquí no es Miami (This Isn’t Miami) portrays the fissures of Veracruz with lyrical fury; or Diego Enrique Osorno, who in En la Montaña (In the Mountains) recounts the Zapatista uprising from an intimate and political perspective.

Voices that are forming something that is no longer just a trend: it is a possible canon. One that is not organized by style or aesthetics, but by a commitment to a truth that is difficult to confront. Writing, in their cases, is about holding one's gaze where others turn.

This literary movement focuses on the aftermath of drug trafficking, such as clandestine graves and the search for missing persons.

FROM TIKTOK TO THE BOOKSTORE

If drug trafficking is the wound, narcoculture is the language that reveals it. It's no longer limited to corridos or TV series; it's also present in clothing, Instagram filters, and, increasingly, in books.

But this isn't the narrative of glamorous drug lords or of violence as fiction. It's the literature of the aftermath: the kind that captures what crime leaves in its wake. Journalists follow traces in clandestine graves, mothers dig with their bare hands, communities caught between drug trafficking and the state. These are writings crafted with rigor, but also with rhythm, with voice, with humanity.

Anabel Hernández has been singled out, threatened, and celebrated for her investigations into criminal elites. Fernanda Melchor combines the rage of journalism with the precision of literary language. And Diego Osorno manages an interview with "El Mayo" Zambada not to mythologize him, but to show the void where a State should be. These texts aren't isolated; they form a corpus. Perhaps a genre, and certainly a form of memory.

For years, speaking of "narco-literature" was almost an insult: fast-paced books with flashy covers and shootouts in every chapter. But what is published today through chronicles demands a different interpretation. It's no longer just about telling stories; it's about understanding.

These works are translated, reviewed outside the country, and sold. And yes, that's uncomfortable. There are those who fear that pain is becoming a commodity, that suffering is being packaged for foreign readers, that tears are being monetized.

It's a legitimate doubt. But it can also be an excuse. Because sometimes it's easier to criticize a book than to face the reality that gave rise to it.

These texts don't explode, they expose. They aren't spectacle, they are a record. And that, in a country that forgets quickly, is already an act of resistance.

Illustration of 'El Mayo' Zambada, a drug lord interviewed by Diego Enrique Osorno, at his recent trial in New York.

CENSORSHIP, MORALITY, AND SILENCE

Sheinbaum's proposal to ban narcocorridos is not new. Other governments have tried it before, always with the same argument: to protect young people, clean up public discourse, and restore order. But history teaches us that cultural censorship never stops with songs. It begins on the radio and ends with books.

What begins as a moralizing policy soon becomes a criterion for exclusion.

Who decides which narratives are valid and which are not? Banning lyrics doesn't stop violence, comfort mothers, or dismantle criminal networks. It's a measure that attacks the echo, but not the explosion. And if the songs are silenced, how long before they try to silence the written works that explain why those songs exist? How long before a chronicle is accused of inciting, a novel of corrupting, a testimony of exaggerating?

What would happen with Bones in the Desert? With Crossfire? With the chronicles that were written while bullets were falling? Confusing narration with glorification is a mistake, a dangerous one. Because if we stop telling, we stop understanding. And if we stop understanding, fear fills everything.

RECOUNTING IS ALSO RESISTANCE

In a country where violence is already background noise, literature is one of the last places where nuance still fits. Where one can pause. Where someone, with words, tries to leave a record. Silencing an entire genre for fear of discomfort is also silencing those who are writing from true pain.

The best of this new narco-literature doesn't talk about crime. It talks about what crime leaves behind. About the mothers who search, the journalists who follow, the towns where silence is now a habit.

This isn't just publication. It's memory. It's an archive. It is, in its own way, a way of fighting for the truth. Where the official version is often shelved rather than verified, these books become a kind of counter-history. They narrate what the press releases omit.

Reading them also implies taking a stand. Because the reader can no longer pretend they don't know. And in times when ignorance offers itself as a refuge, that awareness is, in itself, a political act.

If a book still disturbs, provokes, stirs empathy, then it is fulfilling its function. Perhaps, in this wounded country, that discomfort is also a form of hope.

Source: El Siglo de Torren