Out of Mexico's Violence, A Cultural Renaissance Emerges Along the Border Louis Nevaer - New America Media
go to original March 11, 2013

Pájaro Sin Alas - Ella (El Edén) (En Vivo) (Pájaro Sin Alas)

MEXICO CITY – Mexican youths living in border cities from Tijuana to Ciudad Juarez are reclaiming civil society via cultural movements emerging on the heels of a six year, government-led "War on Drugs" that has left many Mexican border communities ravaged by violence.

In Ciudad Juarez, Mexico’s deadliest city, where the drug war has been exacerbated by a well documented (and still unsolved) wave of violence directed against women, a growing number of young people are using music as a platform to raise their voice against the culture of violence, fear and apparent impunity enjoyed by the drug cartels and those shadowy criminals responsible for the wave of femicides.

Since 1993 more than 700 women have been murdered or sexually assaulted in Ciudad Juarez, just a few miles from the mild-mannered suburbs of El Paso, Texas. The violence has been well documented by, among others, Teresa Rodriguez, a Univision reporter whose 2008 book, The Daughters of Juarez, gave voice to the city’s many women who live in daily fear.

The new music being fashioned by young people on the border – the genre has come to be known as “Nueva Ola Fronteriza” (new border wave) - stands in sharp contrast, both lyrically and sonically, to "Narco Corridos” (drug ballads), a genre of music that glamorizes the exploits of the drug cartels. Those ballads, which spin tales of drug lords such as Ciudad Juarez's Amado Carrillo Fuentes (known as the Lord of the Skies) and Tijuana's Arellano-Felix brothers, who controlled the drug routes between Tijuana and San Diego, are now held in disdain by many Mexican youth. Their attitudes are perhaps best summed up by a popular Youtube video depicting young people ridiculing legendary narco-corrido groups such as Los Tigres del Norte as "so last decade."

Read the whole story at New America Media

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