Listening to Sicarios presents new insights into the lives of paid assassins of Mexico’s drug trafficking syndicates from the perspectives of the assassins themselves. Based on an extraordinary series of ethnographic interviews carried out in the wake of the record levels of narcoviolence experienced in Ciudad Juárez between 2008 and 2012, this study analyzes the ways in which these young men interpret their actions across four key thematic axes: border infrastructures, youth and responsibility, masculinity and sentiment, and ethics: good vs. evil.
It argues that sicarios follow a career path within a criminal corporate infrastructure that is especially robust in Mexican border cities. It also explores how sicarios understand youthful innocence in relation to adult accountability in the realm of violence that is frequently meted out by young men on other young men. It then analyzes sicarios’ expressions of feelings of power that may boost their sense of virility, as well as feelings of fear and regret that imply weakness. Finally, it examines how sicarios defend their personal integrity in the face of a public discourse that views their acts as savage.
Author(s): Arturo Chacón Castañón, Robert McKee Irwin
Series: New Directions in Latino American Cultures
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 128
City: Cham
Acknowledgments
Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction: Listening to Sicarios
Listening to Sicarios
Meeting Sicarios
Fieldwork Protocols
Collaborative Analysis
Themes and Insights
A Few Final Words
Chapter 2: Deadly Employment within the Border Industrial Complex
The Border Criminal Industrial Complex
Borders Don’t Exist
Border Violence
Job Markets, Career Paths
Salarymen
Shifting Professional Priorities, Personal Redemption
The Case of Tony
Sicarios as Border Thinkers
Crossing Back
Some Observations
Chapter 3: Youthful Murderers: Innocence and Professionalism
Approaching Mexican Youth
Innocence and Responsibility
Underground Developments
No Future
Modernizing Juárez
Otherness: Work as a Form of Subsistence
Popular Heroes
Dreams and Reality
Becoming a Man
Conclusions
Chapter 4: Sicario Masculinities: Feeling Reckless and Afraid
The Sentiments of Sicarios
A Woman’s Views on Narcomasculinities
Power and Vulnerability
The Case of Anastasio
Gender and Violence in Juárez
Male Life, Bare Life
Producing Narcomasculinities
Gore Masculinities
Reckless Masculinity in the Face of Fear
Reckless and Afraid
Salvation Amidst Everyday Assassination
Chapter 5: Fury as a Tool of Evil
Locating the Root of Evil
Institutionalized Violence
National Evil
Theories, Explanations, Excuses
Banal Evils
Mexican Horrorism
The Power of Horror
The Case of Alex
Murder in Mexico
An Ethics of Cruelty
A Way of Life
A Bad End
Conclusion
Works Cited
Index
