WHERE IT ALL BEGINS WITH 'NARCO'

Drug Trade's Spread in Mexico Gives Words a New Start

MEXICO CITY—Enter the land of narco-scandals, where narco-realtors launder
narco-profits, narco-babies grow up to be narco-juniors, and narco-ballads
glorify narco-traffickers who hire narco-spies and narco-chauffeurs to
serve the narco-empires they build with narco-dollars.

These days it's almost impossible to pick up a Mexican newspaper without
narco-headlines detailing the exploits of narco-kidnappers, narco-cops or
narco-politicians. Or, for that matter, to hold a conversation without at
least one reference to a narco-something-or-other.

In the last decade, use of the "narco" prefix has exploded in Mexico,
indicating just how deeply and rapidly the drug trade has permeated the
country's social, cultural, economic and political institutions. Narco-talk
has taken on a life of its own, stretching far beyond the daily headlines
to become an ingrained part of the national psyche. Narco-ballads top the
music charts in border cities.

Large, ostentatious edifices built with loads of money and little taste are
dubbed "neo-narco" or "early narco," a reflection of the styles favored in
the homes of the country's rich and infamous drug lords. It began simply
enough. As early as the 1950s, the word "narco-trafficker" popped up
occasionally in newspapers to describe a person who bought, sold or
transported illegal narcotics, according to Luis Astorga, a professor who
has written two recent books tracing the influence of the drug trade in
Mexican society.

But as the drug mafias expanded their power and influence in the 1990s --
along with what Astorga described as the Mexican wordsmiths' "capacity of
invention" -- "narco" has become the prefix of choice for defining anyone
or anything with any connection to the drug trade.

In today's Mexico, the connections are vast. Politicians and columnists
alike fret that Mexico is on the path to becoming a narco-state and a
narco-democracy populated with narco-liberals and narco-nationalists who
take pride in spending their narco-dinero in Mexico rather than exporting
that money to foreign bank accounts. "Dead Mexican drug lord was a
narco-nationalist," wrote Reuters news agency over a dispatch describing
how Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the country's most powerful drug trafficker
prior to his death after plastic surgery in July 1997, "considered himself
a nationalist" because he invested his drug proceeds in Mexico rather than
stashing it in Swiss bank accounts. "The people who steal money from Mexico
and take it out of the country to Switzerland are more of a disgrace than I
am," Carrillo told his alleged associate Manuel de Jesus Bitar Tafich,
according to Bitar's account of the conversation in a Mexican newspaper. "I
bring my money here to stimulate the economy," the deceased druglord
reportedly told Bitar. "Narco-Power Unrestrained" read the headline over an
editorial column in the daily newspaper Universal that chronicled a long
list of state governors, business leaders and church officials in the
country who have been tied to drug traffickers in recent years.

Yes, even church officials. In Mexico, narco-traffickers not only pray to
narco-saints, but shower their local narco-churches and favorite
narco-priests with narco-donations and narco-alms.

Soldiers who join drug cartel payrolls become narco-soldiers. Leftist
rebels are tagged as narco-guerrillas by a government accusing them of
financing their armed uprisings with -- what else? -- narco-profits.
Linguistics professor Otto Schumann of the Autonomous University of Mexico
blames the press for popularizing narco-terminology. "The journalists
started using it a lot and the people who read the newspapers adopted it
easily," he said.

"Narco Babies" blared the fat headlines of a Mexico City afternoon tabloid
over a story about children as young as 8 involved in the distribution of
drugs on the streets of the capital. Their older colleagues, narco-juniors,
run rampant in the border cities of Tijuana and San Diego, where they serve
as hit men for a Tijuana-based cartel run by the Arellano Felix clan.
Newspaper police reports are spiced with references to narco-kidnappings,
corrupt narco-cops, narco-journalists who take payoffs from drug cartels
and the narco-disappeared -- individuals with links to the drug trade who
have vanished without a trace along the U.S.-Mexican border, the transit
point for an estimated 60 percent of all illegal drugs sold in the United
States. "Rogue Police Behind Narco-Snatches," claimed a headline in the
Mexico City Times daily newspaper describing the narco-disappeareds.
"Crusade Against Narco-Chauffeurs," declared another in the newspaper
Reforma. The story described a crackdown by police on freight-truck drivers
who transported cocaine and marijuana in their loads of tomatoes, air
conditioners or concrete. Another police report detailed a cult tied to
narco-traffickers accused of burning and burying 13 bodies on a northern
Mexico ranch as part of "narco-satanic" rituals.

Perhaps it is time for linguists to declare an end to narco-babble.