Como empezo.......

El principio.......this idea/concept/hope/dream started back in February of 2013. Seems so far away, and yet so close. I remember every detail of my first encounter with narco cultura. I was driving home my iPhone auxiliary cord was broken and I was switching stations.

I was listening to the advertisement on the Latino station when gunshots began and a music filled with polka sounds began. I was perhaps in shock, while trying to hear this song. I googled some of what I remembered when I got home. I quickly found the song, Sanguinarios Del M1 (http://youtu.be/rzod0gFjHIw) with lyrics about chopping heads, being strapped with guns and grenades.....it was a lot to stomach.

I spent the next month reading, listening, throwing myself into a deep analysis of what I was listening, seeing.....I admit it was intoxicating. I kept thinking of gangsta rap, and how similar this music was. But I was also confused about so many things, it was similar, but yet, so different. Truth be told a lot of the music made me mad. I guess I felt offended by a lot of the songs, and felt that the music perpetuated violence. It is no secret that while I am not in Mexico, or know the culture of living in Mexico, I am a Xicana who can't say has roots in Mexico, but I have a strong love for Mexico. So here was this music, singing and praising the drug cartel in Mexico. Celebrating the violence, the blood baths, the over the top ridiculous lifestyle in which more is more and the more glittery it is.....the better it is. This was nonsense I said, I hate it. But.....I loved it. I loved it because I knew NOTHING about it. I was already biased, and I hated that it called me.

At this point I was getting ready to return to graduate school and by faith or chance I was now filled with a thesis idea. I knew I had to find out more about this music, I wanted to throw myself at these spaces and learn, hear and essentially become one with this. I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do, how I was going to do it, and what it entailed. I just knew this was it, this was what I wanted to research, immerse myself into, learn, experience.

This, of course was not a concrete idea...yet somehow I began to piece little by little names, songs, historical background. It was nothing though, I was still completely baffled, and I was nowhere near knowing anything about anything.

My first email was to Dr. Celestino Fernandez (http://www.studentaffairs.arizona.edu/faculty/fernandez.php) I remember my email, and telling him I wanted to focus completely on corridos, "oh, but strictly "narco" corridos. I said, I want to focus the research on this concept and instead of writting, I want to film it, I want to do a documentary and I want to start there."

Dr. Fernandez responded promptly, "Wow, I have never heard of doing anything like this, I think it will be amazing." That was all I needed......

How, where, when.............that was the tricky part.