In Shaul Schwarz’s documentary, he follows Edgar Quintero, a member of the band Bukanas de Culiacán, and a police investigator Richi Soto in Juarez, Mexico. Schwarz began as a photojournalist shooting for publications ranging from TIME magazine to Rolling Stone. His new documentary “Narco Cultura” follows the music scene of the Narcocorridos that arose as a result of the Drug War.
The Eagle’s David Kahen-Kashi spoke to Schwarz about the making of the film.
Eagle: How did you find out about “Narco Cultura?”
Shaul Schwarz: I started as a photojournalist and I started covering the violence. I worked in Mexico since the early 2000s on different stories and until [2008] a lot of my Mexican journalist colleagues were calling and telling me, “Dude, you should go to Juarez, you wouldn’t believe it.” So I did and I kind of got in the loop of covering the conflict. There weren’t really too many… foreign journalists going in there and as a freelance journalist who usually gets pigeonholed into stuff, everybody said, “Hey, crazy Shaul’s walking around Mexico making good pictures of the cartel shit.”
So for two years, suddenly it became simply most of what I was photographing. I think towards the beginning of 2010 I was sick and tired of it. I also kind of felt frustrated. The pictures were actually getting played really well, I published two stories with TIME magazine. So it was really like getting played.
But it seemed like everybody was under the idea that it’s just a gang war. It’s gang killing gangs, same old shit, it’s Mexico’s drug war. And then I pursued a story with National Geographic magazine, which like most photographers that was kind of my childhood dream to work for the big Geographic, and I knew this was off subject cause usually NatGeo doesn’t cover news stories and conflicts. So I said, “Well, maybe they’ll be more sensitive.”…I got the job and I shot it, and Geographic being geographic, they gave me a much longer time than most publications to actually roam the land. Then one day I was in Tijuana, and this was the day I was like s—t I got to make a movie, I woke up, there was a murder, I went to cover it and then I heard about the music, but I hadn’t actually seen it. I made a date with Bukanas de Culiacán, from the film, to go meet them at a gig in Riverside. And just as I was about to leave there was another murder and the local AP guy said hey you should come photograph this because there are actually people alive, which is weird cause I usually just photograph bodies. So I rushed and I photographed and I was sweaty and I was running and tired and grumpy. I dashed across the border and eventually an hour later, I was at the show because I went out late. And I saw Edgar [Quintero] with a bazooka. My clothes were stinking of murder, it was that literal kind of crossover. I felt like somebody shoved a bat up my head, I was like “Whoa, what the hell happened here?!” I was so pissed. And I saw people I met that morning in Tijuana and they were there totally partying, to what I called “dancing on the blood,” I called my girlfriend and said you won’t believe what I’m seeing. I photographed the shit out of it again and again and again and I went back and I told Geographic I have this amazing thing. And they said, “What’s so special about this guy with a plastic Bazooka? What is the trouble that captures your imagination?” And they were right, to a degree because I realized in that moment that the still pictures are not really going to evoke the feeling I got that day. That did two things: One is I said I think I have to tell this in not still pictures and then I said I gotta make a movie, I’m not a good writer really, and I was very into it, I’ve done short docs before. Then the other thing, it became this thing through the edit of the movie, it was a kind of big guiding light, I wanna feel I wanna cut his juxtaposition like I felt that day.
E: Do the Narcocorridos realize the music they’re selling is not real?
SS: Yeah, that’s actually part of their defense. They give the crowd the product. That’s what they want. That’s La Moda, as they say, that’s fashionable. And they get what they want. I mean the whole looking at Blog Del Narco on YouTube, that’s a little bit because they’re American. They don’t have it in front of their door. For them also as a problem, like he says when he’s in Culiacan, he has that line, “What you write in a garage in L.A. is bullshit.” To them, they need to connect to something that is more tangible, I think. If you take it out of them, I think it’s part of why this genre was created because Mexican-Americans and maybe Latinos as a whole have this huge identity issue that to us we don’t really get to the bottom of. On the one hand they adapt here really well. On the other hand, and I understand it as an immigrant myself, they don’t completely feel American. Edgar, I asked him the first day I met him Mexican or American? He said, “Mexican.” I said, “Oh, you were born in Mexico?” He’s like, “Yeah, I was born in L.A.”
But to some degree, you have these people who sit here and they’re looking at what’s happening south of the border, more than most of us do. But these kids, it takes such a big part and maybe they have family down there or involvement that they’re looking at this and at the end of the day this genre is a way to connect to that.
E: In America there seems to be a preoccupation with the law and in Mexico their media and content seem to be the opposite. Is it because of that disconnected identity?
SS: To be honest, those films get filmed on both sides of the border. I think the glorification has a little bit different styles on both sides of the border. Meaning there’s more people opposed and appalled by it in Mexico because reality bites a little closer, and yes, there’s a lot of fans, but then you’ll hear people really vocal against the U.S., either you know of this culture and you’re apart of it or you kind of don’t know of it. Most people don’t know of it. And then I think, there’s a different style. A couple years ago it didn’t used to be like that. To be a Corrido artist, the biggest you could go was to Mexico City. Today that’s not true. Most Corrido artists, if you’re in Mexico, you want to make it in the L.A., thus in the U.S. A lot of traffickers if they put a song in your hands as a Corrido artist, the best thing you can do is make it a hit in America. Edgar has a little bit of a backspin on why he’s from here. In order to get street cred, he needs to go down there. There’s this kind of cycle that’s created now by this push. It’s definitely strong on both sides of the border. It’s got a little bit of a different face, a little bit, if you will, a cheaper faker more hard hitting style north of the border. But it really kind of spins back and forth.
This interview has been condensed for style and clarity purposes.
