Professor Sanchez elaborates on his choice of topic...
"I was noticing a profound interest on the topic in my other classes, where we touched on it tangentially, I decided to teach Narco Aesthetics in Colombia and Mexico to explore with students the complexity of the politics of representation of “narcocultures.” Today, images of the violence produced by the so-called War on Drugs are one of the main ways Latin America is consumed globally. The commercially successful series Narcos, produced by Netflix, exploits, and has come to epitomize, a rich and diverse cultural production that has appeared inside and outside the region in the last four decades. Unfortunately, many of these artifacts often provide a simplistic portrayal of drug trafficking, banalizing its violence and obscuring the geopolitical factors at its heart. In the class, we use aesthetic and sociological analysis frameworks to situate these artifacts in a historical and hemispheric political context."
He explains what students will be doing throughout the semester...
"Throughout the semester, we watch movies like Pájaros de Verano (Birds of Passage) and El infierno (Hell) and read novels like La virgen de los sicarios (Our Lady of the Assassins) and Fiesta en la madriguera (Down the Rabbit Hole). We also engage with numerous pieces by artists such as Miguel Ángel Rojas, Violeta Luna, and Wilson Díaz, who have reflected on cocaine and its economy through plastic art, performances, and installations. To foster a creative approach to critical analysis, students in the class will produce an alternative script for the first episode of Narcos and a short podcast introducing listeners to a narco-artifact of their interest. In late October, we will have a session with students from Duke University who are taking a class on representations of the Italian Mafia, taught by Professor Cristina Carnemolla, which will provide an opportunity to inquire into global imaginaries of drug production and circulation beyond Latin America."
Finally, he provides his thoughts what he hopes the takeaways will be...
"Five weeks into the semester, I am very pleased to say that I have learned a lot from a highly motivated group of students. By the end of the term, hopefully we will all understand better what is at stake in narcoaesthetics and have a robust set of analytical tools at our disposal to approach this and other critical cultural phenomena."