Since the 1990s, Mexico’s narcoculture has been studied as a “criminal community’s” symbolic repertoire that serves to portray traffickers’ everyday existence. Its expressions are understood as reliable documentation of narco lives and feature a transgressive aesthetic that frames excess and ostentation as forms of domination. The article also studies narcotraffickers’ forms of spiritual protection, to debate narcoculture; its ethnographic data was gathered between 2014 and 2017 in the Mexican states of Hidalgo and Michoacán by means of participatory observation and in-depth interviews. Seeking protection from popular saints such as Santa Muerte, el Angelito Negro and “San Nazario” Moreno González offers insight into how narcoculture is a tool of social emancipation that legitimates organized crime’s notions of justice and sovereignty.NWOPolitical Culture and National Identit
