The “War on Drugs” across Popular Media: Narconarratives, Technopolitical Violence, and the Border
Schedule
Tue, 14 Apr, 2026 at 12:00 pm
UTC-05:00Location
2300 Red River St, Austin, TX, United States, Texas 78705 | Austin, TX
The “War on Drugs” across Popular Media: Narconarratives, Technopolitical Violence, and the Border Security ComplexDate: Tuesday April 14, 2026
Time: 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Location: SRH 1.313, LLILAS Hackett Room
LLILAS and the LLILAS Mexico Center present a talk by Oswaldo Zavala (College of Staten Island, and Graduate Center at CUNY), followed by a conversation with author Julián Herbert.
Discourses of national security have significantly shaped mainstream media, the film and television industries, popular music, and literary fiction in the United States and Mexico for decades. This presentation analyzes the films Contraataque (Chava Cartas, 2025) and Trap House (Michael Dowse, 2025) as cultural texts that reflect and circulate contemporary security frameworks. In particular, it examines how these productions represent crime, border enforcement, and state responses to drug trafficking, while engaging broader debates about the social and political consequences of militarized anti-drug strategies in Mexico.
https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/llilas/events/the-ldquo-war-on-drugs-rdquo-across-popular-media-narconarratives-technopolitical-violence-and-the-border-security-complex
Where is it happening?
2300 Red River St, Austin, TX, United States, Texas 78705
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