¡Nakíssimo! Transnational Identities, Cultural Tourism, and the Aesthetics of Consumption in NaCo Clothing

Abstract

The NaCo apparel company in Tijuana, Mexico, created a line of clothing and accessories that traded on a bilingual and bicultural identity construction in the late 1990s and 2000s. An examination of this clothing and its connection to the slang term naco reveals interesting aspects of the way national and ethnic discourses construct identity through the flow and consumption of transnational products. They are indicative of how these identities and the consumption of these products produce different identity narratives in the presence of the particular national configurations of race and ethnicity in Mexico and the United States. In an increasingly globalized world where people and cultural products move with increasing ease, NaCo products demonstrate that borders continue to exercise an enormous influence on these same products and how they are consumed. NaCo’s clothing and its consumption as a cultural act point to the enduring influence and importance of the nation, its identity narratives, and cultural codes as a locus of individual identity construction.