Take Them Down: The Construction and Contestation of Mexicans and Drug Cartels in Videogames

Abstract

This article explores gaming manifestations of the US-centric Mexican threat narrative in the context of the so-called drug war, by analyzing Manichean representations of characters, settings, and language (English and Spanish). It argues that videogames construct the concept of the Mexican subject in direct opposition to the US subject—in a decontextualized enemy-hero dialectic—fueling damaging stereotypes that have important repercussions in social, economic, and political discourses in and about Mexico and the United States. This paper examines the stereotypes of Mexican peoples and cartels in videogames depicting the drug conflict and released between 2011 and 2016: Call of Juarez: The Cartel, Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel, Grand Theft Auto V, and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands. Additionally, it reflects on projects such as NarcoGuerra, which aims at counteracting stereotyped hegemonic discourses by promoting informed and empathetic representations of the so-called war on drugs. The overarching goal of this analysis is to provide an insight into gaming representations of the relationship between Mexico and the United States, the geopolitics of drug trafficking, and the neocolonial hegemonic frameworks that fuel them.