Narco-spectrality: Narco-aesthetics and hauntings in the short film Pánico en Pánuco

Abstract

This article uses text and film to demonstrate how the affective and sensory dimensions of narco-power in contemporary Mexico haunt the familiar. As a case study, I draw on footage documenting my family's trip to Sinaloa to visit my father's birthplace in the rural mining town of Pánuco. Through an analysis of the ghosts produced by the filmmaking process and the disruptions to our travels by an increasingly tangible threat of narco-violence, this article explores how fear and distrust reshape a pastoral aesthetics of family leisure. Film is adept at exploring sensory, affective, and embodied aspects of everyday experience. Here it is used to evoke unfolding tensions among my family members, underlining the ways narco-terror manifests atmospherically and as an embodied experience. Film and text here narrate a subjective experience of narco-power and make the case for the ways a spectral narco-aesthetics, or narco-spectrality, permeate the familiar.