Narcopalabras
Like English, Spanish has a knack for neologism. Ken Ellingwood’s article in the LA Times provides a glossary of new words and phrases related to Mexican drug violence.
My favorite is encajuelado:
Encajuelado: Based on the word for “trunk,” a body dumped in the trunk of a car. This is a common method for disposing of victims of a drug hit. Often, the bodies are bound and gagged with packing tape or are encobijados, wrapped in blankets.
When something is happening enough that they made a word for it, you know there’s a problem.
Ellingwood’s glossary explains that an encajuelado is sometimes accompanied by a handwritten narcomensaje, a scrawled drug message meant to threaten rival drug cartels or government security forces. Messages sometimes take the form of banners, known as narcomantas, and are hung from bridges or in other public places to demonstrate a gang’s audacity.
As a screenwriter, you have to be careful how much of this esoterica you try to use in your script. Particularly if characters are speaking English, trying to wedge a “narcomensaje” into dialogue is going to feel forced. Yet a reference to a character being encajuelado, once explained, is chilling.
Articles
October 29th, 2009 at 10:10 am
What we have here is a failure to communicate, which I assume is John’s main point in this post. But to go back to the Hulu-hoopla debate: I used to be a free-content narco when I was back in college, eating Ramen noodles and peanut butter, but once you get a job, then another, you realize that people need to get paid on down the line. I suspect that John would never do this, but what if he charged a tiny yearly subscription for this blog/feed? People will pay reasonable fees for high-quality content, especially if the content is intrinsically valuable. Which is redundant.
October 29th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Those stealing content could be subject to encajuelado.
Is that how I can use that, John? Or is it–
The encajueledo was a media pirate.
Just wondering.
October 30th, 2009 at 8:54 am
I wanna know the word for when someone’s head get’s found on the hood of their car.
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/10/2009_un_world_drug_report.html
I’m also feeling a shocking lack of sympathy for those who are coining these terms with their lives. I know that on some level I should feel bad, but the spectacle seems to eclipse that impulse.
October 30th, 2009 at 9:49 am
Mexican drug violence and cartels in general are responsible for a whole batch of new words. The songs that mexican “bandas” play regarding them are called “narcocorridos”, small time drug dealers that sell drugs in their small stores or businesses are called “narcomenudistas”, and said stores are sometimes called “narcotiendas”. I don’t think that “encajuelado” was originated because of the violence, but it certainly became a lot more common because of it. For example, when people talk about a jail they refer to it as a “tambo” (which is something like a big metal container, similar to a barrel), when someone gets put in jail, then he is “entambado”.
October 30th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
Pedro’s right. Also, besides the fact that regional Spanish varies wildly throughout the Americas, not counting localisms and neologisms, Mexican Spanish, that is North American Spanish, is very elastic both for being the oldest strain of Spanish in Lat. Am. and for its heavy use of Anglicisms, given its proximity to the U.S. Therefore, not counting other factors, like educational level and use of Spanish as a second-language by Native Mexicans (a whole other, fascinating subject) Mexican Spanish is already well-conditioned for these types of fluctuations and transformations.
October 31st, 2009 at 1:21 pm
My first thought was: “narcotamales!” I lived Central America for two years (1972-74) doing missionary work for the LDS Church, and in both Honduras and Nicaragua, you had special tamales called “nacatamales” — large than usual, with chunks of meat embedded in them (and often with raisins, olives, and other things as well).
So if you smuggle cocaine in an oversized tamale, you have a narcotamale!
OK, lame and obscure joke. But I thought it was funny. And I liked the glossary. Not as fluent in Spanish as I used to be, but, as you noted, Spanish is great for neologisms, and these are great. Sort of. ..bruce..