Canadian Press
Mexican ruling party proposes prison time for drug ballad singers
By Catherine E. Shoichet (CP) – 4 days ago
MEXICO CITY — A new proposal from Mexico's ruling party could send musicians to prison for performing songs that glorify drug trafficking.
The law would bring prison sentences of up to three years for people who perform or produce songs or movies glamorizing criminals. "Society sees drug ballads as nice, pleasant, inconsequential and harmless, but they are the opposite," National Action Party lawmaker Oscar Martin Arce told The Associated Press on Thursday.
The ballads, known as "narcocorridos," often describe drug trafficking and violence, and are popular among some norteno bands. After some killings, gangs pipe narcocorridos into police radio scanners, along with threatening messages.
Martin said his party's proposal, presented before Congress on Wednesday, also takes aim at low-budget movies praising drug lords. It was unclear when lawmakers would vote on it.
"We cannot accept it as normal. We cannot exalt these people because they themselves are distributing these materials among youths to lead them into a lifestyle where the bad guy wins," he said.
Martin said the proposal's intention is not to limit free expression, but to stop such performances from inciting crimes.
But Elijah Wald, author of the book, "Narcocorrido: A Journey into the Music of Drugs, Guns, and Guerrillas," said politicians are attempting to censor artists rather than attacking Mexico's real problems.
On his Web site, Wald has posted descriptions of dozens of past efforts to stop the songs, including radio broadcast bans and politicians' proposals.
"It is very hard to stop the drug trafficking," he said. "It is very easy to get your name in the papers by attacking famous musicians."
The norteno band Los Tigres del Norte cancelled their planned appearance at an awards ceremony at a government-owned auditorium in October after organizers allegedly asked the group not to perform their latest drug ballad.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched a nationwide crackdown on drug cartels in late 2006, deploying tens of thousands of soldiers and federal police across Mexico.
Even performers who don't sing drug ballads have been caught up in recent raids.
In December Mexican authorities arrested Latin Grammy winner Ramon Ayala at a drug cartel's party in a gated community of mansions outside the central mountain town of Tepoztlan.
Ayala's attorney has said the accordionist and his band, Los Bravos del Norte, did not know their clients were suspected members of the Beltran Leyva cartel.
.....
Read the full article HERE.
Associated Press Writer Carlos Rodriguez contributed to this report.
Showing posts with label corrido. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corrido. Show all posts
Monday, January 25, 2010
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Border Patrol requests Mexican music encore (Migra Corridos)
SD UT/WaPo
Border Patrol requests Mexican music encore
By Ashley Surdin
THE WASHINGTON POST
2:00 a.m. March 17, 2009
SAMPLE SONG LYRICS
“Before you cross the border, remember that you can be just as much a man by chickening out and staying.
“Because it's better to keep your life than ending up dead.”
– “Veinte Años” (“20 Years”)
WASHINGTON – To its arsenal of agents, fences and stealthy sensors skirting the nation's southern border, the U.S. Border Patrol may soon add another weapon in the fight against illegal immigration: a follow-up album.
Yes, as in CD. With singers, guitars, accordions.
In what may be among the lesser-known deterrents exercised by the nation's security forces, the Border Patrol is deploying up-tempo Mexican folk songs about tragic border crossings to dissuade would-be illegal immigrants. The agency has paid – how much, it won't say – a Washington-based advertising company to write, record and distribute an album, “Migra Corridos,” to radio stations in Mexico. Its title is intended to mean “songs of the immigrant,” but migras is commonly understood as a code word for Border Patrol in much of Mexico.
The first CD of five songs was recorded in 2006 and distributed over the past two years. Another CD is scheduled to be ready by May. There are also plans for a collection of similarly themed songs with musical styles geared toward would-be illegal immigrants from Central America.
Many stations in Mexico that play the songs and the listeners who request them are seemingly oblivious to who is behind the bouncy ballads of death, dashed dreams and futile attempts at manhood.
“It's pretty slick,” said Jason Ciliberti, a spokesman with the Border Patrol in Washington.
The music is part of the Border Safety Initiative, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's push to squash smuggling. The Border Patrol launched “No Más Cruces en la Frontera,” a campaign aimed at educating communities with potential illegal immigrants about the dangers of crossing.
Illegal immigrants can encounter severe hazards on their journey: professional smugglers and bandits who beat, rob, rape and abandon them; bitingly cold or scorching temperatures; snakes, scorpions; drowning; and death by dehydration or exhaustion.
The slogan, which means both “no more crossings on the border” and “no more crosses on the border,” has relied on newspaper, TV and billboard ads.
The most recent twist on the media blitz is “Migra Corridos,” a brainchild of Elevación, an advertising firm that specializes in targeting the Latino market. Elevación, which had been working on the border campaign, sold the Border Patrol on the idea of songs-as-deterrents.
The five-song album draws on corridos, popular Mexican narrative ballads with roots in Spain's Middle Ages. Re-energized in recent decades by such popular Mexican groups as Los Tigres del Norte, the genre reverberates deeply with Mexican and Mexican-American communities, said Martha Chew Sanchez, the author of “Corridos in Migrant Memory” and professor at St. Lawrence University in New York.
The songs, Sanchez said, humanize the experiences of those communities with tales of love, death, migration, globalization and social and political events. More recently, there has been an explosion in the popularity of narcocorridos – ballads that recount the drug traders, their violent exploits and, often, their deaths.
Among the perils mentioned on “Migra Corridos”: a cousin who dies of dehydration, a mother who is raped and beaten by a child-killing smuggler, one man's suffocation in an airtight tractor-trailer.
“He put me in a trailer
“There I shared my sorrows
“With 40 illegals
“They never told me
“That this was a trip to hell.
– “El Respeto” (“Respect”)
Whatever the subject, the songs can connect with listeners, as long as they tell a compelling narrative, Sanchez said.
“Migra Corridos” lives up to its dance-inducing predecessors, despite its somber stories. The music is peppy, even cheerful.
The songs were distributed to six Mexican states, where, according to Elevación's research, many migrants left for the border: Zacatecas, Michoacan, Guanajuato, Guerrero, Jalisco and Chiapas. Elevación contacted stations and asked them to play the songs as part of the border initiative.
“When we approached the Mexican media, we approach it as a humanitarian campaign,” said Pablo Izquierdo, vice president of Elevación. “We didn't tell them who was behind it because consumer research indicated that it wasn't going to be as well-received.”
But, Izquierdo said, there's nothing fake about the songs. “It's all heartfelt, and it's all from the point of view of the people.”
Izquierdo said feedback from the stations was positive and that even though the CDs were not for sale, listeners started requesting the songs.
It is difficult to measure how effective the corridos have been in aiding the government's effort, but the Border Patrol's Ciliberti cited a steady decline in deaths and rescues along the southern border, attributing it to the agency's broader approach to illegal immigration. According to Ciliberti, 492 people died along the southern border in 2005. Last year, 390 deaths were recorded. In 2005, the Border Patrol assisted 2,550 people in distress in that same area. Last year, 1,263 were rescued.
“There's no mention of being punitive in any of these corridos. These are simply about the dangers,” he said.
Border Patrol requests Mexican music encore
By Ashley Surdin
THE WASHINGTON POST
2:00 a.m. March 17, 2009
SAMPLE SONG LYRICS
“Before you cross the border, remember that you can be just as much a man by chickening out and staying.
“Because it's better to keep your life than ending up dead.”
– “Veinte Años” (“20 Years”)
WASHINGTON – To its arsenal of agents, fences and stealthy sensors skirting the nation's southern border, the U.S. Border Patrol may soon add another weapon in the fight against illegal immigration: a follow-up album.
Yes, as in CD. With singers, guitars, accordions.
In what may be among the lesser-known deterrents exercised by the nation's security forces, the Border Patrol is deploying up-tempo Mexican folk songs about tragic border crossings to dissuade would-be illegal immigrants. The agency has paid – how much, it won't say – a Washington-based advertising company to write, record and distribute an album, “Migra Corridos,” to radio stations in Mexico. Its title is intended to mean “songs of the immigrant,” but migras is commonly understood as a code word for Border Patrol in much of Mexico.
The first CD of five songs was recorded in 2006 and distributed over the past two years. Another CD is scheduled to be ready by May. There are also plans for a collection of similarly themed songs with musical styles geared toward would-be illegal immigrants from Central America.
Many stations in Mexico that play the songs and the listeners who request them are seemingly oblivious to who is behind the bouncy ballads of death, dashed dreams and futile attempts at manhood.
“It's pretty slick,” said Jason Ciliberti, a spokesman with the Border Patrol in Washington.
The music is part of the Border Safety Initiative, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's push to squash smuggling. The Border Patrol launched “No Más Cruces en la Frontera,” a campaign aimed at educating communities with potential illegal immigrants about the dangers of crossing.
Illegal immigrants can encounter severe hazards on their journey: professional smugglers and bandits who beat, rob, rape and abandon them; bitingly cold or scorching temperatures; snakes, scorpions; drowning; and death by dehydration or exhaustion.
The slogan, which means both “no more crossings on the border” and “no more crosses on the border,” has relied on newspaper, TV and billboard ads.
The most recent twist on the media blitz is “Migra Corridos,” a brainchild of Elevación, an advertising firm that specializes in targeting the Latino market. Elevación, which had been working on the border campaign, sold the Border Patrol on the idea of songs-as-deterrents.
The five-song album draws on corridos, popular Mexican narrative ballads with roots in Spain's Middle Ages. Re-energized in recent decades by such popular Mexican groups as Los Tigres del Norte, the genre reverberates deeply with Mexican and Mexican-American communities, said Martha Chew Sanchez, the author of “Corridos in Migrant Memory” and professor at St. Lawrence University in New York.
The songs, Sanchez said, humanize the experiences of those communities with tales of love, death, migration, globalization and social and political events. More recently, there has been an explosion in the popularity of narcocorridos – ballads that recount the drug traders, their violent exploits and, often, their deaths.
Among the perils mentioned on “Migra Corridos”: a cousin who dies of dehydration, a mother who is raped and beaten by a child-killing smuggler, one man's suffocation in an airtight tractor-trailer.
“He put me in a trailer
“There I shared my sorrows
“With 40 illegals
“They never told me
“That this was a trip to hell.
– “El Respeto” (“Respect”)
Whatever the subject, the songs can connect with listeners, as long as they tell a compelling narrative, Sanchez said.
“Migra Corridos” lives up to its dance-inducing predecessors, despite its somber stories. The music is peppy, even cheerful.
The songs were distributed to six Mexican states, where, according to Elevación's research, many migrants left for the border: Zacatecas, Michoacan, Guanajuato, Guerrero, Jalisco and Chiapas. Elevación contacted stations and asked them to play the songs as part of the border initiative.
“When we approached the Mexican media, we approach it as a humanitarian campaign,” said Pablo Izquierdo, vice president of Elevación. “We didn't tell them who was behind it because consumer research indicated that it wasn't going to be as well-received.”
But, Izquierdo said, there's nothing fake about the songs. “It's all heartfelt, and it's all from the point of view of the people.”
Izquierdo said feedback from the stations was positive and that even though the CDs were not for sale, listeners started requesting the songs.
It is difficult to measure how effective the corridos have been in aiding the government's effort, but the Border Patrol's Ciliberti cited a steady decline in deaths and rescues along the southern border, attributing it to the agency's broader approach to illegal immigration. According to Ciliberti, 492 people died along the southern border in 2005. Last year, 390 deaths were recorded. In 2005, the Border Patrol assisted 2,550 people in distress in that same area. Last year, 1,263 were rescued.
“There's no mention of being punitive in any of these corridos. These are simply about the dangers,” he said.
Friday, July 06, 2007
Corridos and the Immigration Debate
NYT
July 6, 2007
Mexicans Sing Age-Old Ballads of a New Life
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
NAMPA, Idaho — Watching television coverage of immigration marches, Jose F. Garcia got mad. He got frustrated. He got his button accordion.
In short order, Mr. Garcia squeezed out the beginnings of a corrido, a kind of Mexican folk ballad that tells a story, often with a moral, and sang out the lyrics that came to him.
Now they are putting up barriers in front of us so we don’t return;
but that is not going to block us from crossing into the United States,
We leap them like deer, we go under them like moles.
Mr. Garcia, accompanied by his young son Benjamin on a snare drum, recently belted out the song, “Latinos Unidos,” in an onion field for the benefit of researchers from the Western Folklife Center, a nonprofit cultural organization in Elko, Nev., that has begun a project to document Mexican influences and folklore in the ranching West.
Corridos have long telegraphed the melancholy of Mexico’s northern frontier. Heroes die. Lovers are crossed. And, in the controversial narco-corrido form, drug dealers are celebrated.
But as migrants moved north, modern corridos have also been inspired by everyday occurrences and current events, with some written about the Kennedys, crops, floods and truck stops.
Mr. Garcia has recorded a corrido about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, “Tragedia en Nueva York,” complete with a jet sound whining through the guitars, horns and accordion.
It was Sept. 11 when the world woke up
in the year 2001 when it was reported
that in the twin towers two airplanes crashed
(In Spanish, the lyrics rhyme.)
The Western Folklife Center intends to build an archive of such material, recording for posterity the Mexican presence far from the border and turning some of it into segments for public television and radio.
Although the project was conceived before the immigration debate intensified, Hal Cannon, the founding director of the center and its popular offshoot, the annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering, said it could serve as a reminder that, come what may, the Latino influence has already taken root.
“I think that’s an important song,” Mr. Cannon told his colleagues after listening to a few verses of Mr. Garcia’s corrido, which Mr. Garcia plans to perform with his band and may play as part of a corrido competition the folklife center is organizing here on July 15 month.
Through the project, Mr. Cannon said later, “Relationships will be built, understanding will be built and we will be documenting something that is quite ephemeral.”
Musicians and scholars debate what qualifies as a corrido. To purists, Mr. Garcia’s immigration song, though sung in the style of a corrido and with instruments common to the form, does not make the cut.
“I believe somebody has to die,” said Juan Dies, an ethnomusicologist who is based in Chicago and is working with the center on the project. “But some people don’t feel that way.”
“The community defines what a corrido is, not a scholar from Chicago,” added Mr. Dies, who specializes in Mexican music. “It is, basically, a musical news story.”
Mr. Garcia’s repertory, apart from immigration and terrorism, includes songs of desperate lovers and other more traditional corrido themes, which he and other musicians have found the crowds here, ever nostalgic, tend to favor.
“To me, a corrido is a song with a message,” said Mr. Garcia, who recently opened a dance club but is hoping for a big break some day for his band. “I don’t like the ones about drug traffickers that are popular on the radio and that the young kids these days like. But as long as it is telling a story with a message to me it is a corrido.”
Some of the older corridos here speak of the beauty of the valley — one, a romantic ballad called “Nampa,” extols the virtues of its women and “silvery moon nights” — or bar fights long forgotten. But the longing for home, and the difficulty of going back, are more popular themes among the current crop of local musicians.
“If I write one about my friend over there the people would say, hey, who wants to hear about him?” said Gerardo Barca, a musician known by his nickname, Lalo. “People want to be transported home, to time and events there.”
So Mr. Barca wrote the bittersweet “Lindos Recuerdos,” or “Beautiful Memories,” about the loss of his family’s ranch in Michoacan to development after he left 15 years ago and his inability to ever return.
“These are just beautiful memories of times that won’t come back;
Since the times have changed,
and where there was that little ranch now there is a city.”
“Everybody here can relate to that, to that idea of wanting to go home but never really making it,” he said.
Latino immigrants, primarily from Mexico and Texas, came to the Treasure Valley here in three waves. The first arrived in the 1800s to work in mines and build railroads, another came to work in agriculture in the postwar boom of the 1940s and 1950s and a third in the past couple of decades as Boise and its suburbs have swollen over farmland.
From 1990 to 2000, the Hispanic population of Idaho grew 92 percent, to 101,690, with most of that growth in the Treasure Valley.
Alfredo Paz, a local musician, laments that the younger generation prefers narco-corridos, a rough equivalent to gangsta rap and something he and his band members refuse to perform.
“We don’t want to sing about drugs or rape or anything like that,” said Mr. Paz, who does perform corridos about double-crossed lovers and his signature, “Le Quedan Plumas Al Gallo,” or “The Rooster Still Has His Feathers.” The song is about a man defeated in love but still the cock of the walk.
Mr. Garcia, who has been in the United States for more than 20 years, said he was carrying on a musical tradition handed down from his father and practiced in the small village where he grew up.
“I always wanted to be somebody so I composed music,” he said.
While watching the immigration marches that day, Mr. Garcia said he felt compelled to put “our story” to music, scratching out the words over several weeks, right up to the day the folklife center researchers came calling.
“I feel we need to write out stories and this was a big part of our story here,” he said. “Corridos used to be like newspapers. Well, maybe, they still should be.”
Monday, April 09, 2007
Mexican Drug Cartels Leave a Bloody Trail on YouTube
Washinton Post
Mexican Drug Cartels Leave a Bloody Trail on YouTube
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, April 9, 2007; A01
MEXICO CITY -- Bloody bodies -- slumped at steering wheels, stacked in pickup trucks, crumpled on sidewalks -- clog nearly every frame of the music video that shook Mexico's criminal underworld.
Posted on YouTube and countless Mexican Web sites last year, the video opens with blaring horns and accordions. Valentín Elizalde, a singer known as the "Golden Rooster," croons over images of an open-mouthed shooting victim. "I'm singing this song to all my enemies," he belts out.
Elizalde's narcocorrido, or drug trafficker's ballad, sparked what is believed to be an unprecedented cyberspace drug war. Chat rooms filled with accusations that he was promoting the Sinaloa cartel and mocking its rival, the Gulf cartel. Drug lords flooded the Internet with images of beheadings, execution-style shootings and torture.
Within months, Elizalde was dead, shot 20 times after a November concert. His enemies exacted their final revenge by posting a video of his autopsy, the camera panning from Elizalde's personalized cowboy boots to his bloodied naked body.
Elizalde's narco-ballad video and its aftermath highlight a new surge of Internet activity by Mexican drug cartels, whose mastery of technology gives them a huge advantage over law enforcement agencies. Following the model of terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda, the cartels have discovered the Web as a powerful means of transmitting threats, recruiting members and glorifying the narco-trafficker lifestyle of big money, big guns and big thrills.
"It's out of control," Victor Clark, a Tijuana-based drug expert, said in an interview.
Drug raids in Mexico now routinely net cameras, computers and intricate computerized surveillance systems along with the usual piles of cash, cocaine and weapons. Hit men are just as likely to pack video cameras as "goat's horns" -- the Mexican drug world's nickname for AK-47 assault rifles.
Mexican police have been slow to recognize the Internet as a font of clues, critics say, a mistake that has increased the ability of the cartels to work in the open.
"Imagine, if you're a policeman, you can find gold here on these Web sites," said Alejandro Páez Varela, an editor at the Mexican magazine Dia Siete who tracks drug gangs' use of the Internet. "It's a shame. Everything's here: names, places. They even say who they are going to kill."
The videos, almost unheard-of a year ago, now show up with disturbing regularity. Last Monday, Mexican newspaper Web sites published portions of a video of a supposed Gulf cartel hit man being questioned by an off-screen interrogator about the February murders of five police officers in Acapulco.
The man wears nothing but underwear. A large "Z" is scrawled in thick ink on his chest, along with the words "Welcome, killers of women and children." The Z is a symbol of the Zetas, the Gulf cartel's notorious hit squad, which was started by former Mexican army special forces officers.
The full version of the video shows assassins decapitating the man by slowing twisting a wire through his neck. It ends with a written threat: "Lazcano, you're next" -- an apparent reference to Heriberto Lazcano, alleged chief of the Zetas.
Viewer comments on the video sites provide some of the possible clues police could be investigating, Clark said. On one recent evening, viewers had posted what appeared to be death threats on a YouTube page showing a bloody narcocorrido video.
"You have few days left, Miguel Treviño," wrote a user named "kslnrv."
"The Internet has turned into a toy for Mexican organized crime," Clark said. "It's a toy, a toy to have fun with, a toy to scare people."
While terrorists have turned to the Internet to communicate with other terrorists, the Mexican cartels appear to be using cyberspace mostly to taunt and threaten enemies. The videos can be explicit or cryptic. Inserting code words is part of the game for drug dealers who delight in leaving riddles to be unscrambled by their rivals and police officers.
Mexican researchers are beginning to examine these Internet postings to monitor who is up and who is down in the drug wars. Páez Varela is tracking an increase in videos posted by the Sinaloa cartel, many of which tout the supposed virtues of its leader, Joaquín "Chapo" Guzmán.
Guzmán, who escaped from a high-security Mexican prison in 2001, and his backers appear to be posting more videos of his hit men carrying out executions in parts of Mexico once thought to be under control of the Gulf cartel.
"What Chapo Guzmán is saying is that his militant arm is strong, not just in Sinaloa, but in Veracruz, the state of Tamaulipas and the state of Tabasco," Páez Varela said. "It's like an advertisement."
But the other side is advertising, too, even though its leader, Osiel Cárdenas, was recently extradited to the United States. A video homage to Cárdenas has proliferated on the Web, boasting that he is still powerful.
"With an order from the boss, more heads will roll," an unknown performer sings. As the singer wails, the screen fills with an image of a blood-smeared floor and four heads severed from their bodies. It ends with a pistol shot into the forehead of a supposed gang member and a gushing wound.
"Mexican law enforcement is ill-equipped to deal with this," Andrew Teekell, an analyst at Stratfor, a private intelligence firm based in Texas, said in an interview. "In the U.S., posting videos like that would be plain crazy -- U.S. law enforcement has guys who do nothing but surf the Internet. But in Mexico, they can get away with it. It shows these cartels are untouchable."
Mexico's federal police agency has a cybercrimes unit, but it has produced few important drug busts. In the meantime, most local police forces pay little attention to the Internet, Clark said. A federal police spokesman declined to discuss ongoing investigations, but said a concerted effort is now being made to track drug gangs on the Internet.
"The police are not taking what narcos post on the Internet seriously," Clark said. "It's a mistake. In terms of investigations, you have to take advantage of all available information."
YouTube, which appears to be the most popular destination for the cartels' videos, removes those flagged by users as objectionable. But the violent clips frequently reappear on the site shortly after being removed. Online comment sections attached to videos disappear, but fill up again when the videos return. The online discussions, in Spanish, are often filled with threats, overt and veiled, as well as streams of profanities.
Mexican drug dealers have for years commissioned composers to write songs in their honor. Now, the Internet is suddenly turning some of them into superstars. None is bigger than Valentín Elizalde.
When he was alive, he never had a best-selling album. But less than four months after his murder and half a year after "To My Enemies" became an Internet hit, Elizalde made it big. On March 3, when Billboard came out with its list of best-selling Latin albums in the United States, Elizalde occupied the top two spots.
Mexican Drug Cartels Leave a Bloody Trail on YouTube
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, April 9, 2007; A01
MEXICO CITY -- Bloody bodies -- slumped at steering wheels, stacked in pickup trucks, crumpled on sidewalks -- clog nearly every frame of the music video that shook Mexico's criminal underworld.
Posted on YouTube and countless Mexican Web sites last year, the video opens with blaring horns and accordions. Valentín Elizalde, a singer known as the "Golden Rooster," croons over images of an open-mouthed shooting victim. "I'm singing this song to all my enemies," he belts out.
Elizalde's narcocorrido, or drug trafficker's ballad, sparked what is believed to be an unprecedented cyberspace drug war. Chat rooms filled with accusations that he was promoting the Sinaloa cartel and mocking its rival, the Gulf cartel. Drug lords flooded the Internet with images of beheadings, execution-style shootings and torture.
Within months, Elizalde was dead, shot 20 times after a November concert. His enemies exacted their final revenge by posting a video of his autopsy, the camera panning from Elizalde's personalized cowboy boots to his bloodied naked body.
Elizalde's narco-ballad video and its aftermath highlight a new surge of Internet activity by Mexican drug cartels, whose mastery of technology gives them a huge advantage over law enforcement agencies. Following the model of terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda, the cartels have discovered the Web as a powerful means of transmitting threats, recruiting members and glorifying the narco-trafficker lifestyle of big money, big guns and big thrills.
"It's out of control," Victor Clark, a Tijuana-based drug expert, said in an interview.
Drug raids in Mexico now routinely net cameras, computers and intricate computerized surveillance systems along with the usual piles of cash, cocaine and weapons. Hit men are just as likely to pack video cameras as "goat's horns" -- the Mexican drug world's nickname for AK-47 assault rifles.
Mexican police have been slow to recognize the Internet as a font of clues, critics say, a mistake that has increased the ability of the cartels to work in the open.
"Imagine, if you're a policeman, you can find gold here on these Web sites," said Alejandro Páez Varela, an editor at the Mexican magazine Dia Siete who tracks drug gangs' use of the Internet. "It's a shame. Everything's here: names, places. They even say who they are going to kill."
The videos, almost unheard-of a year ago, now show up with disturbing regularity. Last Monday, Mexican newspaper Web sites published portions of a video of a supposed Gulf cartel hit man being questioned by an off-screen interrogator about the February murders of five police officers in Acapulco.
The man wears nothing but underwear. A large "Z" is scrawled in thick ink on his chest, along with the words "Welcome, killers of women and children." The Z is a symbol of the Zetas, the Gulf cartel's notorious hit squad, which was started by former Mexican army special forces officers.
The full version of the video shows assassins decapitating the man by slowing twisting a wire through his neck. It ends with a written threat: "Lazcano, you're next" -- an apparent reference to Heriberto Lazcano, alleged chief of the Zetas.
Viewer comments on the video sites provide some of the possible clues police could be investigating, Clark said. On one recent evening, viewers had posted what appeared to be death threats on a YouTube page showing a bloody narcocorrido video.
"You have few days left, Miguel Treviño," wrote a user named "kslnrv."
"The Internet has turned into a toy for Mexican organized crime," Clark said. "It's a toy, a toy to have fun with, a toy to scare people."
While terrorists have turned to the Internet to communicate with other terrorists, the Mexican cartels appear to be using cyberspace mostly to taunt and threaten enemies. The videos can be explicit or cryptic. Inserting code words is part of the game for drug dealers who delight in leaving riddles to be unscrambled by their rivals and police officers.
Mexican researchers are beginning to examine these Internet postings to monitor who is up and who is down in the drug wars. Páez Varela is tracking an increase in videos posted by the Sinaloa cartel, many of which tout the supposed virtues of its leader, Joaquín "Chapo" Guzmán.
Guzmán, who escaped from a high-security Mexican prison in 2001, and his backers appear to be posting more videos of his hit men carrying out executions in parts of Mexico once thought to be under control of the Gulf cartel.
"What Chapo Guzmán is saying is that his militant arm is strong, not just in Sinaloa, but in Veracruz, the state of Tamaulipas and the state of Tabasco," Páez Varela said. "It's like an advertisement."
But the other side is advertising, too, even though its leader, Osiel Cárdenas, was recently extradited to the United States. A video homage to Cárdenas has proliferated on the Web, boasting that he is still powerful.
"With an order from the boss, more heads will roll," an unknown performer sings. As the singer wails, the screen fills with an image of a blood-smeared floor and four heads severed from their bodies. It ends with a pistol shot into the forehead of a supposed gang member and a gushing wound.
"Mexican law enforcement is ill-equipped to deal with this," Andrew Teekell, an analyst at Stratfor, a private intelligence firm based in Texas, said in an interview. "In the U.S., posting videos like that would be plain crazy -- U.S. law enforcement has guys who do nothing but surf the Internet. But in Mexico, they can get away with it. It shows these cartels are untouchable."
Mexico's federal police agency has a cybercrimes unit, but it has produced few important drug busts. In the meantime, most local police forces pay little attention to the Internet, Clark said. A federal police spokesman declined to discuss ongoing investigations, but said a concerted effort is now being made to track drug gangs on the Internet.
"The police are not taking what narcos post on the Internet seriously," Clark said. "It's a mistake. In terms of investigations, you have to take advantage of all available information."
YouTube, which appears to be the most popular destination for the cartels' videos, removes those flagged by users as objectionable. But the violent clips frequently reappear on the site shortly after being removed. Online comment sections attached to videos disappear, but fill up again when the videos return. The online discussions, in Spanish, are often filled with threats, overt and veiled, as well as streams of profanities.
Mexican drug dealers have for years commissioned composers to write songs in their honor. Now, the Internet is suddenly turning some of them into superstars. None is bigger than Valentín Elizalde.
When he was alive, he never had a best-selling album. But less than four months after his murder and half a year after "To My Enemies" became an Internet hit, Elizalde made it big. On March 3, when Billboard came out with its list of best-selling Latin albums in the United States, Elizalde occupied the top two spots.
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Narcocorrido band Explosion Norteño
Songs about Mexican drug cartels proving dangerous for performers
By Anna Cearley
San Diego
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
January 2, 2007
TIJUANA – Three months after gunmen seriously wounded Alberto Cervantes Nieto, the popular Tijuana norteño singer was back on the stage at Las Pulgas nightclub, singing his trademark songs about the Arellano Félix drug cartel.
Metal rods protruded from his right arm, where a shattered bone continues to heal, as Cervantes smiled and bounced to the beat of the accordion music. His fans, wearing cowboy hats and leather boots, sang along. One was about “El Cholo,” a suspected Arellano member who is at large:
“No one will detain him,
He is a determined man,
He has lots of people under his command,
All have AR-15s and AK-47s.”
Cervantes' group, Explosion Norteña, is known for its peppy narcocorridos. The genre, in which bands tell musical tales of the drug world and how cartel members stand up to authority, has been compared to gangsta rap in the United States for the way it depicts criminal lifestyles and for the controversy it engenders.
Pressure from community groups has effectively banned narcocorridos from Mexican radio stations, but the groups remain popular. The songs, disseminated on CDs, are memorized by fans who flock to the groups' concerts.
It was inevitable that the Aug. 10 assault on Cervantes in the Tijuana office of his record producer would raise questions about the singer's familiarity with the Arellano Félix cartel.
Cervantes, 31, who was in a coma for 12 days, says he has no idea why he was attacked.
“I don't know if someone didn't like how I sing, or if it was because someone just didn't like me,” Cervantes said before his comeback concert in November. “Nothing can be determined until the person who did this is arrested.”
However, Mexican investigators said last week that they have been stymied because Cervantes declined to give them a statement.
That has left rumors to fill the void. They range from his angering the Arellanos, or being targeted by a rival cartel, to more mundane theories of rivalry and jealousy.
Members of other banda and norteño musical groups have been attacked recently in Mexico, and most of the cases remain unsolved. At least five assaults were reported in 2006, including the killing in November of singer Valetín Elizalde in Reynosa, south of McAllen, Texas. The slaying has been linked to organized crime.
The incidents have revived public discussion over the responsibility that artists bear and the danger they face when depicting such sensitive subjects.
Alberto Capella, president of a public security citizens advisory committee in Baja California, said the songs set a bad example for youths.
“It contributes to a way of thinking that people dedicated to these illicit activities are a type of hero,” he said.
The singers say they are just portraying life on the streets and that what they sing about is no different from what people read in the newspapers. But the code names and other cryptic phrases used by the groups prompt speculation that the songs spring from a deeper knowledge of the underworld.
A U.S. drug investigator, who declined to be identified because of his work on sensitive Arellano cases, said Explosion Norteña has performed at the Arellanos' parties but that there's no indication the musicians themselves are involved in drug trafficking.
Explosion Norteña, a five-member group, also produces popular love and dance songs with no mention of drugs. José Manuel Romo Gallardo, artistic manager at Tijuana's “La Mejor” FM 97.7, said the radio station regularly plays those songs, but not the ones about drugs because “as a company, we have certain values of integrity and quality.”
Nonetheless, he said, “the groups write what people want to hear.”
Artists tapping into the lore of drug traffickers can find plenty of material in Tijuana. The Arellanos have controlled the passage of drugs along much of the Baja California border for nearly two decades, but many top leaders have been arrested in recent years.
The cartel is facing internal fissures and challenges from rival groups. Suspected cartel leader Francisco Javier Arellano Félix, whom Cervantes refers to in his songs as “El Tigrillo,” was arrested in August, and a plethora of dumped bodies and shootouts with local police soon followed. Arellano, who is in U.S. custody in San Diego, faces racketeering charges that could lead to his execution.
Some norteño musicians say they won't write a narcocorrido about the Arellanos.
“Personally, we haven't . . . it's something very delicate, and you just don't do it like that,” said Ivan Quiñónez of the group Los Galleros de la Sierra.
Elijah Wald, author of the book “Narcocorrido: A Journey Into the Music of Drugs, Guns and Guerrillas,” said some narcocorridos require approval from drug traffickers and others don't.
When a top cartel leader is arrested, for example, lots of groups write tunes to capture the moment. Some of these songs are based more on journalistic observation than personal relationships. Other songs are penned for money or gifts, Wald said.
“These guys are both journalists and court musicians, and those are different, occasionally overlapping jobs,” said Wald, who is based in Los Angeles.
The narcocorrido has its roots in the traditional Mexican corrido, a form of musical storytelling that dates to the 1700s with themes of love, betrayal and historical events. The songs often had an anti-authority tone.
Some of Cervantes' songs depict traffickers as honorable and brave, usually surrounded by heavily armed men. He uses codes and nicknames to refer to the cartel's members and makes references to their killing techniques. Some of them are in prison, others are still on the loose.
Cervantes denies that his songs paint drug traffickers in a positive light.
“I never say a narco comes out like a king,” he said. “I just talk about how things are, but I also write about when they are detained and go to jail.”
But critics, such as Capella, say musicians are exploiting the issue for financial gain, even though Mexican media reports estimate more than 2,000 people died from drug-cartel violence in 2006.
Explosion Norteña, which was started about 10 years ago, isn't the first to touch on such themes.
The group owes much of its early exposure to the Tucanes de Tijuana, a popular group that has written numerous narcocorridos. The Tucanes paid for Explosion's first album and took them on tour as an opening act. The Tucanes, who didn't respond to a request for an interview, wrote some of Explosion's first songs. Cervantes, whose band's repertoire includes other musical styles such as cumbias, rancheras and ballads that don't touch on drug themes, said he's now the primary author of the corridos.
“I realized that I had my own voice and style,” he said.
The group has performed in places such as New York, Texas and Oklahoma, but the Arellano songs resonate most in Tijuana.
“You mention about seeing a caravan of cars going through the city, and people here know what that's like because they've seen it too,” he said, referring to armed convoys of drug traffickers.
Cervantes was attacked inside Champion's Music. Someone walked in and asked the men there if one of them was “El Beto.” When Cervantes acknowledged his nickname, he was shot in the chest, arm and leg. Two office staff members were also shot and survived. None of the group's other members was in the office that day.
The singer suffered a serious arm wound that still requires daily physical therapy, and he recently had an operation to remove a cyst near his wounded lung. Cervantes' doctors again ordered him to rest, and he reluctantly canceled appearances planned for December. “He's a very restless guy, always busy and doing things, so this is hard for him to be forced to stay in bed,” said his sister, Mariela Cervantes.
Cervantes wouldn't say what his next album will be about, or whether it mentions the attack, but he has one idea for a song about a victim of kidnapping – a growing problem in Tijuana in recent years – based on the experience of someone held for four months who wasn't freed until a ransom of more than $1 million had been paid.
In a city like Tijuana, there's plenty to write about. Cervantes said he has heard that after the attack, someone even wrote a corrido about him.
By Anna Cearley
San Diego
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
January 2, 2007
TIJUANA – Three months after gunmen seriously wounded Alberto Cervantes Nieto, the popular Tijuana norteño singer was back on the stage at Las Pulgas nightclub, singing his trademark songs about the Arellano Félix drug cartel.
Metal rods protruded from his right arm, where a shattered bone continues to heal, as Cervantes smiled and bounced to the beat of the accordion music. His fans, wearing cowboy hats and leather boots, sang along. One was about “El Cholo,” a suspected Arellano member who is at large:
“No one will detain him,
He is a determined man,
He has lots of people under his command,
All have AR-15s and AK-47s.”
Cervantes' group, Explosion Norteña, is known for its peppy narcocorridos. The genre, in which bands tell musical tales of the drug world and how cartel members stand up to authority, has been compared to gangsta rap in the United States for the way it depicts criminal lifestyles and for the controversy it engenders.
Pressure from community groups has effectively banned narcocorridos from Mexican radio stations, but the groups remain popular. The songs, disseminated on CDs, are memorized by fans who flock to the groups' concerts.
It was inevitable that the Aug. 10 assault on Cervantes in the Tijuana office of his record producer would raise questions about the singer's familiarity with the Arellano Félix cartel.
Cervantes, 31, who was in a coma for 12 days, says he has no idea why he was attacked.
“I don't know if someone didn't like how I sing, or if it was because someone just didn't like me,” Cervantes said before his comeback concert in November. “Nothing can be determined until the person who did this is arrested.”
However, Mexican investigators said last week that they have been stymied because Cervantes declined to give them a statement.
That has left rumors to fill the void. They range from his angering the Arellanos, or being targeted by a rival cartel, to more mundane theories of rivalry and jealousy.
Members of other banda and norteño musical groups have been attacked recently in Mexico, and most of the cases remain unsolved. At least five assaults were reported in 2006, including the killing in November of singer Valetín Elizalde in Reynosa, south of McAllen, Texas. The slaying has been linked to organized crime.
The incidents have revived public discussion over the responsibility that artists bear and the danger they face when depicting such sensitive subjects.
Alberto Capella, president of a public security citizens advisory committee in Baja California, said the songs set a bad example for youths.
“It contributes to a way of thinking that people dedicated to these illicit activities are a type of hero,” he said.
The singers say they are just portraying life on the streets and that what they sing about is no different from what people read in the newspapers. But the code names and other cryptic phrases used by the groups prompt speculation that the songs spring from a deeper knowledge of the underworld.
A U.S. drug investigator, who declined to be identified because of his work on sensitive Arellano cases, said Explosion Norteña has performed at the Arellanos' parties but that there's no indication the musicians themselves are involved in drug trafficking.
Explosion Norteña, a five-member group, also produces popular love and dance songs with no mention of drugs. José Manuel Romo Gallardo, artistic manager at Tijuana's “La Mejor” FM 97.7, said the radio station regularly plays those songs, but not the ones about drugs because “as a company, we have certain values of integrity and quality.”
Nonetheless, he said, “the groups write what people want to hear.”
Artists tapping into the lore of drug traffickers can find plenty of material in Tijuana. The Arellanos have controlled the passage of drugs along much of the Baja California border for nearly two decades, but many top leaders have been arrested in recent years.
The cartel is facing internal fissures and challenges from rival groups. Suspected cartel leader Francisco Javier Arellano Félix, whom Cervantes refers to in his songs as “El Tigrillo,” was arrested in August, and a plethora of dumped bodies and shootouts with local police soon followed. Arellano, who is in U.S. custody in San Diego, faces racketeering charges that could lead to his execution.
Some norteño musicians say they won't write a narcocorrido about the Arellanos.
“Personally, we haven't . . . it's something very delicate, and you just don't do it like that,” said Ivan Quiñónez of the group Los Galleros de la Sierra.
Elijah Wald, author of the book “Narcocorrido: A Journey Into the Music of Drugs, Guns and Guerrillas,” said some narcocorridos require approval from drug traffickers and others don't.
When a top cartel leader is arrested, for example, lots of groups write tunes to capture the moment. Some of these songs are based more on journalistic observation than personal relationships. Other songs are penned for money or gifts, Wald said.
“These guys are both journalists and court musicians, and those are different, occasionally overlapping jobs,” said Wald, who is based in Los Angeles.
The narcocorrido has its roots in the traditional Mexican corrido, a form of musical storytelling that dates to the 1700s with themes of love, betrayal and historical events. The songs often had an anti-authority tone.
Some of Cervantes' songs depict traffickers as honorable and brave, usually surrounded by heavily armed men. He uses codes and nicknames to refer to the cartel's members and makes references to their killing techniques. Some of them are in prison, others are still on the loose.
Cervantes denies that his songs paint drug traffickers in a positive light.
“I never say a narco comes out like a king,” he said. “I just talk about how things are, but I also write about when they are detained and go to jail.”
But critics, such as Capella, say musicians are exploiting the issue for financial gain, even though Mexican media reports estimate more than 2,000 people died from drug-cartel violence in 2006.
Explosion Norteña, which was started about 10 years ago, isn't the first to touch on such themes.
The group owes much of its early exposure to the Tucanes de Tijuana, a popular group that has written numerous narcocorridos. The Tucanes paid for Explosion's first album and took them on tour as an opening act. The Tucanes, who didn't respond to a request for an interview, wrote some of Explosion's first songs. Cervantes, whose band's repertoire includes other musical styles such as cumbias, rancheras and ballads that don't touch on drug themes, said he's now the primary author of the corridos.
“I realized that I had my own voice and style,” he said.
The group has performed in places such as New York, Texas and Oklahoma, but the Arellano songs resonate most in Tijuana.
“You mention about seeing a caravan of cars going through the city, and people here know what that's like because they've seen it too,” he said, referring to armed convoys of drug traffickers.
Cervantes was attacked inside Champion's Music. Someone walked in and asked the men there if one of them was “El Beto.” When Cervantes acknowledged his nickname, he was shot in the chest, arm and leg. Two office staff members were also shot and survived. None of the group's other members was in the office that day.
The singer suffered a serious arm wound that still requires daily physical therapy, and he recently had an operation to remove a cyst near his wounded lung. Cervantes' doctors again ordered him to rest, and he reluctantly canceled appearances planned for December. “He's a very restless guy, always busy and doing things, so this is hard for him to be forced to stay in bed,” said his sister, Mariela Cervantes.
Cervantes wouldn't say what his next album will be about, or whether it mentions the attack, but he has one idea for a song about a victim of kidnapping – a growing problem in Tijuana in recent years – based on the experience of someone held for four months who wasn't freed until a ransom of more than $1 million had been paid.
In a city like Tijuana, there's plenty to write about. Cervantes said he has heard that after the attack, someone even wrote a corrido about him.
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