The use of the song to relay news goes to the roots of the Mexican corrido. The ballads were born in the late 18th-century in northern Mexico, and would carry news of coronations and beheadings to rural communities which had no other news outlets. In the bloody revolution of 1910-17, thousands of ballads were written about guerrilla commanders such as Pancho Villa - a moustachioed bandit turned revolutionary who won spectacular victories over federal soldiers. The genre broke into the modern recording industry in the 1970s when Sinaloan band Los Tigres del Norte made records while working as immigrant labourers in California. However, most Sinaloans consider the real father of the drug ballad to be Chalino Sanchez, a small-town roughneck who sung tales of crime and violence in the late 1980s. Sanchez was shot dead in an unsolved killing close to Culiacan in 1992 and accounts of his life mix fact with legend. At 13, he was said to have killed a man who raped his sister, and his fans tell of how he shot dead assailants at concerts. Whatever the truth, Sanchez's influence on the music scene is undeniable. 'With Chalino we made songs for the barrio [neighbourhood],' said Nacho Hernandez, a 40-year-old singer and composer who played with Sanchez and was with him the night he died. 'We made songs for the people in the cantina, for the people on the street. We talked about the things they want to hear about. We didn't care if the radio wouldn't play us.' Hernandez, a jovial but imposing figure with a thick neck and huge hands, has gone on to record 36 albums of drug ballads since the death of Sanchez, while also composing for other best selling artists. He rejects the idea that the music encourages violence or drug dealing. 'The violence is already there. We are just singing about what we see,' Hernandez said, chewing on a hearty breakfast in a Culiacan café. 'The killings of the singers aren't connected with the music either. They happen when the victim has upset someone over a girl or money or something. I am not worried about something happening to me because I don't mess with people. I treat everyone with respect.' The ballads have become steadily more popular and are now an integral part of a 'narco culture' that is endemic in many other parts of Mexico and the southern United States. In the streets of Culiacan, the songs blare out of huge, expensive pick-up trucks with bumper stickers of marijuana leaves. They rock nightclubs full of women with inch-long false nails embedded with precious stones, and men with 500lb alligator-skinned boots who fire their guns in the air to the music. And they are played by street musicians outside shrines to Jesus Malverde, a Sinaloan bandit who has become the unofficial patron saint of drug smugglers. The lyrics talk with pride about drug trafficking, describing it as a route out of poverty. They mix in the expressions of the Sicilian mafia, calling the crime bosses 'capos' and 'godfathers'. And they herald the gangsters for being the valientes or 'brave ones' who are not scared of police or soldiers. 'The thing that can be hard for foreigners to understand is the pride that some Sinaloans have in being at the head of organised crime,' said Elmer Mendoza, an author from Culiacan. 'Mothers can be proud that their sons have become gangsters, even if this leads to death, as it is a way that they have made something of themselves.' Cesar Jacobo, 33, who founded and composes the songs for Grupo Cartel de Sinaloa, is typical of the new generation that has grown up immersed in drug ballads and narco culture. Moving from rural poverty to an urban slum when he was 10, he heard his father sing love songs at home. But the young Jacobo was only interested in ballads about the gunslingers and crime bosses that ran his barrio. When he founded his group two years ago he named it after Sinaloa's organised crime syndicate. 'I wanted a name that said it like it is, with no disguise,' Jacobo said as the group posed for photos in a Culiacan cemetery packed with elaborate graves, mostly of young men who had suffered violent deaths. Grupo Cartel's explicitly violent lyrics push the barriers of the genre, talking of balaclava-clad assassins and blood-thirsty triggermen, people he says he grew up with. But he also mixes the reality with fantasies and metaphors. In one ballad he describes a hired killer arriving in hell to be confronted by his murder victims. 'For me the words are the most important thing,' he said, singing snippets of his ballads. 'I get the message right. Then I make it fit the rhythm.' Grupo Cartel's hard stance has earned it a strong following and it can now charge £2,000 to play at a party in Culiacan and more than £5,000 to play in larger towns. However, Jocobo admits their name's association with the Sinaloa cartel is potentially dangerous. 'We basically won't play anywhere outside of Sinaloa and some close states. But I tell the group it is better to live great for a couple of years than spend your whole life in poverty,' he says, grinning. Songs by drug ballad bands feature on the YouTube website alongside amateur videos. In many cases the clips are covered with messages favouring a particular cartel and threatening rivals with death alongside gruesome pictures of dead bodies. The bands claim to have no connection to those producing the videos. 'Who knows who is making these films?' Jacobo said. 'There are just some sick people out there.' In one video, a beaten man is shown begging for his life before he is shot in the head. Another shows autopsy footage of Elizalde's body with laughter dubbed over it. Funeral home workers later admitted to filming the video on their mobile phones, but no charges were pressed. A rising number of mexican politicians argue that drug ballads should be made illegal altogether. This anti- ballad lobby was particularly incensed when the popular band Los Tucanes de Tijuana posed with automatic rifles and pistols during a high-profile video shoot in Mexico City. Irineo Mendoza, of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, is preparing a bill that would force record labels to show the lyrics of proposed recordings to government officials. If the words were seen as promoting violence or drugs, the recording would be forbidden. 'These ballads are perpetuating the problem,' Mendoza said. 'Young children listening to the music want to become gangsters. That is very bad for society.' Other groups simply say the government should work harder to bring down the cartels. President Felipe Calderon claims he is winning the war against the gangs by sending 25,000 soldiers and federal police to the worst-hit areas, making record drug seizures and, where appropriate, extraditing wanted men to the United States. In November, soldiers seized 23.5 tons of cocaine - enough for about 200 million lines - in the world's biggest ever cocaine bust. It was torched in a public bonfire. Calderon's offensive has earned him praise from the States, and George W. Bush has proposed giving Mexico $1.4 billion in aid to help the effort. But some independent investigators say the crackdown is not getting to the root of the problem. The bloodshed is driven by a huge profit motive, with gangs fighting rivals and police for lucrative smuggling routes to the States. Mexican cartels make an estimated $10 billion to $30 billion a year trafficking cocaine, heroin, marijuana and crystal meth to their northern neighbour, in a country where wages are as low as $5 a day. They also have access to the biggest handgun market in the world, buying the latest machine guns and automatic pistols in American stores and smuggling them south in the same vehicles that head north with the drugs. 'Calderon sending soldiers to pace round towns is just a show. It doesn't bring down these criminal organisations,' says Ismael Bohorquez, who runs a newspaper covering organised crime and corruption in Sinaloa. 'This unpunished violence leaves an atmosphere of impunity and terror where ugly incidents, like these slayings of singers, can take place.' But the drug ballad bands can, perversely, benefit from the killings. Both K Paz de la Sierra and Guasabena have seen sales rocket since the murders of their lead singers. Websites dedicated to their memories are packed with adoring messages from followers and their tombs are visited from afar and covered in flowers. For some fans they are already martyrs. 'Valentin Elizalde died a hero for many people here,' says Alejandra Aguilera, a friend of the singer in Culiacan. 'His spirit lives on. He is still alive in his music.' |