
In “Ch y la Pizza,” a 2022 collaboration between Mexican corrido tumbado star Natanael Cano and Fuerza Regida, the California-bred música Mexicana group, hidden meanings abound. In one verse, the song name-checks “JGL haciendo verdes,” thought to be a reference to Joaquín Guzmán Loera (better known as drug lord El Chapo) raking in cash. Interpretations vary, but the song’s title itself could be a nod to “La Chapiza,” or a faction of the Sinaloa cartel helmed by El Chapo’s children, bolstered further by a play on words interpreted as an ode to how the cartel makes bank in the US: “En el gabacho se parte el queso / Pa' la CH y la pizza.” Some believe it could be a portmanteau of two warring factions between the Sinaloa cartel, Los Chapitos and La Mayiza. Either way, the song has raised eyebrows and attracted attention, from both the listeners and the cartels themselves.
Cano, Peso Pluma, and Junior H have helped make corridos tumbados a worldwide (if controversial) phenomenon in recent years. However, corridos go back centuries. The balladic tradition has always existed as a form of documenting the present, and artists used these songs to immortalize tales of bravery, cowardice, and exploitation by antiheroes and bandits. Later on, the genre became entwined with drug cartels, whose exploits often fueled the songwriting — narcocorridos were born, a shift that both helped corridos catapult to popularity and imperiled musicians who dared to sing them.
Thousands of people have been murdered by drug cartels in Mexico or have disappeared over several decades. The Council on Foreign Relations estimates that since 2006, when Mexico stepped up its response to cartel activities, more than 431,000 people have died as a result. And along with the uptick in violence, public threats against musicians have also surged.
In 2023, Peso Pluma, the Sinaloa-bred musician who has name-checked El Chapo in his thrumming songs, was threatened by a rival cartel in Tijuana. (He ended up cancelling the show.) Cano was among several singers publicly threatened earlier this month by a group within the Sinaloa Cartel, known as the Chapitos, who had recently seen realignment within their ranks. According to CBS, the Chapitos claimed that the musicians had been “financially helping” one of their enemies, the Salazares. The group warned Cano that he “will be shot” if he doesn’t mind his “own business.”
To help further understand context and what’s behind these most recent elevated threats from cartels against musicians, The FADER spoke with Rafael Acosta Morales, an Associate Professor of Latin American Cultural Studies in the Department of Romance Studies at the University of North Carolina, who studies Mexican and American narratives and cultures.
The FADER: Where did corridos emerge, and how have they evolved over time?
Rafael Acosta: Back in the 19th century, both in the US and Mexico, the wide majority of the population was illiterate, and so they could not read or write in the newspapers. So what they would do was to compose songs that told of some of the events that were going on, and interpreted the lives of their people for popular consumption.
Then they became a much larger part of Mexican culture during the Revolution, when they would be political propaganda, a means of social cohesion. They fulfilled many functions within the Revolution, but mostly that: A way for people to communicate the collective developments of the war in their society. They also fulfilled other roles, like sustaining cultural institutions or shaping gender roles, in which they were very active talking about what was the proper behavior for men and women. And in that way, it's not something that is only particular to corridos. Like, The Iliad fulfilled that function for ancient Greece and that sort of thing.
Corridos became much more common, but they still told [stories] how people felt towards the US government or the Mexican government, and the way they behaved. So they became social critiques. They became much more intertwined with drug running, because the drug dealers in the 70s and 80s were folk heroes, and represented resistance against oppression by the federal government. Much like social bandits have throughout the years. Many cartels also fulfilled a sort of social banditry function for the populace at large, Robin Hood-esque figures, except they weren't stealing from anybody. Which made what they did much more of a victimless crime in the eyes of many people in Mexico.
You think about someone who is 16, 17 years old... [Through corridos] he gets to live this fantasy of being a man who is respected, who is powerful, who is chased by women.
Are inter-cartel politics, and the government’s response, often reflected in these threats against musicians? I’m thinking of how in 2007, many musicians were suspected to have been murdered by cartels in Mexico after the government cracked down on cartel activity.
They very, very closely follow cartel realignments [and] changes in policy. In 2006, 2007, that's when [former Mexican president] Felipe Calderón stepped up the violence related to fighting cartels and brought the army out of the barracks and into the streets. And in doing so, the violence in Mexico became heightened. It turned into what they call a low-intensity war. because it wasn't like the war in Ukraine, where artillery would be firing all the time. But it was a very intense period of fights in the street that resembled more of military confrontations than just organized crime.
In relation to singers, there is a lot of realignment that happens often. Let’s say Peso Pluma’s name becomes attached to the Guzmán family. But then once Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, El Chapo, and the children of El Chapo get captured, the organization fragments. And then rival organizations to El Chapo’s children arise and might then threaten Peso Pluma, who performs many songs that evoke the imagery of El Chapo. Because he is no longer aligned with their organization, but rather with their enemies. So that would have been the most likely development [recently].
The Mexican government has offered protection to people like Natanael Cano, who have been the subject of recent threats. Does that do anything to mitigate the problem, or is it like putting a Band-Aid on it?
It is very obviously a Band-Aid. I’m not saying that it is meaningless, because for Natanael Cano it’s probably very, very meaningful. But in the large scale of things, it doesn't have any sort of large impact. So you can address a few individuals, but there is no way out of the war on drugs. It’s like they said in The Wire: “The war on drugs is not a war, because wars end.” It is an unresolvable conflict as it is fought.
Many of the people who take part in the activities of a cartel... For many of them, the corrido is a form of thinking about life after death.
Is the controversial subject matter within corridos a reason why the genre has become so popular in recent years?
It’s a musical development. So a lot of non-Spanish speakers who will never take time to look into the lyrics will listen to Peso Pluma and enjoy it. I mean, I don't think that a large swath of Jimmy Fallon's audience is familiar with any of the cartel politics that are evoked with [corridos].
And then, when you think about the people who do know, it’s a powerful fantasy, right? You think about someone who is 16, 17 years old. He gets up in the morning, goes to school, then works all day. [Through corridos] he gets to live this fantasy of being a man who is respected, who is powerful, who is chased by women. For most people, they become a form of entertainment or living a fantasy.
On yet another level, many of the people who take part in the activities of a cartel…well, they know they will die young. It's not that because someone is poor or has very unfavorable expectations of their life, they can’t think about their life because of that. They do, just like everybody else. And for many of them, the corrido is a form of thinking about life after death.
How so?
Most of the corridos that have historically identifiable characters run along three lines. They can be about the feasts that this person offers to his friends. And in that way, I'm very consciously evoking the Greek language, where the king or the hero would offer a feast to all the other people who were with him. And in this way the corrido serves as propaganda: “It is so fun to hang around with me. Come join us.” One of the other branches of corridos makes them scary as hell. Sometimes they say things like, “I kill them and then I eat their souls,” or “I will have their flesh” or whatever. There are people who live off of being scary to others. And finally, the other large branch of corridos are elegies: “Oh, he used to be such a nice guy, we had fun playing by the river when we were children. He was very generous, not one of his friends was ignored.”
These functions are very logical for many of these people who know that they are very likely to die at a young age. The prospect of an elegy has allure if you know that your life depends on being scarier than the next guy. It also makes sense that you would try to present yourself in as horrible a light as possible. And if your life also depends on having many people by your side, It also makes sense to speak about how cool it is to be your friend.
That’s heavy.
And it is not a very different reality from what they would experience if they did not turn to crime, which is the reason why people turn to it. Many of them live in places where it is already dangerous, where the police are the largest threat to your life. It doesn’t matter whether you're doing things that are legal or not, like, you can just be the one who was there. Much like in the US, the idea is the same: Oppressing populations at random, so they feel afraid of aiming for anything.
In many of these cases, people realize that they can’t dream. Or that their dreams are impossible. Like, even if you go to one of the public universities, you’re not very likely to improve your station in life considerably. Maybe you make three times more, so you're only twice at the level of poverty. Which is not a huge improvement to their lives. So they will turn to the idea of: “I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees.”