Narcocorridos and Mexican history

Hello dear readers, once again, to a new adventure into history. Now today let’s talk about the Mexican Revolution some more, along with how the Revolution helped influenced an entire musical genre and drug trafficking. With that out of the way, let's get down to business to defeat the drugs!

To start us off today, let’s talk about music in Pre-Columbian society. In Pre-Columbian society music was used for religious purposes and in their rituals. Because of this importance, there were many music conservatories, especially in the larger tribes such as the Mayan or the Mexica, also known as the Aztec. Additionally, musical instruments used were believed to house spirits or gods and would only be used by professionals and only in the most important religious ceremonies. The idea of using music in religious ceremonies was also an important aspect of religion in Europe, which became important for Spain during the conquest of modern day Mexico and converting the natives to Christianity. By taking advantage of their musical talent and abilities, the Spanish used church music to teach the natives about Christianity. In an attempt to teach the natives Spanish, in addition to religion, the Spanish used villancicos, folk songs about religious themes that weren’t necessarily Biblical. These songs helped introduce various religious themes to the natives and help teach them Spanish.

Let’s fast forward to the Mexican Revolution. (A quick recap to previous events can be found here for the Mexican War for Independence and here for some background to the racial problems that led to the Mexican Revolution.) If you’ve missed my previous post the Revolution, along with some background info click here. I won’t bore any of you readers with a recap of the Mexican Revolution, since I provided quite a few links, but I will go ahead and mention that these events were important in shaping corridos. Corridos are a traditional Mexican musical genre which have their roots in the Mexican Revolution. For most of Mexico’s history a majority of the population was illiterate because they lived in poverty and couldn’t afford to go to school. Because of this, during the Mexican Revolution the quickest and easiest way to learn news of battles and other events occurring was by having messengers deliver the news to people. The best and most entertaining way of this was through music.

Corridos are essentially narrative stories that tell people of events and stories that took place, sometimes the stories are about the death of an important figure. The beginning of most corridos tell the beginning of a story and calls for the listener to pay attention. An example of this is a popular corrido about the death of Emiliano Zapata, which you can hear here, begins with “Escuchen señores, oigan/El corrido de un triste acontecimiento.” (“Listen gentlemen, hear/The ballad of a sad event.”) This is a typical introduction for corridos to tell people listening about who the protagonist is and what the event is about. The next two lines establish who the main character or protagonist of the corrido is as well as where this story takes place, in this case Emiliano Zapata and Chinameca respectively. These lines say “pues en Chinameca ha muerto a mansalva/Zapata, el gran insurrecto.” (“Because in Chinameca dead at close range/Zapata, the great insurgent.”) The next line establishes the year that this event takes place which is 1919, while the rest of the Corrido tells the story of Zapata’s death and the ambush that lead to his murder.

This is why the corridos grew in popularity quickly, they allowed for people to learn about events quickly during a time when it was difficult to properly attain news about battles. At the same time, many corridos were used as propaganda to either promote certain Revolutionaries or attempt to dissuade peasants from siding with certain factions. An example of this would be various corridos that have Francisco “Pancho” Villa as a protagonist, particularly after the Pershing Expedition of 1916 until 1917, where Villa attacked the town of Columbus, New Mexico. Time for some backstory for the Pershing Expedition. After Villa attacked the town, General John J. Pershing was ordered to capture Villa for his attack. Pershing and his forces tracked Villa down but were never able to capture him, due to the fact that Villa knew the terrain and locations and how many Mexicans helped Villa escape by either lying to Pershing or hiding Villa. This would continue for a year until the United States entered World War I and would have to recall Pershing and his troops in order to fight in the war. I would love to keep talking about Villa and his various accomplishments, but I’ll save that for some other time though, back to the corridos. Now Villa was one of the leaders of the various factions in the Mexican Revolution, and was one of the most popular among the peasant class.

One popular topic for corridos about Villa involved mainly him outsmarting his opponents at every turn, whether it be US soldiers or other enemies, Villa would never be beaten by anyone unless it was part of his plan. In reality, there were many cases of Villa being outsmarted by his enemies and wasn’t quite as unstoppable as many would think. An example of this is the corrido “La persecución de Pancho Villa” which can be heard here, talks about how Villa was able to outsmart the US soldiers that were searching for him. In the corrido it states that the President of Mexico at the time, Venustiano Carranza, allowed ten thousand American soldiers and six hundred airplanes to cross into Mexican territory and capture Villa. The corrido goes on to say that all the soldiers and airplanes were useless against Villa because of how clever he was and how the Mexican people were all helping Villa escape. In reality; however, there were only about 8 planes used initially, though because of the Mexican terrain, most were quickly destroyed by the mountain ranges and were unable to achieve enough altitude to properly pass the mountain ranges, along with many dust storms and other problems preventing the planes from being much help in reconnaissance. Later on 24 additional planes were bought, though this was still significantly less than the 600 the corrido states. Later on in the corrido it states that Villa managed to trick the US soldiers by stealing US uniforms for himself and his troops in order to infiltrate the US troops and stole some planes for their own use.

All of this leads to another important aspect of the corrido genre, “good guy” and “bad guy” figures where the protagonist is the good guy and the antagonist is the bad guy. In modern corridos the hero is typically a drug trafficker or a member of the cartel, while the “bad guy” is typically the Mexican government or the police force. These types of corridos are a subgenre of the corrido genre called narcocorridos. Initially narcocorridos began in the 1970s with a norteño genre band called Los Tigres del Norte, or The Tigers of the North. In the 70s, they began the narcocorrido genre by creating corridos based on events involving drug trafficking. They would primarily create fictional stories of real events. One of their most famous narcocorridos came out in 1974 and was titled “Contrabando y Traicion” which can be heard here, tells the story of two drug traffickers, a man named Emilio and a woman named Camelia la Texana, who go from Mexico all the way to Los Angeles. Once they reach Los Angeles, they drive their car and changed their tires, which was where they originally hid the marijuana they were smuggling. Once they sell the marijuana and each get their half of the money, Emilio tells Camelia that they now go their separate ways and that he is going to go the be with the woman he loves. Camelia, who had fallen in love with the man, has her heart broken and decides to kill him and steal his money. The end of the corrido goes on to say that by the time the police officers showed up, there was just the man’s body along with the car and that Camelia had escaped with no one knowing where she disappeared to.

This song was one of the first popular narcocorridos which quickly evolved into a separate subgenre all together. Many modern narcocorridos deal with either real events, people, or simply about showing off the power, weapons, and women that the drug dealers had. In this aspect, many modern narcocorridos become comparable to gangster rap in the United States where the point of the song was to show off the women, money, power, and weapons that the singer/protagonist has at their disposal. As time went on, the narcocorridos became more and more popular as the war on drug continued.

Time for a really quick history on the War on Drugs. In the 1980s the US became harder on drugs and began preventing drugs from Central America from reaching the US through the Caribbean, which meant that drug lords had to find a new way to smuggle drugs into the US, so they figured it would be easier to do this by using Mexico. This is roughly when drugs starting popping up more frequently in Mexico, sparking the beginning of the narcocorridos. As time went on, in the 1990s, more and more drug lords and high ranking leaders of cartels in Central and Southern America were beginning to be captured or killed, meaning that the few remaining cartels in those areas were no longer as powerful as previously, thus meaning that they would be unable to pay the Mexican cartels to smuggle drugs into the US. As a result of this the cartels would be paid in drugs. Because Mexico suddenly had a surplus of drugs, more were able to be sold in Mexico, thus making the Mexican cartels much more powerful and richer than the cartels in Central and Southern America. During this time the PRI, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, was in power in Mexico and for the most part would turn a blind eye to the illegal actions perpetrated by the cartels. In the year 2000 something that many believed would never happen, happened; the PRI were defeated by the PAN, the National Action Party, won the election and Vicente Fox became the first non-PRI president in over 70 years. As a result of this both Fox and his successor Felipe Calderon, began to wage war on the cartels in Mexico with Calderon deciding to use the military instead of the police to wage his war, mainly due to the belief that many police officers were corrupt and were working with the cartels. So because of this, the cartels had been able to rise in power because since for a couple of decades there was a surplus of drugs, where the cartels were able to sell drugs, not only abroad, but to the Mexican population as well which was the main reason why they were able to rise to power.

How does this brief history of the War on Drugs relate to narcocorridos, well here’s why. As we’ve already established, corridos tend to be about heroes, good guys, and their triumph, as well as being one of the most defining Mexican musical genres. Because of this, many powerful cartel leaders desired to have corridos written about their exploits, their power, and their influences. This is something that essentially created the “true story” based narcocorridos compared to the fictionalized narcocorridos of the Tigeres del Norte. The consequence of this is that as these types of narcocorridos glamorized the violence of the War on Drugs, and due to the narcocorridos making the life of a drug cartel leader seem amazing and causes many young people want to live this lifestyle. This is especially prominent in smaller rural areas of Mexico where the Mexican government doesn’t have that much of a presence and the local drug cartels are the ones that are building roads, schools, etc. It’s for this reason that some people look up to cartel leaders as see them as good people, and thus compose or have others compose narcocorridos in their honor, whereas there are other narcocorridos that deal with the glamorization of the lifestyle. In many of the music videos for these types of narcocorridos, there are many scantily clad women, drugs (typically cocaine), and many weapons, including AK-47s and other weapons similar to this.  An example of this type of narcocorrido is Mafia Nueva, or New Mafia, by singer El Komander, where he sings about the new mafia in Sinaloa, where they have the fastest and newest sports cars, beautiful women and all these weapons, and that he began this early in life. Mafia Nueva can be seen here.

Here comes the interesting part of this, the Mexican government has banned many narcocorridos in certain states, as well as from airing on the radio. In addition to this, some bands have been banned from playing in Mexico all together, such as the aforementioned Los Tigres del Norte, who have been banned from playing in the state of Chihuahua due to the majority of their songs being narcocorridos, or at least related to the drug trade. This was done in an attempt to prevent the spread of the drug lifestyle, though as with other attempts to censor and ban music, it didn’t quite succeed. The lifestyle of the cartel leader is one that many people wish to have, especially young people, though not quite for the reasons you would think. As I previously mentioned, there is little government presence in some smaller rural villages of Mexico and as a result of this, there are many times where the people creating roads, building schools, and taking care of citizens living in those areas are the cartels. Sometimes they do this because this is where they grew up or have relatives living there, though this isn’t always the case. In some cases, the cartel leaders do this because they know that these people will be indebted to them, and have to repay this “kindness” through money or sometimes people. There are many cases where young people are forcibly recruited to serve as lookouts or as messengers. There are also cases where the children and teenagers choose to join the cartels for their own reasons, whether they be to help their families financially, or because they were drawn in by the allure of being rich and powerful is entirely circumstantial. Regardless of how people join the cartels, what matters that people join.

Due to recent events a popular motif for some narcocorridos are about Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and his arrest, later escape from jail and subsequent re-arrest. This is extremely noticeable in how many of the narcocorridos about how unstoppable he is, or in this case was. This is a clear example of how the fame and power of being a cartel leader is for those in that position of power. In addition to this, it’s important to note that it was his own hubris that allowed for the recapture of Juaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, since he wanted to do an interview with Sean Penn and Kate del Castillo in order to tell his life’s story, as well as showing the amount of power and influence he held. This is very important to note since this is clearly an example of the fame, power, and influence of a drug cartel leader being the reason of their downfall. Very soon after he escaped from jail in 2015, there were already narcocorridos written about him, one of which can be seen here and one by El Komander, who we hear from earlier, can be heard here. All in all, this clearly demonstrates the influence and power that El Chapo had prior to arrest, and that this power and influence was not easily lost, especially considering how he was able to escape from jail.

I will end here, since unfortunately, I do not have much more information, though if you are curious about learning more about the narcocorrido genre or how drug cartels have changed Mexican culture, go here to read an article about that on cracked.com or here to go see a video more about narcocorridos as well as how music has been used for propaganda by Mexico and the United States by thisexists on youtube. I hope you all enjoyed this, and perhaps next time we will tackle another topic. Though before I leave, let me give some words of encouragement. Never stop trying in life, don’t give up because we only live through life once. Make the most of your life and keep moving forward because we live in a cycle, there’s life then death, so make every second of your life count, because there is no moving back, because time can only go forward so make sure everything counts, and that you don’t leave behind any regrets.