BRUTAL BALLADS: MEXICAN BAND BUILDS FOLLOWING BY ROMANTICIZING DRUG
TRAFFICKING'S VIOLENCE

In November, the police chief in the Mexican border city of Tijuana
canceled a concert by a famous group of musicians after they released
a song that suggested they had real-life links to the drug traffickers
they'd been singing about for years.

Since then, the band has gone elsewhere. On Friday night, a burst of
prerecorded gunfire echoed through a Memphis nightclub as the
red-suited members of Los Tucanes de Tijuana launched their signature
song, "El Papa de los Pollitos." (CAUTION: This link leads to a music
video that contains some elements of violence and nudity.)

The lyrics describe a mob boss who calls himself "The daddy of the
little chickens" and threatens rivals with an AK-47. "He who gets
involved will die, if he doesn't make arrangements with me."

Los Tucanes, or The Toucans, are among the best-known composers of
narcocorridos, Mexican ballads with a polka beat that often celebrate
real-life drug lords as outlaw heroes.

The accordion-heavy songs are controversial in Mexico, where an
estimated 6,587 people died in drug violence last year.

"Society sees drug ballads as nice, pleasant, inconsequential and
harmless, but they are the opposite," Mexican lawmaker Oscar Martin
Arce told The Associated Press. He has proposed a law to restrict
music and movies that celebrate crime.

Despite the criticism, the music remains popular in Mexico and among
immigrants in the U.S. Los Tucanes have held several shows in Memphis
in recent years.

Like many Mexican groups that visit Memphis, they perform at venues
that cater to immigrants and their shows aren't advertised in English.
Their tour also includes stops in Tulsa, Okla.; Nashville; and
Louisville. Hundreds of people paid as much as $60 for tickets to the
Friday show at Eclipse Discoteque nightclub on Getwell Road in south
Shelby County.

The popularity of the music is a reminder of local links to Mexico's
drug war. Most of the illegal drugs consumed here are delivered
through Mexico, law enforcement officials say, and the city has long
been a distribution point for drugs.

Mario Quintero, the 39-year-old lead singer and composer for Los
Tucanes, says the group plays drug ballads because the audience wants
them.

"We only play what the people want to hear, and since we depend on
them, we can't stop pleasing them," he said.

He says it's freedom of speech and that it's not a negative
influence.

Quintero, a soft-spoken man with a big mustache and a black hat,
flatly denied connections to real-life drug dealers. "We don't have
anything to do with drug trafficking or the traffickers. We make music."

Others have doubts.

The song that got them in trouble was about a Tijuana gangster named
Raydel Lopez Uriarte, or "El Muletas," who belonged to a cartel known
for beheadings and dissolving rivals' bodies in caustic soda, the AP
reported.

The song, which appeared on the Internet last year, praises the
criminal: "Muletas, how you have grown. The laws do nothing to you."

The song also includes a shout-out from Muletas to his
friends.

Asked to explain how the message from Muletas got in the song,
Quintero says people constantly approach him with requests and that he
doesn't investigate what they do for a living.

"If someone says 'Hey, send a shout-out to Fulano,' I send it, because
I don't believe I'm committing any crime," he said.

When the song appeared, Tijuana Police Chief Julian Leyzaola canceled
a concert at the last minute. About 11,000 tickets had been sold,
Quintero said.

The number of tickets sold underscores the group's popularity. The
six-man band that started in the 1980s in a Tijuana bar has sold 2.2
million recordings in the U.S. alone, plus millions in other
countries. Some of the band's biggest hits are dance or love songs
that have nothing to do with drugs.

Songs by Los Tucanes are a staple on the three-hour Friday night radio
show called "Heavy and Banned Ballads" on Memphis Spanish-language
radio station WGSF-1030 AM.

The show specializes in corridos, or story songs. Host Aroldo
Velasquez is quick to point out that the songs are on topics ranging
from cockfighting to tragic love, not just drugs.

But some songs make clear references to drugs and drug violence. One
song called "500 Shots" describes a band of ex-soldiers who carry out
an assassination mission for the Mafia.

"'500 Shots' speaks of the truth," Velasquez said. "The truth that's
happening in the border between Mexico and the United States."

On each show, Velasquez reads letters from local prisoners greeting
friends and family. Foreigners make up only 2 percent of inmates in
the local jail, 201 Poplar.

But at FCI Memphis, a federal lockup, one in five prisoners is from
Mexico. The inmates were arrested around the country and serve long
sentences, often for drugs.

Velasquez says prisoners are human beings who can change and that in
some cases they're innocent.

"That's why I pass along the letters, because I believe they're not
all guilty."

The radio station carried ads for the concert by Los Tucanes, who
didn't go onstage until just before 2 a.m. Saturday.

What followed was a performance in which the skill, cheerfulness and
energy of the musicians often overshadowed the menace of the words.
Couples danced and women climbed onstage to kiss Quintero on the
cheek. One drunken man did it too.

Between songs, Quintero read requests and shout-outs from the
audience. One was for La Familia Michoacana, a drug cartel.

Just before 4 a.m., there was a final request for a song called "La
Pinata." The band obliged, singing about a party where people break
open a pinata that's stuffed with drugs, not sweets.

"The cake wasn't made of bread, it was Colombian cake / Yes, they
serve it on plates, but five or six grams at a time / If you want to
make pinatas, I've got the bags right here."