Uncovering Mexico
Jeremy Schwartz is the Mexico correspondent for Cox Newspapers. He is based in Mexico City.What's on this page?
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Home > Uncovering Mexico > Archives > 2006 > December
December 2006
Yet another corrido singer slain
Drug violence has claimed another singer of narco-corridos, this time in the new battleground of Michoacán (see posts below). Javier Morales Gómez was gunned down while talking on his cell phone in the plaza of Huetamo, Michoacán, Wednesday night, near the scene of battles between drug lords and the Mexican military.
Morales Gómez is the third corrido singer to be killed since August. Another was shot at and numerous others have cancelled shows or stopped singing certain songs because of the threat of violence.
Morales Gómez’s group, Los Implacables del Norte, hailed from a region of Michoacán called “Tierra Caliente,” or the Hotlands, a place that has seen a dramatic rise in drug violence in the past year.
Although no group has claimed responsibility for the killing, a quick tour through the Implacables record library reveals a penchant for violent songs: “Border Mafia,” “Death Contract,” “Drug Tragedy,” and several songs about the Tijuana-based Arrellano family pepper the list.
Los Implacables are particularly popular in Texas, and Morales Gómez died a few feet from his pickup, which had Texas plates.
Dangerous time to sing narco-corridos
You can add another group to the police officers, military members and newspaper reporters targeted by Mexico’s ruthless drug cartels: singers. A week after popular singer Valentin Elizalde was gunned down after a show in Reynosa, fellow corrido crooner Lupillo Rivera was the subject of a drive-by shooting in Guadalajara this past weekend.
Rivera escaped unharmed and has not blamed the cartels, but the incidents have created a scary atmosphere for singers of “narco-corridos,” the hugely popular folk songs detailing the inner-workings of the drug world.
The group Control and singers Beto Quintanilla and Vicente Fernandez have canceled shows, reportedly because of safety worries. The group Paloma says it will no longer sing those corridos that might cause them trouble, the daily Reforma reported Tuesday.
Often described as gangsta rap set to a polka beat, narco-corridos are big sellers in Mexico and often memorialize the big capos with chronicles of their exploits. Sometimes the narco-corridos take sides.
Elizalde began and finished his Reynosa show with the song “To My Enemies,” which supposedly was taken as a threat to the Zetas, the armed faction of the Gulf Cartel. Elizalde is from the state of Sinaloa, home to Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who has been at war with the Gulf Cartel for years.
Virgin of Guadalupe miracles
I was startled awake at 6 this morning and for a second I thought I had been somehow transported to Baghdad. What sounded like mortar rounds exploded with powerful booms from the church down the street. And then I remembered today is the Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe and the artillery was in fact fireworks.
An estimated 6 million Mexicans are making the annual pilgrimage to the Basilica of Guadalupe in northern Mexico City to give thanks and commemorate the 475th anniversary of the Virgin’s appearance to Indian peasant Juan Diego. Some have walked for days from outlying villages to arrive in the city, while others finish the trek on their knees, crawling over asphalt and concrete to arrive at the Basilica.
The day’s first miracle occurred about noon, when a 28-year-old woman from Tlaxcala gave birth to a baby in the Basilica’s atrium. No word on the baby’s name, but I’m putting my money on, umm, Guadalupe.
Michoacán: The new battleground
It seems Nuevo Laredo has passed the torch to the central state of Michoacán when it comes to levels of unimaginable drug violence. The state has registered more than 500 drug-related executions and, more spectacularly, 17 beheadings this year.
In a show of strength by his week-old administration, President Felipe Calderon, who was born in Michoacán, is sending in the troops. Almost 7,000 to be exact. Michoacán will take on the appearance of a militarized zone, with 24 checkpoints on the state’s roads, flyovers searching for clandestine marijuana fields and a virtual sealing of ports on the Pacific Coast.
Vicente Fox tried to flood Nuevo Laredo with federal troops in 2005, an effort that did nothing to slow the grinding war between the Gulf and Sinaloa cartels. Those two cartel giants appear to have found another battleground in Michoacán, where proxy groups have been doing most of the fighting.
The most violent of those groups may be a local outfit called La Famila. While the Mexican government has said La Famila is linked to the Matamoros-based Gulf Cartel, the group has presented itself as home-grown vigilantes trying to do good.
Even as it claims responsibility for several grisly decapitations, it has taken out ads in local papers defending its actions, arguing that it is seeking to rid the state of purveyors of ice, a particularly addictive and damaging form of methamphetamine.
The group also has granted interviews to Mexican newspapers, telling El Universal that it is helping poor farmers and funding schools in the poorest regions of Michoacán, which is annually among the states sending the most migrants to the United States.
What’s next in Oaxaca?
Mostly lost amid the hubbub of Felipe Calderón’s inauguration last week is the near dismantling of the leadership of the Oaxaca protest movement. Nearly 150 members of the APPO, the umbrella group of protesters demanding the ouster of Gov. Ulises Ruiz, have been arrested in the past 10 days. Many have been sent to far-flung prisons in the states of Nayarit and Tamaulipas on the border. Monday night, the APPO’s most visible face, Flavio Sosa, was arrested in Mexico City leaving a press conference.
It’s unclear yet what the arrests mean for the future of Oaxaca. The APPO has been visibly weakened and the teachers union, which formed the backbone of the protest movement, has rejected an APPO call to go back out on strike because of the arrests. The APPO has called a megamarch for Saturday, which should be a good barometer of where they stand.
According to press reports, Oaxaca City, Oaxaca, is returning to calm, certainly good news for Calderón. Calderón signaled a harder attitude toward the Oaxaca protesters with the appointment of a hard-line conservative interior minister, and federal troops continue to occupy the city.
The wave of arrests was sparked after a riotous protest march on Nov. 25, in which protesters burned several government buildings. The burnings gave the government a tidy pretext to arrest the leaders, some analysts say, quieting the Oaxaca situation just in time for the turnover of power.
And so it begins …
It’s hard to describe the chaos inside the Mexican Congress this morning for Felipe Calderon’s inauguration. I arrived via the garage (after walking about a mile inside the heavily militarized perimeter) and was greeted to the scene of party officials from the left-leaning PRD running like madmen through the halls.
The officials were trying to support their legislators, who were on the congressional floor trying to block the inauguration, but guards wouldn’t let them inside. So they banged and kicked the glass of the locked doors and shouted slogans.
It was a jarring beginning to the day.
Things were even more chaotic and confusing on the floor of the Congress, where lawmakers had been camped out for three days in advance of the inauguration. Things were so tense that any movement sent security guards running up the crowded aisles. At least two fist-fights broke out, with congressmen diving into the melees like they were in a mosh pit at a punk show.
Many of us in the press section, amazed by what was unfolding in front of our eyes, doubted Calderon could pull off the inauguration. But he appeared in a lightning-quick, nearly military operation that lasted just a few minutes. Most of the stage was taken by his fellow party members, and legislators from the PRD never tried to get in Calderon’s way. They did, however, do their best to drown out Calderon with shouts of “Obrador!,” a nod to leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who has formed a shadow government.