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Monday, November 26, 2007

Slain narco corrido singer finds success in death

By Jeremy Schwartz | Monday, November 26, 2007, 11:10 AM

elizalde.jpgIt’s only been a year since his death, but murdered corrido crooner Valentin Elizalde is already on a path to Elvis-like post-death reverance in Mexico. Elizalde was a moderately successful singer when he was gunned down after a show in the border town of Reynosa last November 25. The Sonoran-born singer had been linked to the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel and sang some inflammatory narco-corridos - songs that detail the exploits of drug smugglers - in Reynosa. But Reynosa, the theory goes, is territory of the Gulf Cartel, Sinaloa’s main rival, and it’s widely believed that disgruntled Gulf cartel hitmen were responsible for the post-concert bloodbath.

Since his death, Elizalde has become a pop culture phenomenon. His songs are heard everywhere in the country and at all hours. Here in Mexico City, Elizalde can seem omnipresent, blasting from the stalls at the city’s markets, on the bus, in the taxi. He had recorded an album shortly before his death which has been released posthumously, a la 2Pac, the fallen American rapper. The album, “Lobo Domesticado” sold more than 100,000 units, a spectacular success in bootlegging-plagued Mexico.

The National Enquirer-like Fama weekly magazine recently published a 47-page special issue dedicated to Elizalde, comparing his success to that of slain Tejano star Selena. The magazine details how some of his fans have taken to praying to his image, and in Sinaloa his music is considered to have healing powers and is credited with helping a boy with Down Syndrome to talk. Meanwhile, a legion of imitators have seized Elizalde’s name, hoping to sell some records of their own.

Elizalde was killed during a wave of violence directed at Mexican singers of narco-corridos, a trend that thankfully has lost steam recently.

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Back on the border

By Jeremy Schwartz | Monday, November 26, 2007, 10:47 AM

desert.jpgLast week we headed up to the border for a story in the Chihuahuan desert and for some turkey and stuffing with Nancy’s parents. We flew to Monterrey and took a bus up to Piedras Negras, across the border from Eagle Pass. After being in Mexico City for so long, it was a little jarring how different the borderlands are from the megalopolis: the landscape, the people, the Wranglers all share much more culturally with Texas than Mexico City. Just as border people in Texas complain the politicians in Washington, D.C. don’t understand the border, so too do their Mexican counterparts complain about the politicos in the Mexican capital.

It was also a little sad to see what is happening in our beloved Coahuila, where Nancy and I were married two years ago. The Coahuilan border is often called the “frontera blanca” (the clean border), a reference to the relative safety and absence of violence there, especially compared to Nuevo Laredo to the east and Ciudad Juarez to the west. But violence has been creeping into Coahuila in the last year, most likely the result of increasing federal pressure on other parts of the border. Saltillo, the state capital, has seen several high ranking police chiefs gunned down. It goes to show that no stretch of border is entirely immune from the narco-wars.

Meanwhile, the border area continues to boom, driven mostly by Mexican shoppers looking for deals on the U.S. side and a weak dollar. Mexican bus lines advertise all-day shopping trips to Eagle Pass malls and parking lots continue to be filled with Mexican license plates. And leaders on both sides of the Texas/Coahuila border continue to lead the effort against a border wall. Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster has become a spokesman of sorts, sparring with Bill O’Reilly and appearing on NPR.

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