The History of the Mexican Drug Trade through Music
Narcocorridos are drug war Mexico’s public sphere. Unlike the newspapers and TV shows which often follow an unapologetically pro-government line, narcocorridos claim to tell “the truth” about the drug trade and the drug war. No doubt they can drift into adulation. But in the right hands, they are powerful tools to tell Mexicans what really happened beneath the headlines.
These narcocorridos are not selected for their historical import (for these, listen to the wonderful Roots of the Narcocorrido) or their innate quality (though some are bangers). Rather I have chosen them because they tell stories or capture characters which are mentioned in The Dope.
A brief explanation of their relevance follows below the playlist.
Los Tucanes de Tijuana, Mis tres animales. The Dope opens with the story of Cruz, a drug lookout from Michoacán. He refers to narcotics by their slang names. Perico (parrot) is cocaine. Chiva (goat) is heroin, and Gallo (rooster) is marijuana.
Francisco Avitia, El Pablote. El Pablote or Pablo González was the husband of Ciudad Juárez queen pin, Ignacia “La Nacha” Jasso. As the corrido claims, he worked initially for Enrique Fernández, the “king of morphine” in 1920s Juárez. El Pablote was a feared border gunman who eventually died in a bar shootout.
Jefferson Airplane, Mexico. Jefferson Airplane were one of the great counterculture bands. In “Mexico” they lamented Richard Nixon’s Operation Intercept, which had stopped the flow of weed north of the border.
José Alfredo Jiménez, El Rey. During the 1970s the Federal Judicial Police or PJF took over many of Mexico’s regional drug protection rackets. At their get togethers they would croon along with “El Rey” which declared fittingly that the singer’s word “was law”.
Enleonados del Norte, El Fiscal de Hierro. The song tells the story of Salvador del Toro Rosales, a feared Mexican prosecutor dubbed “the Prosecutor of Iron” who descended on Nuevo Laredo to “clean up the city”. in 1971. He left dozens of traffickers dead. Locals claimed that he was actually working in league with a major smuggler, Juan Nepomuceno Guerra.
Angel González, Contrabando y Traición. There had been plenty of drug songs before. But Contrabando y Traición (1974) - which told the tale of a drug deal gone wrong - was the first big narcocorrido hit.
Los Tigres del Norte, La Mafia se Muere. Operation Condor inspired a host of narcocorridos and really popularized the genre among northern Mexicans. They gravitated towards songs that countered government propaganda and offered a degree of dignity to the dead traffickers.
Los Broncos de Reynosa, El Corrido de Lamberto Quintero. Los Broncos de Reynosa were the band of the master corrido writer, Paulino Vargas. One of his most famous songs concerned the death of Lamberto Quintero. He died - so the story went - at the hands of another trafficking clan.
Los Broncos de Reynosa, Clave 7 and Los Incomparables de Tijuana, Pedro Avilés. Both songs are written in remembrance of Pedro Avilés Pérez, a notorious 1970s trafficker, who was eventually killed by a PJF hit squad in September 1978. As I discovered they were paid to do so by the DEA.
Los Jigueros del Pico Real, Corrido a Felix Gallardo, Tigres del Norte, El Corrido del Dr. Fonseca. The so-called “Guadalajara cartel”, was a group of SInaloa traffickers, DFS agents, and right-wing hitmen that ran the cocaine and weed industry of early 1980s Mexico. They inspired many corridos including these two classics.
Los Invasores del Nuevo Laredo, Los Super Capos. One of the rare corridos to deal with the biggest cartel of all - the gringos.
Los Tigres del Norte, El Zorro de Ojinaga. The story of Pablo Acosta, the Ojinaga smuggler, eventually killed by PJF forces under Guillermo González Calderoni.
Ariel Camacho, El Señor de los Cieles. Song in honor of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, The Lord of the Skies, and the biggest cocaine smuggler of the early 1990s.
Los Invasores del Nuevo Laredo, Fui Judicial Federal. A song about the legendary PJF chief, Guillermo González Calderoni. Accused of corruption, he survived by fleeing to the United States. Here he received refugee status with the help of friends in the DEA. He was shot dead in a Texas car park in 2003.
Valentín Elizalde, A mis enemigos. The song was allegedly a challenge by the Sinaloa cartel to the Zetas. Whether it was or not, someone clearly thought it was and shot Valentín Elizalde dead in 2006.