Home | Community | Message Board


This site includes paid links. Please support our sponsors.


Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!

Shop: Original Sensible Seeds Feminized Cannabis Seeds   Kraken Kratom Red Vein Kratom

Jump to first unread post Pages: 1
InvisibleveggieM

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
Who Is Killing Mexico's Musicians?
    #7795882 - 12/24/07 02:54 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Who Is Killing Mexico's Musicians?
December 24, 2007 - Time Magazine

Since the 1990s, popular Mexican singers have been increasingly crooning about Kalashnikovs and cocaine alongside their traditional ballads of hard work and lost love. Take "Contraband in the Border" by Valentin Elizalde, one of the thousands of drug ballads or narco corridos that are played in cantinas and parties from the mountains of Mexico to the immigrant ghettos of Los Angeles. "There was a big shoot-out/With 14 bullet-filled bodies/And the American government,/took away the marijuana" go the lyrics, as tubas and accordions drone out the melody to the rhythm of a German polka. In November 2006, gunmen ambushed and killed Elizalde and took out his manager and driver while injuring his cousin outside a cockfighting ring in the border city of Reynosa.

Elizalde's murder is not an isolated incident. Singers have not just been chanting about the bloody drug violence ravaging their country; they have also been among its most prominent victims. At least 13 musicians have been killed — gunned down, burned or suffocated to death — since June 2006. The violence gained international attention earlier this month when three entertainers were killed in a week: a male singer was kidnapped, throttled and dumped on a road; a trumpeter was found with a bag on his head; and a female singer was shot dead in her hospital bed. (She was being treated for bullet wounds from an earlier shooting.)

The Mexican public was particularly shocked by the slaying of singer Sergio Gomez, who founded his band K Paz de la Sierra while he was an immigrant in Chicago. He had scored a recent hit with Pero Te Vas a Repentir, or "But You Will Have Regrets," a love song so catchy that half the country was humming it. Gomez was abducted after a concert in his native Michoacan state, beaten and burned and then strangled with a plastic cord.

Thousands mourned him at sprawling wakes in Michoacan, Mexico City and Chicago, where he was finally laid to rest. "Being a fan of Gomez, this news really makes me sad," Mexico City Police Chief Joel Ortega said during the wake here. "These things shouldn't happen in our country. Whatever the causes were, it is very sad. He was an extraordinary vocalist."

Investigators have yet to solve any of the 13 musician killings. Nor have they revealed any suspects, although they have said that drug gangs could be responsible. The same murkiness clouds most of the 2,500 slayings in Mexico this year that have been tallied by the leading Mexican newspapers in what they call "execution-meters." Those killings involve ambushes or abductions and appear to bear to marks of organized crime.

The federal government has held back from giving any hard numbers on drug-related murders. However, President Felipe Calderon insists he is winning the war against the trafficking cartels by making record cocaine seizures, extraditing kingpins to the United States and putting soldiers on the streets of the worst-hit towns and cities.

The slain entertainers all played related styles of music. Hailing from ranches and small towns in northern Mexico, the genre (which includes Banda, Nortena, Grupero and Durangense) combines Mexican folk melodies with the marching band ryhthms of German immigrants. The music has now evolved to include electric guitars and keyboards and is as popular in big Mexican and U.S. cities as it is in the countryside.

The musicians of these styles grew up in communities rife with drug traffickers, who often pay the entertainers to play at their parties and to write songs about them. The singers perform the drug ballads along with their love songs: the narco corridos have been among the biggest selling records in the country.

The managers, fellow musicians and loved ones of the slain entertainers have been mum about pointing the finger at any suspects or motives. Some have said they fear for their own safety. Elijah Wald, author of a recent book on narco corridos, argues that entertainers are not being specifically targeted. They are just in the same circles as many drug traffickers and are caught up in the jealousies and arguments that afflict everyone in that world. "If you were to drop a bomb on a random party of drug traffickers you would always get a few musicians," Wald says. "Singers also attract the attention of people's wives and girlfriends, which could be enough to get them killed. The rising gangsters gain their reputation by proving how much they are cold-blooded psychos."

The real=life bloodshed has not damaged the posthumous popularity of the entertainers. Sales of Elizalde and Gomez records have rocketed since their deaths. This month, they were both nominated for 2008 Latin Grammys, which will be awarded in February.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineOjom
member
Male User Gallery


Folding@home Statistics
Registered: 10/27/99
Posts: 2,148
Last seen: 3 years, 6 months
Re: Who Is Killing Mexico's Musicians? [Re: veggie]
    #7795904 - 12/24/07 03:08 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Wow, crazyness.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
InvisibleMontanahunter420
Mushroom Hunter
Male User Gallery


Registered: 05/10/06
Posts: 1,188
Re: Who Is Killing Mexico's Musicians? [Re: Ojom]
    #7796075 - 12/24/07 04:18 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

I think the drug war has more of a negative impact on mexico than the united states.


--------------------
All of my posts are purely fictional and for hypothetical purposes.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Invisiblejohnm214
Male User Gallery

Folding@home Statistics
Registered: 05/31/07
Posts: 17,582
Loc: Americas
Re: Who Is Killing Mexico's Musicians? [Re: Montanahunter420]
    #7796088 - 12/24/07 04:22 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

who knows, its bad news for both

Its a shame that we interfere in the central/southamerican countries too... its our citizens that are driving the trade anyways, not like they are forcing cocoa down our throats.

But EntheogenicPeace will be here to comment in 3... 2... 1...

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Offlineelcharrosays
Stranger
Male User Gallery


Registered: 08/25/07
Posts: 1,503
Loc: south east
Last seen: 13 years, 7 months
Re: Who Is Killing Mexico's Musicians? [Re: johnm214]
    #7798105 - 12/25/07 12:04 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

i saw all this on an episode of csi one time no shit. well everything from the music and the artists and the narco corridos being about true events and people revenge killing over them and shit. i dont know who they had playing on the show but it sounded badass and my mexican friend needs to learn more slang apparently.


--------------------

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Invisibletruffleupagus
Male User Gallery


Registered: 02/19/06
Posts: 3,103
Re: Who Is Killing Mexico's Musicians? [Re: johnm214]
    #7799957 - 12/26/07 01:34 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

johnm214 said:
its our citizens that are driving the trade anyways, not like they are forcing cocoa down our throats.




chocolate?

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineSeussA
Error: divide byzero


Folding@home Statistics
Registered: 04/27/01
Posts: 23,480
Loc: Caribbean
Last seen: 1 month, 9 days
Re: Who Is Killing Mexico's Musicians? [Re: truffleupagus]
    #7800154 - 12/26/07 05:53 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Tis the season, though I suspect he meant coca.  :wink:


--------------------
Just another spore in the wind.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Jump to top Pages: 1

Shop: Original Sensible Seeds Feminized Cannabis Seeds   Kraken Kratom Red Vein Kratom


Similar ThreadsPosterViewsRepliesLast post
* Mexico's math problem adds up to a U.S. meth problem veggieM 870 0 06/04/05 10:49 PM
by veggie
* Mexico drug use soars as U.S. meth labs shift south veggieM 1,120 0 05/09/05 08:13 PM
by veggie
* Feds Hunt for Mexico-Calif. Drug Tunnel Lana 1,966 4 04/18/04 10:08 PM
by TinMan
* Mexican Air Force Pilot Films 11 UFO's fireworks_godS 1,381 4 05/12/04 07:54 AM
by Protester
* Mexican Drug Cartel dissolved foes in Hydrochloric acid veggieM 2,437 1 03/25/05 01:59 AM
by MikeOLogical
* Huge Brick Weed bust- silly Mexicans, we don't want your brick weed! 2Experimental 3,893 2 11/19/04 02:36 PM
by 2Experimental
* Swiss Musician Sees and Tastes Music ivi 579 2 03/07/05 01:48 PM
by TheHateCamel
* Ashley Villareal, 14 year old girl, killed by DEA pattern 6,224 7 07/12/03 04:57 PM
by TinMan

Extra information
You cannot start new topics / You cannot reply to topics
HTML is disabled / BBCode is enabled
Moderator: motaman, veggie, Alan Rockefeller, Mostly_Harmless
1,359 topic views. 0 members, 5 guests and 2 web crawlers are browsing this forum.
[ Show Images Only | Sort by Score | Print Topic ]
Search this thread:

Copyright 1997-2024 Mind Media. Some rights reserved.

Generated in 0.023 seconds spending 0.008 seconds on 14 queries.