Do corrido texts help catch drug traffickers? Deciphering an Urban Legend | International

Mexican authorities arrested Mario Alexander Gámez, “El Piyi,” one of the top hitmen of La Chapiza – as the armed wing of the Sinaloa cartel is known – last Thursday in the Jardines de Santa Fe, north of Culiacán. It concerns a white man with a beard and a height of approximately 1.75 meters. This vague information released by the police after his arrest was important in deciphering the criminal’s identity. The mysterious appearance of El Piyi aroused the interest of narcocorrido composers years ago. Federal sources have told media in recent days that the songs mentioning the cartel hitman helped direct the investigation to track him down. This newspaper has spoken to experts in the music genre, who have a more skeptical view of the weight that corridos can have in an intelligence operation.

Enigmatic criminals and popular heroes have been historical inspirations for the corrido genre. El Piyi, a low-profile hitman but with significant influence in the Sinaloa cartel, attracted some interest among corrido artists, according to authorities. The texts dedicated to Gámez portray him as a man loyal to the organization and close to high-ranking figures, such as Néstor Isidro Pérez-Salas, ‘El Nini’ – the head of security of the cartel’s Los Chapitos faction, led by the sons of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán – who was captured in Culiacán in November. Corrido del Piyia song performed by Larry Hernández and Los Caimanes de Sinaloa, provides an example of these lyrics: You will see me next to Nini / I will never leave his side, to me he is like a brother (…) Nice to meet you, they call me El Piyi / And here we are, paying attention to the orders of the boss Iván (Iván Archivaldo Guzmán, a son of El Chapo).

El Piyi’s arrest took place in the context of violence that has plunged Culiacán into chaos since September 9. The city has become the epicenter of a war between the two factions battling for control of the Sinaloa Cartel – those loyal to Ismael “El Mayo Zambada” and Los Chapitos. One hundred people have been killed in cartel violence in the state in the past two weeks.

For Luis Omar Montoya, a historian specialized in music at the Mexican Center for Research and Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS), obtaining information about a criminal through a corrido may be feasible, but not decisive. “Of course it is possible that the information in the corridos could be used, but I definitely think it is unlikely that the Mexican army will rely solely on a corrido to capture someone,” he explains, emphasizing the importance of underlines the violent actions. context unleashed in Culiacán to understand El Piyi’s arrest.

Over the past week, several media outlets have reported that federal sources were consulted by the Milenio newspaper based on songs by musicians from the corridos tumbados genre, a currently fashionable variant that unites the traditional corrido with modern urban styles. Some of the subgenre’s big names, such as Peso Pluma, Roberto Laija and Luis R. Conriquez, included references to El Piyi in their discography. An example of this is La People IIwhere he is linked to Jorge Humberto Figueroa-Benítez, ‘El 27’, another capo of the Sinaloa Cartel hitmen: We go out to defend the boss’s son (…) / 27 and Piyi, to take care of the land, the family and the elderly.

Although these texts reveal some information, Montoya argues that the story of modern corridos “is very poor,” making him skeptical of the hypothesis of the corrido as an important tool in achieving an arrest. The historian points out that the texts can help understand the playful side of the subject and its tastes; but he says this is clouded by the description of virtues that the composers associate equally with the different figures (“they all like women, guns and luxury cars,” he specifies).

Luis Díaz-Santana, a researcher from the Autonomous University of Zacatecas (UAZ), has spoken in several studies about the “increasing” of the importance that, he says, many academic specialists have attached to the texts of the corridos, emphasizing the forgotten playful context. in which they are consumed. “The corridors are spaces for fun, for letting off steam,” he tells EL PAÍS by telephone. The musical genre is closely associated with commissioned corridos, songs created at the request of an interested party in which the composer extols the virtues of those providing the money. For Díaz-Santana, distinguishing between reality and fiction in the texts of the corridos can be a complicated task: “It would be a matter of conducting a very in-depth investigation and in any case I don’t think we would do that with certainty get about the result.”

Díaz-Santana has conducted conversations with composers from the US-Mexico border region, an important area for understanding the genre, which is closely linked to the culture of mestizaje. “All I discovered during fieldwork with these musicians is that when they compose, they do so in absolute freedom, and they are never conditioned by outside influences,” he explains. La People IIWritten by Roberto Laija, it deals superficially with the fulfillment of missions by assassins, without going into detail. “Personally, I doubt whether they were composed on commission. You can see that they are festive corridos, that the composer conceives them in an absolutely personal way,” Díaz-Santana explains.

The UAZ researcher also highlights a certain lack of understanding regarding the cultural segment through which the genre moves – where references to stories about drug trafficking and violence are common – and where the composers use their own codes: “Often (explicit lyrics) can seem aggressive, macabre. I feel that the importance of reading corridos to the letter has increased. When we see the lyrics in context, we realize that what initially seemed like aggression is more of a joke.”

El Piyi’s problem is not an isolated one. A few hours after the arrest of El Mayo Zambada, singer El As de la Sierra was released Pacifico sada song in which he recounted the capture of the Sinaloa Cartel capo. And criminal figures like El Chapo Guzmán or Juan José Esparragoza, ‘El Azul’, also a member of the Sinaloa Cartel, songs have been written about them.

Díaz-Santana’s research goes back many years. The researcher has studied corridos on the figure of Fred Gómez Carrasco, one of the great Chicano drug lords of the 1970s, who rose from the countryside of San Antonio to become one of the most infamous cartel capos, a common story in the mythologization of the character. “The idea common to all figures who become myths, the extreme contrast between childhoods that were very modest and became public figures of great authority, is striking. This contrast causes a lot of pleasure in society, it is something that is deeply ingrained in the human spirit.”

The possible influence of corridos in the investigations that led to El Piyi’s arrest obscures what CIESAS researcher Montoya actually finds more interesting: the importance of corridos for understanding popular issues, as drug cartels use today’s urban corrido singers to create a to set up a political platform. “(This situation) ultimately confirms that drug trafficking is all-pervasive; how it is embedded in all of popular culture, how it is a ubiquitous discourse, and how a kind of popular mythology is built around drug trafficking.”

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