The US State Division has revoked visas held by members of a Mexican band for “glorifying a drug kingpin”.
Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau stated the band, Los Alegres del Barranco, had projected a picture of El Mencho onto a display at a current live performance in Mexico.
El Mencho, whose actual title is Nemesio Oseguera Ramos, is the chief of the Jalisco New Technology Cartel (CJNG), probably the most feared transnational drug trafficking gangs.
The CJNG is considered one of eight legal teams which the Trump administration lately declared “international terrorist organisations” as a part of its technique to “guarantee the full elimination” of those teams within the US.
In a post on X, Landau wrote “within the Trump Administration, we take severely our duty over foreigners’ entry to our nation”.
He added that “the very last thing we’d like is a welcome mat for individuals who extol criminals and terrorists”.
Los Alegres del Barranco had been scheduled to carry out greater than a dozen live shows in US states together with Oklahoma, Texas, Alabama, Kentucky and California.
Their music and that of different norteño bands has gained a big following within the US, significantly in areas the place Mexican-Individuals reside.
The band fell foul of each the US and the Mexican authorities on Saturday once they displayed a picture of El Mencho throughout their live performance within the Mexican metropolis of Zapopan.
It was projected whereas they performed a tune which praises him as “a person of warfare who loves his household” and extols his exploits because the chief of the “cartel with 4 letters”, a thinly veiled reference to the CJNG.
Narcocorridos, songs praising drug cartel leaders, should not unusual in Mexico.
Many bands enjoying norteña music – a style characterised by catchy lyrics typically sung to a polka-inspired rhythm and accompanied by an accordion and the twelve-stringed bajo sexto – are paid by drug barons to compose these songs.
Some bands depend on revenue early of their careers from being employed to play at personal events, lots of that are hosted by folks concerned in or with connections to the cartels.
The tune praising El Mencho shouldn’t be the one narcocorrido in Los Alegres del Barranco’s repertoire.
An earlier tune entitled The 701 is in regards to the chief of the Sinaloa cartel, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, and the way he rose to quantity 701 in Forbes journal’s checklist of the world’s richest folks.
Composed earlier than El Chapo was jailed, it describes him as “the world’s most wished man” who shouldn’t be solely wealthy as a result of he has “many banknotes” but in addition as a result of he “can depend on the friendship of the folks”, the tune claims.
The live performance at which the band projected the picture of El Mencho got here simply weeks after family looking for disappeared family members got here throughout a ranch that has been described by the authorities as a “training and extermination camp” for the CJNG.
A whole bunch of deserted footwear and suitcases, in addition to bone fragments and ovens, discovered on the ranch appear to point that the cartel used it to coach folks it had recruited forcibly or by deception, killing those that resisted.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum was amongst those that criticised the band.
Requested in regards to the incident at her morning information convention, she stated that “this should not occur, it isn’t proper” and ordered an investigation.
The singer of Los Alegres del Barranco appeared happy by the point out of his band in the course of the president’s information convention.
Talking in a video printed on TikTok, he answered a fan’s query about it, saying “how cool” it was and thanking folks “for all of the help we have now acquired”.
