Los Nuevos Terroristas: The Alterado Movement and The Development of Corridos and Narcocultura in Mexico (Revised)

SCHOOL OF CULTURES, LANGUAGES AND AREA STUDIES (SOCLAS).
RESEARCH INSTITUTE OF LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES (RILAS).
UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL. UNITED KINGDOM.
Los Nuevos Terroristas:
The Alterado Movement and the
Development of Corridos and Narcocultura
in Mexico.

Daniel Brancato. BA Dissertation. Latin American Studies.
1/17/2011

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Contents
Table of Figures ......................................................................................................... 2
Acknowledgments...................................................................................................... 3
Introduction ................................................................................................................ 3

Chapter 1. Historical Background. .............................................................................. 8
The Origins of the Corrido and Regional Mexican Music. ....................................... 8
The Roots of the Narcocorrido. ............................................................................... 11
The Legacy of Chalino Sánchez. ............................................................................. 13
Technobanda, Duranguense and Hyphy. ................................................................. 15

Chapter 2. The Alterado Movement. ......................................................................... 21
The Roots of Sinaloan Narcocultura. ...................................................................... 22
Twiins Enterprises: Mexican Music Made in the USA. .......................................... 24
The New Narco Fashion. ......................................................................................... 26
Corridos Enfermos and Buchones. .......................................................................... 28
The Alterado Movement and the Media. ................................................................. 30

Chapter 3. Monterrey and the North-East. ............................................................... 38
The Norteño Heartland. ........................................................................................... 38
Tejano Culture and Classic Corridos. ...................................................................... 40
Narcocultura in the North-East. .............................................................................. 42
Los Cachorros de Juan Villarreal. ............................................................................ 43
Narcocorridos in the North-East. ............................................................................ 44
Banda and the Alterado movement in Monterrey.................................................... 46

Chapter 4. Oaxaca. ...................................................................................................... 51
Mixtec Migration. .................................................................................................... 52
Corridos and Narcocultura in the Mixteca Region. ................................................. 53
Problems Facing Oaxacan Artists. ........................................................................... 56
El Oaxaco. ................................................................................................................ 58
The Costa Chica: Afro-Mexicans and Corridos Costeños. ...................................... 62
Conclusion. .............................................................................................................. 69
Bibliography. ........................................................................................................... 72
Discography ............................................................................................................. 81

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Table of Figures.

Figure 1. Mexico. ........................................................................................................... 7
Figure 2. States of Mexico. ............................................................................................ 7
Figure 3. Los Tigres del Norte ..................................................................................... 18
Figure 4. Chalino Sánchez. .......................................................................................... 18
Figure 5. Los Capos de México. .................................................................................. 19
Figure 6. Los Capos de México. .................................................................................. 19
Figure 7. El As de la Sierra .......................................................................................... 20
Figure 8. El Halcón de la Sierra (RIP). ........................................................................ 20
Figure 9. Sinaloa. ......................................................................................................... 21
Figure 10.Items for sale at the Chapel of Jesús Malverde. .......................................... 33
Figure 11.The shrine at the Chapel of Jesús Malverde ................................................ 33
Figure 12. El Komander ............................................................................................... 34
Figure 13. Los Buitres de Culiacán. ............................................................................. 34
Figure 14. Burberry pechera ........................................................................................ 35
Figure 15. Shirt worn by El Komander ........................................................................ 35
Figure 16. Narco fashion ............................................................................................. 36
Figure 17. The typical buchón style. ............................................................................ 36
Figure 18. Narcojuniors Vicente Zambada and Vicente Carillo ................................. 37
Figure 19. Alfredo Beltrán Leyva „El Mochomo‟ ....................................................... 37
Figure 20. Edgar Valdez „La Barbie‟ ........................................................................... 37
Figure 21. Nuevo León. ............................................................................................... 38
Figure 22. Antonio Tanguma (RIP) ............................................................................. 49
Figure 23. Beto Quintanilla (RIP) ................................................................................ 49
Figure 24 Don Juan and Juan José Villarreal.............................................................. 50
Figure 25. Sergio Vega „El Shaka‟ (RIP) .................................................................... 50
Figure 26. Regions of Oaxaca. ..................................................................................... 51
Figure 27. Mixteca Regions. ........................................................................................ 55
Figure 28. San Juan Mixtepec, Juxtlahuaca, Oaxaca. .................................................. 56
Figure 29. The Costa Chica. ........................................................................................ 62
Figure 30. Los Faraones del Norte ............................................................................... 65
Figure 31. At plaque at the Chapel of Jesús Malverde in Culiacán ............................. 66
Figure 32. An elderly resident of San Juan Mixtepec .................................................. 67
Figure 33. Los Sucesores del Norte ............................................................................. 67
Figure 34. Alvaro Monterrubio .................................................................................... 68
Figure 35. José Luís Ávila Casanova ........................................................................... 68
Figure 36. Alfredo Rios 'El Komander' ....................................................................... 71
Figure 37. Adolfo Valenzuela and Rogelio Martínez 'El RM' ..................................... 71
Figure 38. Don Emilio Franco ..................................................................................... 72

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Acknowledgments.

I would like to thank all those who helped me during my research, especially
the artists, record producers, music promoters and songwriters who gave me their
time, especially Fabian Ortega „El Halcón de la Sierra‟ (RIP), Sergio Vega „El Shaka‟
(RIP) and Don Emilio Franco (RIP). A special thank you to Los Alegres del Barranco
and Los Inseparables de la Sierra. I apologise for not being able to write more about
you. For those others not mentioned, my sincere apologies, due to the word limit I
have not been able to include you but you have been equally as important in relation
to the whole investigation. Also, to all the many corrido fans who shared their
thoughts and views with me. I would like to give special thanks to my supervisor Dr.
Chris Harris of the University of Liverpool, Dr. Juan Carlos Ramirez-Pimienta of San
Diego State University, Felix Castillo of Frontera Visual and Elijah Wald, for their
help, inspiration and support. I would especially like to thank my friends David and
Abraham Peña from Monterrey, who helped and supported me during my time there
and Javier López from San Juan Mixtepec, Oaxaca, for making me feel part of the
family during my time in Oaxaca.

Sentando en una hielera
Y escuchando un corrido
Le jale un cuerno de chivo
Rodeado por mis amigos
Con los versos recordaba
Todo lo que en vida he sido.i
Introduction


On October 19, 2010, a Mexican singer called Fabián Ortega, known by his
stage name as El Halcón de la Sierra was assassinated in the municipality of Guerrero,
in his home state of Chihuahua.1 This followed the murder of another singer, Sergio
Vega „El Shaka‟ who was gunned down after a car chase in the state of Sinaloa just
four months earlier on June 26. Vega‟s body was riddled with over thirty bullets.2
This incident came just hours after Vega declared to the entertainment website La

1 Seijas, Susana. (October 22, 2010). El Halcon [sic] de la Sierra: Death of a Cartel Singer. CBS
News. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-20020417-503543.html
2 Yahoo News. AP. (June 29, 2010). Mexico Mourns Yet Another Slain Norteno [sic] Singer.
http://new.music.yahoo.com/sergio-vega/news/mexico-mourns-yet-another-slain-norteno-singer--
62002934

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Oreja that reports of his murder had been mistaken.3 In turn, Vega‟s death followed
the assassinations of two more Mexican singers; Sergio Gómez, lead singer of the
group K-Paz de la Sierra, was abducted by a fleet of ten Chevrolets and then tortured
and strangled in 2007.4 Valentín Elizalde „El Gallo de Oro‟ was shot dead after a
concert in Reynosa, Tamaulipas.5 All were singers of Regional Mexican music.6
Ortega, Vega and Elizalde were especially popular singers of corridos, a form of
ballad which has been popular in Mexico for centuries and which has had strong
connections to the drug trade dating back to the 1920s.7 The murders of these artists is
not a recent phenomenon, in 1997 singer Saul Viera „El Gavilancillo‟ was shot dead
outside a Denny‟s restaurant in Bellflower, Los Angeles, California (Quinones, 2001:
22). In 1992, corrido legend Chalino Sánchez was kidnapped and executed in
Culiacán, Sinaloa (Quinones, 2001: 23).

Since Mexican President Felipe Calderón launched his war on drugs in 2006,
over 30,000 people have been killed in Mexico.8 With the escalation of drug-related
violence in Mexico, cartels have become even more brutal in their methods of
execution and torture, beheadings are now commonplace. Such an example of
brutality is an incident that took place in Sinaloa in 2008 when the body of 36-year-
old Hugo Hernández was left on the streets of Los Mochis in seven pieces, his torso
was found in a plastic container in one location and elsewhere another box contained
his arms, legs and skull. Hernández‟s face had been sewn onto a football and was left
in a plastic bag near the city hall of Los Mochis.9 As violence and brutality increases,
corridos have also become even more hard-core, with lyrics mentioning beheadings,
rocket-launchers, torture and a thirst for blood. Corridos, like „gangsta rap‟ [sic] in the
United States, have been blamed for inciting violence and glamorising the illegal drug

3 BBC News. (June 28, 2010). Mexican Singer El Shaka Dead After Denying His Murder.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10429934
4 BBC News. (December 4, 2007). Abducted Mexican Singer Strangled.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7126594.stm
5 Guzmán, Julio Manuel L. (November 26, 2006). Asesinan a Valentín Elizalde en Reynosa. El
Universal. http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/espectaculos/73091.html
6 Regional Mexican is a radio format used to include various genres of Mexican music, typically
banda, norteña and mariachi.
7 The term narcocorrido is often used by scholars and the media to refer specifically to corridos about
drug smuggling.
8 BBC News. (December 16, 2010). Mexico‟s Drug War: Number of Dead Passes 30,000.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12012425
9 Fox News. AP. (January 8, 2010). Mexican Cartel Skins Rivals Face, Stitches It on Soccer Ball.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/01/08/mexican-cartel-skins-rivals-face-stitches-soccer-ball/

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trade and organised crime. However, corridos have had a long and important role in
the history of Mexican popular culture, serving as chronicles of the Mexican pueblo.
Corridos are now connected to drug smuggling as part of a much wider drug
smuggling culture, or narcocultura as it is known in Mexico.10

Most scholarly works on the topic of narcocultura and corridos tend to focus
primarily on three areas; the US-Mexico border region, Sinaloa and California. The
US-Mexico border has a long history of corridos and smuggling, whereas Sinaloa has
a deep history of drug cultivation. During the early 1990s a type of brass band music
known as banda sinaloense or tambora, which was associated with narcocultura
became widely popular in southern California. Most scholars have tended to focus
their work on these geographical regions without closely analysing how the same
topic has affected people in other regions of Mexico. A popular choice of topic
amongst scholars and the media has been the subject of the sudden increase in the
popularity of Regional Mexican music and the development of narcocultura during
the early 1990s, which caused many Mexican-Americans to re-discover and take pride
in their Mexican roots. This dissertation offers an in-depth analysis of corridos and
narcocultura in two particular states, Nuevo León, in the north-east of the country and
Oaxaca, in the south-west.

Nuevo León is where música norteña11 was developed and an enduring
corrido legacy remains in this state, yet most scholars tend to only focus on the
historical importance of the region. The developing trends in music, corridos and
narcocultura in the state have generally been ignored by both the media and scholars.
Over the last few years, a new style of corrido has gained great popularity in the state
and narcocultura is clearly present. As regards to Oaxaca, corridos are also
immensely popular throughout the state and narcocultura is rife in certain regions.
Musical styles from northern Mexico are also widely popular in certain regions of
Oaxaca. However, a general unawareness exists amongst scholars and even amongst
the general public in the rest of Mexico as to Oaxaca‟s relevance to música norteña,

10 Narco-Culture, Narcoculture and Narco Culture are renditions of the Spanish term narcocultura
which have been used by the press and certain scholars. This dissertation uses the term narcocultura as
it is the most common Spanish term currently in use.
11 Norteña (or norteño) – a genre of music which originated in northern Mexico. Also known as
conjunto in Texas. The term norteño will be used in this essay to refer specifically to the group which
plays the music, not the music itself.

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banda, corridos and narcocultura. The culture promoted by the state‟s government
and studied by anthropologists usually relates to Oaxaca‟s indigenous folk traditions
or to the music and culture of its tropical coasts. This dissertation draws attention to
an aspect of Oaxacan culture which has been generally ignored by scholars and the
media.

A central theme in this dissertation will be the Alterado movement. The
Alterado movement is a new musical and cultural movement that is having a profound
impact on corridos and narcocultura all over Mexico and amongst Mexican-
Americans. The Alterado movement can be considered an attempt to modernise and
urbanise rural folk music by changing the rhythms of banda and música norteña and
altering the traditional structure and purpose of corridos. Furthermore, the Alterado
movement reflects the transition of narcocultura from its rural origins to urban, youth
culture. This dissertation assesses the extent to which the Alterado movement has
broken away from its roots and considers its impact on corridos and narcocultura,
especially in relation to Nuevo León and Oaxaca. This dissertation also assesses the
importance of the Alterado movement for young Mexicans and Mexican-Americans.
At the time of writing there are no academic works on the Alterado movement, very
little on narcocultura in Nuevo León and even less in relation to Oaxaca. Therefore,
many of the references used in this dissertation come from personal interviews
conducted by the author whilst carrying out fieldwork in Mexico and the United
States. As there are many previous works on corridos and narcocultura in relation to
northern Mexico and Mexican-Americans, such as Wald (2001) and Simonett (2001),
this dissertation provides just a brief background on the roots of narcocultura and
corrido history. The current state of corridos and narcocultura in Sinaloa and
California will be dealt with in the Chapter 2 in relation to the Alterado movement.

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Figure 1. Mexico.

Figure 2. States of Mexico.

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Chapter 1. Historical Background.

The Origins of the Corrido and Regional Mexican Music.

In order to understand the upsurge of the modern corrido and its socio-cultural
impact, one must first be aware of its roots and its important role in Mexican history
and culture. This chapter gives a brief history on corridos and smuggling in Mexico.
It also explains the importance of the life and legacy of singer Chalino Sánchez and
how his death led to a boom in the popularity of corridos and banda amongst
Mexican-Americans. The reader will also be introduced to the new styles of regional
Mexican music which developed following the „banda boom‟ of the early 1990‟s and
recent developments in the genre. 12

It is generally agreed by most scholars that the Mexican corrido derives from
the Spanish romance ballads which flourished in the fifteenth and sixteenth century
(Simpson & Mayson, 1977: 51). In fact, some of the earliest known corridos are
adaptations of popular romances. Two prime examples are; La Martina, an adaptation
of the romance La Adúltera, of which there are thirteen other romance versions, (Diaz
Riog, 1987: 625) and La Delgadina, an adaptation of a well-known romance by the
same name, of which there are also twenty-nine other versions (Diaz Riog, 1987:
625).13 Corridos inform listeners on news, educate, give social commentaries and
generally tell stories and legends. Traditionally, corridos begin with the singer
informing the listener that he is about to sing a corrido, along with a prologue to the
story. The date and location of the events are also often revealed at some point in the
corrido, commonly at the start.

En 1911
Les voy a explicar muy bien
Mataron a dos hermanos
Y a un primo hermano también

12 The November 15, 2003 issue of Billboard magazine dedicated its front cover and „hotspot‟ to
celebrating the 65th anniversary of Banda El Recodo, one of Mexico‟s most popular bandas. The article
by Ault makes reference to the „banda boom‟. (Ault, 2003: 40). Broughton, Ellingham and Trillo,
(2000: 470) also refer to the „banda boom‟ of the 90s.
13 Two of the the best known romance versions of the corrido La Martina include Blancaniña and La
Esposa Infiel. For more further information on the link between the romance and the corrido see;
Mendoza (1939), Paredes (1963). For further information on Blancaniña see Hernández, Guillermo E.
(2000) http://www.chicano.ucla.edu/center/events/lamartina.html

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Fue jueves 20 de abril
Como a las diez de la tarde
Murió Don Mariano Pérez
En las manos de un cobarde.ii

It is also quite common for corridos to begin with the singer asking the audience for
permission to sing and to be quiet and pay attention.

Pido permiso señores
Para cantar el corrido
De Culiacán, Sinaloa
De esas tierras es nacido
Salvador, así es su nombre
López Beltrán su apellido.iii

However, there is no strict rule to follow. The corrido then goes on to tell the story
and ends with a moral, a piece of advice or a warning to the audience or listener and a
farewell from the singer, known as a despedida. A typical despedida includes the
imagery of a dove flying off to tell the story.

Ya con ésta me despido

Vuela vuela palomita
Y un consejo voy a darles

Y que te pares no quiero
Para matar a un valiente

Y les llevas la noticia
Tienen que saber llegarle

Que murió Tino Quintero
Porque actuar sin precaución
Junto con Delfino Chaidez
La vida puede costarles.iv

Que Dios los tenga en el cielo.v

The musical form of the corrido is a basic rhythm which is consistent
throughout, with short pieces of music between each verse. Corridos do not
traditionally have choruses. As with romances, corridos were originally sung simply
with a guitar (Wald, 2001: 184). However, nowadays there are various styles of music
which accompany corridos, this depends on the region of Mexico it is played it. The
two main styles of music which usually accompany corridos are música norteña and
banda. Norteña developed from the musical styles brought to Texas by German,
Czech-Bohemian and Polish immigrants in the 1800s. These musical styles included
the polka, redowa, schottische and marzurka (Lomelí, 1993: 298). From there the
music spread to the Rio Grande Valley and into northern Mexico and can now be
heard all over Mexico. Nuevo León and Tamaulipas are the traditional strongholds of
the genre (Wald, 2001: 184), with the huapango norteño being especially associated

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