First Trump targeted Mexico's drug cartels. Now it's the musicians who sing about them [View all]

Source: CNN

First Trump targeted Mexico’s drug cartels. Now it’s the musicians who sing about them

By Max Saltman and Gustavo Valdes, CNN
7 minute read
Updated 5:51 PM EDT, Sun May 4, 2025

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Yet last month, a group that sang the very same song – “El del Palenque” (“He of the Cockfighting Arena”) – was barred from the United States in an unprecedented move that critics say raises troubling questions about free speech in America.

Their transgression, according to the State Department? “Glorifying (a) drug kingpin.”

The song is a narcocorrido: a ballad about the drug trafficking underworld. The band that wrote it – Los Alegres del Barranco – landed in hot water with both US and Mexican authorities recently when they performed the tune in the Mexican city of Zapopan.

That performance, in which the group sang about the exploits of El Mencho, the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, in front of a cartoon portrait of him, not only ended the band’s plans for a US tour but left them the subject of a criminal investigation on their home turf.

As one of six Mexican drug cartels the Trump administration has declared Foreign Terrorist Organizations, the Jalisco cartel is at the center of growing US-Mexico tensions over cross-border crime. Authorities in both countries took exception when video of the concert went viral.

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Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/04/americas/narcocorrido-mexico-bands-us-trump-intl-latam