Chihuahua Fines Tigres del Norte Band For Playing Narcocorrido in Public Kate Linthicum - The Los Angeles Times
go to original May 26, 2017

Los Tigres del Norte were fined after they performed a narcocorrido in Chihuahua Mexico, breaking a law that bans the songs. (Antonio Uribe)

It was a well-known ballad about Camelia the Texan — a woman who smuggles drugs into the United States and then murders her lover in a jealous rage — that got Los Tigres del Norte into trouble.

The wildly popular band played the song — one of their many hits chronicling the lives of drug smugglers — during a packed performance Sunday afternoon in the northern Mexican city of Chihuahua.

In doing so, they violated the one hard and fast rule for musicians who play Chihuahua: No singing about narcos.

Now the band owes $25,000 in fines for violating city law.

The penalty against the Grammy-winning group is another high-profile salvo in Mexico’s war against narcocorridos — a popular genre of accordion-driven norteño music that some Mexicans believe glorifies drug trafficking and violence.

A few years ago, Chihuahua leaders made it a crime punishable with fines and jail time to play narcocorridos in public, saying such performances were “acts against public security.”

The way things are now with insecurity, we can’t permit drug traffickers to be venerated in songs.

In other parts of the country, radio stations have been pressured to stop playing the songs and some of the musicians who make them have been investigated for links to drug cartels.

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