El Mayo Zambada arrested in the United Statesthe great Mexican drug lord founder of the Sinaloa Cartel and who had never set foot in a prison. That was the big headline with which this newspaper opened the front page on July 25. Ismael The May Zambada was arrested at a private airport in El Paso, Texas, where authorities also took into custody Joaquín Guzmán López, one of El Chapo’s sons. Not even 48 hours had passed since that moment, but the machinery bullfighting was already in operation. José Heredia, known artistically as El As de la Sierra, published Peaceful sada corrido in which he recounted in detail the historic arrest with controversial lyrics: We dropped the big M (in reference to the drug dealer) / there in El Paso, Texas / the business titan falls / he is already behind bars. The Mayo has been a recurring figure for artists of the controversial genre, where their stories are told as exploits. This way of narrating, added to the idiosyncrasy of the corridos, has fostered a debate for decades about the limit between the story and the apology for crime.
The arrest of the founder of the Sinaloa Cartel gave rise to a flood of theories: whether he fell into a trap, whether he turned himself in, whether it was an agreement between Los Chapitos and the United States. Shortly after the arrest, Zambada’s lawyer assured Los Angeles Times that his client was “violently kidnapped” by El Chapo’s son. In a letter released on August 10, Zambada claimed that on July 25 he was going to meet with the governor of Sinaloa, Rubén Rocha. The politician denied it: “We have no complicity with anyone (…) If they said that I was going to be there, then they lied. And if you believed them, then you fell into the trap,” he said at an event in which the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, showed his support for the governor. In that letter, the capo said that Hector Melesio Cuén, former mayor of Culiacán, who was shot dead at a gas station on July 25, the day of the arrest, would also attend the alleged meeting. This Wednesday, the Mexican authorities gave credibility to Zambada’s letter about his capture.
El As de la Sierra, a popular musician in the late 90s and early 2000s, also spoke in the song about the speculations that arose in the first moments of the arrest, before El Mayo’s lawyer spoke and before the letter was made public: The news speculates / that he turned himself in / New Mexico, Las Cruces / he landed on a jet / being such a big shark / the government arrested him. And he also refers to the presence of Guzmán López on the scene: With him came a short boy / he was also very wanted / today Sinaloa is in pieces / because of the news they have givenAuthorities were offering a $15 million reward for El Mayo’s head, and $5 million for El Chapo’s son.
With a hat and shirt, El As’s style continued the legacy of musicians like Chalino Sánchez. Sad Pacific It is a song adorned by the brass of the northern band, a very common sound among artists attached to the essence of the subgenre. References to the famous drug trafficker have been present in dozens of songs, sometimes covered by covert mentions (El M, El MZ, el señor del sombrero…) and other times without curtains to hide his figure: El Mayo.
A low profile
Corrido artists often feed their stories with the reality they live, with their context. In the 2000s, when Mexico was going through one of the darkest stages of the country, the war against drug trafficking promoted during the Felipe Calderón administration (2006-2012), the lyrics of the corridos were imbued with this, dealing with the issue of violence from a cruder perspective. It was the time of the altered corridos. In an interview with this newspaper, Eulogio Sánchez, singer of Los Buitres de Culiacán Sinaloa ―one of the most prominent bands of the variant―, explained the reason for those lyrics: “Why was it sung (about violence)? Because it was the theme of the country at that time (…) Besides, in the region where we are from (Sinaloa) there is the bush, it is a strategic point for drug trafficking. We live with them every day. I think it would be disrespectful on our part not to tell those stories, it is inevitable.”
On the day of the capo’s arrest, Grupo Definitivo, together with Grupo Feroz, uploaded the official video of one of their songs to YouTube, The people of M: And so you know, Mayiza t-shirts (people who work for the El Mayo faction of the cartel). In that song, they make no reference to the arrest of the drug trafficker, which shows how recurrent the character is in the songs.
Ishmael The May Zambada tried to keep a low, almost ghostly profile during his career as a drug trafficker. He has been described as an austere man, who spent his days in the mountains, hiding to avoid justice. “The mountains are my home, my family, my protection,” he told Mexican journalist Julio Scherer in an interview in 2010. That theme is what, at the beginning of August, Los Farmerz and El Fantasma used in their song Mr. May: If they didn’t catch him before / of course they couldn’t.
A cell, paper and pen
Corridos, like epic songs, capture reality from an epic perspective, treating the actions of their characters as feats. The musical subgenre was especially relevant during the Mexican Revolution (1910-1917), when the songs recounted what was happening during the conflict. It is this epic that has heightened the controversy of its lyrics, in which often – in the case of the narcocorridos or the war corridos― It is the criminals who carry out these actions. exploits. Added to this factor is the fact that corridos por encargo are deeply rooted in the genre, songs that arise at the request of someone so that musicians deal with certain topics or narrate certain events. Sometimes, it is the cartels themselves who request allusive songs.
UNAM Philosophy Faculty professor Ainhoa Vásquez warned in an interview that it was important to distinguish between two concepts in which apology is separated by a thin line: narcoculture and the narcofiction. “The narcoculture It is what drug traffickers produce for drug traffickers; and the narcofictions They are produced by people who have nothing to do with drug trafficking and for people who have nothing to do with drug trafficking,” he explained.
In the case of the corridos about the founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, that narcoculture comes to take a leading role. Jesus Reynaldo Zambada, alias The King, El Mayo’s brother, he was arrested in 2008 as one of the four fundamental pillars of the Sinaloa Cartel; and was extradited to the United States in 2012. During his time in prison, he took up paper and pen to exploit a previously unknown facet, that of corrido composer. For his brother he wrote The best knowna song that would be covered by Los Intocables del Norte in 2015: With his hat on his side / his gaze and his smile / he has become very well known / and in his country he is admired / they know he is a good friend / and also in love.
The presence of El Mayo has crossed the border of drug trafficking culture, to the point of impregnating the discographies of relevant artists such as Los Tucanes de Tijuana ―in 2017 they published The MZ―. Or in that of young stars ―and controversial― today, like Peso Pluma, who spoke of his figure in Zapata (2023): Let’s turn on another green one to de-stress / the MZ is still workingA playlist created on Spotify by a user shows the kingpin’s hold on the music industry. With 52 songs (almost three hours of music), nearly 20,000 users of the music platform have already saved the playlist on their profiles.
Sign up for the free EL PAÍS Mexico newsletter and to WhatsApp channel and receive all the latest news on current events in this country.
