Pubdate: Thu, 27 Dec 2007
Source: Houston Chronicle (TX)
Copyright: 2007 Houston Chronicle Publishing Company Division, Hearst Newspaper
Contact:  http://www.chron.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/198
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm (Opinion)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/area/Mexico (Mexico)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Felipe+Calderon

MUSICAL MASSACRE

Killings of Mexican Entertainers Loudly Echo the Narco-Violence 
Throughout the Country.

This year should have been a peak for Mexican singer Sergio Gomez. 
His band K-Paz (pronounced cah-paz) de la Sierra released a monster 
hit; this December they were nominated for a Grammy. But Gomez never 
savored his triumph - he was found after a recent concert murdered in 
classic narco-trafficker style, bound, burned, bludgeoned and 
strangled. The killing, like those of a dozen other musicians since 
June 2006, broadcasts more loudly than ever the impunity of Mexico's 
drug cartels and the price all Mexicans pay for it.

No one understands the timing behind the spate of musician deaths; 
perhaps it is grisly coincidence. Family members say Gomez didn't use 
drugs or even smoke. But he did play roughly the same genre of music, 
and died in the same month, as two other narco-victims: one kidnapped 
and smothered with a plastic bag, the other - a rising star named 
Zayda Pena - shot in the neck, saved by surgery, then shot again by 
masked gunmen as she lay in her hospital bed.

Drug kingpins, it's known, swarm the music business. They often 
sponsor young musicians who have no way to buy costly equipment. 
Concert promotion, where 10,000 extra "ticket sales" can explain away 
mammoth drug profits, is a prime way to launder money.

Many of the musicians killed, moreover, played variations of a genre 
whose roots entwine with narco-culture. Falling under the category of 
"ranchera," the sound essentially is Mexican country music, with folk 
tunes punctuated by traditional German accordion and percussion. Some 
of the genre's most popular practitioners are known for their 
"narco-corridos," ballads glorifying the exploits of drug 
traffickers. (Sergio Gomez, notably, didn't sing such songs). The 
corridos are a modern incarnation of a musical tradition that 
predates the Mexican revolution.

Ranchera singers share geographic roots with the traffickers, too. 
According to Elijah Wald, author of a recent book on narco-corridos, 
these musicians largely come from hardscrabble ranches and mountain 
pueblos where the only people of wealth are drug traffickers.

"Essentially, they are the only rich Mexicans in Mexico who have an 
interest in this music," Wald said. Even if drug lords aren't 
sponsoring musicians, they may hire them for parties, or fall in love 
with their female stars and compete with the male stars. In the drug 
trade, where crazed violence is a resume requirement, such links can 
turn deadly. Police speculated that Pena's death may have been such a case.

But aside from the spectacle of well-known performers dying 
gruesomely, Mexicans have other reasons to be appalled. The 13 
musician murders might appear to be a new trend, until you count them 
along with the more than 2,500 other narco-style murders that 
occurred in Mexico this year. Though federal authorities don't 
release these figures, the newspaper El Universal reported that this 
year's total more than doubled the 1,080 narco-killings recorded in 2001.

Ranchera singers might run special risks, but they can't be called 
special targets. Sensational as the coverage has been, it really is 
only a headline for a bloodier crisis: the impunity with which drug 
cartels do their work.

 From the start of his tenure last winter, President Felipe Calderon 
has tried to bear down on them. He recently extradited a major 
kingpin to the United States, and sent 10,000 soldiers and federal 
police to half a dozen states where the traffickers dominate. Yet 
this month's flamboyant murders make it clear who is winning.

"These musicians are wealthy, visible stars in a country that has had 
a huge rise in violence - and people not put in jail for it," Wald 
noted. "What distinguishes them from other victims is not that they 
are musicians, but that we have heard of them."

Fame, though, could brighten the spotlight. When entertainers are 
slain, Mexicans, like Americans, feel someone has robbed them of 
someone they knew. Perhaps that will heighten the demand for the only 
reform that will make a difference: at the core of Mexico's 
chronically corrupt police forces, and in its often-compromised court 
system and government.

Calderon did well to name narco-crime as his top priority. But to end 
the massacre of his citizens, and the resultant bleeding of Mexico's 
economy, he will have to fight much harder, and deeper, than any 
president before him has dared.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake