Gerardo Ortiz arrest brings Mexico’s history of 'narcocorridos' into focus

The music video opened with sex scenes inside a bathroom and shows of love and affection. By the end, a male lover had been shot dead from a bullet to the face and the woman caught cheating with him tied up, groped, gagged and thrown into the trunk of a car. In the last scene, the car she's locked in is set on fire.

Well-known Mexican singer Gerardo Ortiz's graphic and controversial "Fuiste Mia" ("You Were Mine") video racked up some 30 million views before it was finally taken down in March, following weeks of outcry from across Mexico over the horrific violence it portrayed.

Ortiz, who played the video's drug lord and dishonored boyfriend, is often described as a singer of narcocorridos, or narco ballads. Though they sound like mariachi and polka, the songs chronicle Mexico's violent drug wars. According to some reports, Ortiz's video was filmed at a home linked to drug trafficking.

In July, outrage over the video culminated in Ortiz's arrest by federal police at the Guadalajara airport, for the charge of advocating crime in the video. He posted bail and was released the following day. The video was especially dire, critics said, in a country notoriously violent for women, where six women are murdered per day, often tied to drug-related violence.

Ortiz's arrest has led to claims that Mexico is repressing freedom of expression. And now, the country is embroiled in a debate about narcocorridos. With their roots in songs from the Mexican Revolution, the ballads have evolved over the years, especially since Mexico became mired in violent drug wars a decade ago.

The birth of corridos

During the Mexican Revolution, corridos were popular songs with rhythms based on the polka and the waltz, played with instruments typical of the northern region, like the guitar, accordion, snare, tololoche (similar to a European double bass) and fife. The songs told stories of courageous fugitives, gunmen and horses, painted generals as mythical heroes and recounted battles in great detail. Then came the corridos villistas, dedicated to the exploits of Pancho Villa, such as 'Catarino y los rurales', which tells the story of a battle between one man (Catarino) and 100 rural men. Catarino, according to the song, healed his battle wounds with saliva.

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The origin of narcocorridos

In the post-Revolution 1920s, Chinese immigrants realized that the earth beneath Sinaloa was optimal for opium production, and opium and poppy plants began to sprout up. That marked the drug's trade route through Mexican territory to the United States, as well as a new chapter in the corrido story. In the early 30s, the cultivation and marketing of drugs and associated violence became part of daily life in Sinaloa. Naturally, musicians began to narrate these events.

Among the first corridos about drug trafficking was "El Pablote," by Jose Rosales, which was recorded in 1931 in El Paso, Texas. The song talks about Pablo Gonzalez, a Chihuahuan capo from the early 20th century. Most corridos disparaged drug trafficking; "Por morfino y cocaína" ("Because of morphine and cocaine") by Manuel Cuellar Valdez, and "El contrabandista" ("The smuggler") by Juan Gaytan were both recorded in 1934 and written from the point of view of jailed drug dealers.

Narcocorridos as we know them now

After a half century of drug trafficking shaped Sinaloa’s culture, the 1970s saw the beginning of a modern corrido style, which lauds the capos and their illegal business dealings as great feats of adventure. For instance, the legendary mega hit "Contrabando y traición" ("Contraband and Betrayal"), also known as "Camelia la Tejana" ("Camelia The Texan"), was written by Angel Gonzalez in 1972 and popularized by Los Tigres del Norte in 1973. It tells of the drug dealing couple Emilio Varela and Camelia La Tejana, who carry loads of marijuana from Tijuana to Los Angeles hidden in the tires of their car. After collecting their money, Emilio confesses to Camelia that he plans to meet his true love in San Francisco. A betrayed Camelia then kills him. This type of corrido, more rooted in everyday life, was popularized by Los Tigres del Norte in the 70s, Los Tucanes de Tijuana in the 80s and Chalino Sanchez in the 90s.

Twiins Music Group

A new wave of artists emerged in the early 2000s under the Twiins Music Group label, founded in 1997 by twins Omar and Adolfo Valenzuela. The twins were born in Sinaloa, where they grew up with their father, a veteran of the local Sinaloa scene who played in the well-respected Banda Tierra, which played at parties funded by drug mafiosos like Felix Gallardo and Caro Quintero. In an interview with VICE, Adolfo said his father would often play at parties for three days in a row. "They weren’t allowed to talk, they had to remain there until the capo wanted," he said. Their father did not want his children to end up playing those same parties, so he sent them to the United States when they were 14, where they lived with their aunt in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of east Los Angeles.

The Valenzuelas went from a middle class lifestyle in Culiacán, Mexico, to being cholos in the projects of Los Angeles. They didn’t speak English. One day, a music teacher from their school, Roosevelt High, noticed their talent and helped them get work playing with Celia Cruz and Tito Puente. Their careers took off quickly. Omar won a jazz award, Adolfo was invited to tour with a salsa orchestra, and both were offered music scholarships to the University of Southern California and the California State University in Northridge. They had to get fake passports and licenses to attend college.

At just 19, they produced albums for Banda el Recodo, like "Lo Mejor De Mi Vida" in 1999, which sold more than one million copies in the US and proved the size and influence of the Mexican-American market. From that moment on, the twins worked to master that market. Their economic model assumes that everything that hits in the United States will be made popular later in Mexico, where the market is much bigger.

Narco-culture

The war on drugs under President Felipe Calderón started in 2006 when the president deployed 6,500 federal troops to contain a rising tide of drug-related violence in the southern state of Michoacan. The active cartels began to receive media attention and to operate in a very visible way, and levels of violence soared. The players included the Beltrán Leyva brothers from Sinaloa, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the Michoacán Family (which later dissolved and became the Knights Templar), the Gulf Cartel, the Arellano Felix family from Tijuana, the Juarez Cartel, the Sinaloa Cartel (headed by Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzman) and the Zetas.

Cartels from the 1980s and 1990s were in charge of transporting loads of cocaine from Colombia. But this was a new generation of kingpins. Smuggling agreements became solidified and soon the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels gained territory. The strength of the cartels led to the popularization of narcocorridos and as a result, these songs were outlawed. The power of this generation of drug kingpins led the Mexican government to focus its full attention on breaking up the cartels. And narco-culture was born.

Movimiento Alterado

In the spring of 2008, a cousin of Omar Valenzuela told him about a shy 20-year-old man from Culiacán who helped him sell clothes in the alleys of downtown L.A. The man was handsome, wrote corridos and wanted to get into the music industry. Valenzuela agreed to meet with him. That night, Alfredo Rios was waiting outside Valenzuela's house with a battered acoustic guitar. He introduced himself and began to sing one of his songs. Halfway through, Valenzuela said he was going to make him a soloist. That day, Alfredo "The Komander" Ríos became the star that Twiins Music Group needed.

The Movimiento alterado, or the Alertness Movement, is a trend in narcocorrido music with violent and explicit lyrics about the war on drugs and the atrocities experienced in states like Guerrero, Sinaloa, Chihuahua, Tamaulipas and Baja California. Clashes between government troops, drug cartels and paramilitary groups are the main sources of inspiration for these artists.

The level of detail in the lyrics, coupled with an attempt by the government to halt the spread of narco-culture by banning narcocorridos on the radio, forced these singers to publish their videos on YouTube and promote their songs through social networks. As a result, the digital reach and speed of the genre grew. These were corridos for a new generation.

In 2010, Los BuKnas composed the Alertness Movement anthem, "Bloodthirsty M1." This song is representative of this new generation of narcocorrido artists and the violence depicted in their lyrics. "With goat horns and a bazooka on his neck / Making heads fly off anyone who gets in our way / We're bloodthirsty, crazy and twisted / We like to kill," sing Los BuKnas, who were signed by Twiins Music Group. It's like the "We Are the World" of the genre.

The Valenzuela brothers want artists to start out their careers in Los Angeles for commercial reasons (though this also happened organically since narcocorridos were banned in Mexico until 2013). The stories in the songs are characteristic of the border region, given the geography of drug smuggling. Trafficking also impacts the personal lives of producers and performers who have migrated to the United States trying to get away from drug-related violence.

While Mexico banned these types of songs, corrido singers in the United States racked up awards, and the Twiins' artists became even more famous. El Chapo de Sinaloa, for example, was nominated for a Latin Grammy for his album "You Will Like It" in 2007 and "With the Strength of the Corrido" in 2010. In 2008 he won the award for song of the year with "The Perfect Night" at the Premios Lo Nuestro and was nominated for best male artist of the year and best band album. That year his single "To You I Can Say Yes" won best song of the year in the male soloist category at the Latin Billboard Awards.

There are three types of songs in the Movimiento Alterado. One type, the canción arremangada, speaks of beer, drugs and women. The corrido is the traditional song about a person involved in drug trafficking. The "sick" song includes lyrics about people being beheaded and dismembered. The songs reflect reality in Mexico, especially in some northern states. The production of illegal drugs began in Culiacán, Mexico, where the most powerful Mexican drug cartels were founded and where a march was held demanding Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's freedom when he was imprisoned in 2014. Narco-culture is now part of Mexican culture and identity.

Following Ortiz’s arrest, Omar Valenzuela added his voice to the chorus against Mexico’s government, arguing that narcocorridos do not advocate violence. They tell stories -- real or fictitious -- that the public identifies with, he told Univision News.

"We live in a hypocritical society,” Valenzuela told Univision News. “At the end of the day, those same officials, in their drunkenness, are singing the songs and corridos of our artists.”

“There are a lot of problems in Mexico,” he added, “and [the arrest of Ortiz] is a way to divert attention.”

Jessica Weiss and Sergio Rincón contributed reporting.