El Narco (30 page)

Over in more sophisticated Mexico City, wealthy kids are less interested in narco ballads, instead following rock and electronic music from the United States and Europe. They are more likely to be fans of U2 than Tigres del Norte. But narco ballads increasingly sound in Mexico City’s vast slums. Pirate CDs of Valentín Elizalde, Chalino Sánchez, and the hard-core Grupo Cartel rock the capital’s buses and taxis, house parties and cantinas, the melancholy sound and edgy lyrics appealing to everyone from teenagers to granddads.

César said his own father never listened to narco music, singing pure love songs in his home. But César was more interested in the ballads about the gunslingers and crime bosses in his barrio. The more time I spend with him, the more he admits he is close to this world. Childhood friends are
sicarios.
Others are traffickers. He prefers to write ballads about it.

His lyrics go deep into the inner lives of the assassins, describing their conflicts in choosing a path that in so many cases leads to their death. As well as using explicit lyrics, he mixes in fantasies and metaphors. In one ballad, he describes a hired killer arriving in hell to be confronted by his murder victims. As he talks, he bursts out into snippets of his songs.

“For me the words are the most important thing. Sometimes, I have all these weird ideas and I want to get them into the songs. I want to get the message right. Then I make it fit the rhythm.”

He also wrote one love song. Sort of. It is about a friend who was shot dead over some beef with a lover. The song takes the voice of this friend apologizing to his wife for not being by her side, for being shot dead over some nonsense in an affair. It is called “Perdoname, Maria” (Forgive Me, Maria).

I want to ask your forgiveness,

That I won’t see my children,

Crying clouds my conscience,

On the path I have taken,

I want you to know, Maria,

That I will always be by your side.

César has nine children by two women. That is quite fast work for a thirty-three-year-old. One of his young sons follows us around to the photo shoot, and César warmly shadowboxes with him on a dirt hill.

Most of Grupo Cartel’s repertoire is about specific Sinaloan Cartel gangsters identified by their nicknames. He has songs about lieutenants called Indio, Cholo, Eddy, El Güero (Whitey), and verses about the big chief Mayo Zambada. They all describe the traffickers in classic narco glory. As the song “Indio” goes:

High-powered rifles,

Lots of money, in my pockets …

They used to send me kilos,

Now they send me tons.

Many Grupo Cartel songs are posted on the Internet along with photos of the famous gangsters they sing about. Some videos include grainy footage of Sinaloan assassins firing rounds in training or close-ups of their victims full of bullets, wrapped in tape, or cut into pieces. The videos are plastered together in amateur fashion and get hundreds of thousands of hits. I ask César who makes these clips. “I have no idea,” he replies. “There are some sick people out there.”

César admits the group’s close links to the Sinaloa Cartel are potentially dangerous, making it a target for rival gangs. But he says to keep safe, they don’t play much outside Sinaloa and some other “friendly” states. “There is always the risk of dying. But it is better to be a star for a few years”—he grins—“than live like a pauper for your whole life.”

Maybe it was his closeness to the Sinaloa Cartel that provoked the hit on Valentín Elizalde, after the Reynosa concert. Or perhaps the reason was a splatter music video of one of his songs. Or did he mess with the woman of the wrong gangster? Or did a killer’s girlfriend just make the mistake of saying that Valentín was attractive?

A lot of women in northern Mexico certainly thought the Golden Rooster was a sex symbol, with his broad nose and white cowboy hat tilted over his warm smile. But his voice was what won adoration from fans. As well as having the street cred of Chalino, he had a melancholy touch that conveyed both the joy and the struggles of his people, an epic quality like a John Lennon or a Ray Charles.

Valentín’s music was also super-danceable thanks to the brass section of the Banda Guasaveña. Another great tradition in northern Mexico is Banda music, characterized by blaring trumpets and trombones. The sound came from German immigrants who set up beer breweries in Mazatlán port in the nineteenth century. Traditionally, no singers could shout loud enough to be heard over the wail of the Banda. But as
norteño
incorporated electric instruments and speaker stacks, crooners sang through microphones over the din.

Many of Valentín’s songs were not even about gangsters. His most famous hit, “Como Me Duele” (How It Hurts Me), was a catchy dance number about amorous jealousy. But the Golden Rooster also wrote some of the hardest-hitting narco lyrics. One tune, “118 Balazos” (118 Bullets), chronicles a mafioso who survives three assassination attempts. As the song begins (above the sound of horns):

Now three times I have been saved,

From a certain death,

From pure Goat’s Horns,

That have shot close to me,

118 bullets,

And God took them away.

Shortly before his murder, Valentín had a hit with a song called “A Mis Enemigos” (For My Enemies). The words had a vengeful tone, although to whom Valentín was talking was ambiguous. Was it another musician, a rival gangster, or even some politician? Videos appeared on the Internet with the song and images of murdered members of the Zetas gang. Some people interpreted the record as a taunt by the Sinaloan Cartel at their rivals. The tune became popular at the height of violence between the Sinaloa Cartel and Zetas, and some of the films were particularly brutal, including one snuff video of a Zeta who is tied to a chair and shot in the head.

As this video collected hundreds of thousands of hits, Valentín played in Reynosa, the heartland of the Zetas’ territory. The concert was rowdier than ever and ended with the rain of bullets.
⁶

Photographers arrived to take photos of the handsome twenty-seven-year-old lying on the car seat, riddled with lead. He is wearing a beige suit and black shirt, his eyes slightly open. The driver was also killed in the hit. Tano Castro’s survival was a miracle. “I thank God every day that I am alive,” he tells me.

Even in death, Valentín’s enemies didn’t leave him in peace. A video was taken of him lying naked in the autopsy room. Gaping bullet holes can be seen in his chest, his eyes are still slightly open, his tasseled jacket and cowboy boots beside the table covered in blood. The video was posted on the Internet with laughter dubbed over it. Police said they arrested two autopsy workers over the incident.

Following Valentín’s murder, assassins killed a string of other musicians across Mexico. A band called Los Herederos de Sinaloa stepped out of a radio interview in Culiacán and were sprayed with a hundred bullets. Three group members and their manager died. In one week, three entertainers were killed in different incidents: a male singer was kidnapped, throttled, and dumped on a road; a trumpeter was found with a bag on his head; and a female singer was shot dead in her hospital bed. (She was being treated for bullet wounds from an earlier shooting.)

The Mexican public was particularly shocked by the slaying of Sergio Gómez, who founded his band K-Paz de la Sierra while he was an immigrant in Chicago. He shot to fame for a love hit called “Pero Te Vas a Arrepentir” (But You Will Have Regrets), a song so catchy that half of Mexico was singing it. Assailants abducted him after a concert in his native Michoacán state and tortured him for two days, burning his genitals with a blowtorch, before strangling him with a plastic cord. Sergio Gomez was also posthumously nominated for a Latin Grammy, competing with the deceased Valentín Elizalde for the prize in 2008. Neither of the dead men won.

In the vast majority of the musician slayings, police made no arrests and named no suspects. That is typical of the dismal clear-up rate of about 5 percent of murders during the Mexican Drug War. The killings had “all the marks of organized crime,” police say in their standard comment after every murder. Why are they killing musicians? reporters asked.
Quien sabe
(Who knows).

However, police did make arrests in the Valentín Elizalde case. In November 2008, federal agents stormed a house and nabbed regional Zetas commander Jaime González, alias the Hummer. In press statements, officers said the Hummer organized and personally took part in silencing the Golden Rooster in retaliation for the music videos. The incident is still a little murky. While the Hummer was sentenced to sixteen years in prison for drugs and weapons charges, he has still not officially been charged for Valentín’s killing.

As with with Jim Morrison, Tupac Shakur, and Kurt Cobain, the celebrity of the Golden Rooster grew with his death. Knowing his end, his songs sound sweeter, his melancholy voice sadder, his talk of killing more sinister.

“His presence is so strong. He still comes back to me in my dreams,” Tano says. “And other people meet me all the time and say that Valentín is still with them. They are very sad that he is gone.”

Corrido
lovers from California to Colombia visit Valentín’s grave in Sinaloa, keeping it covered in flowers.
⁷
And to keep the star alight, younger balladeers have even written tales about the life of the Rooster. Just like the kingpins he crooned about, the Golden Rooster has been immortalized in song.

CHAPTER
11

Faith

And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.

And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.

And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.

—
REVELATIONS
20:13–15,
KING
JAMES
BIBLE

The corpse of arch-gangster Arturo “the Beard” Beltrán Leyva lies below a two-story mausoleum in the Humaya Gardens cemetery on the southern edge of Culiacán. Nearby is the tomb of another powerful mobster, Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel, who was shot dead by soldiers in July 2010. Nacho Coronel was said to be close to Chapo Guzmán and fought against Beltrán Leyva. Thus in life, Nacho and the Beard were on opposite sides of the war; but in death they share the same earth.

Humaya Gardens has hundreds of other narco tombs in its sun-beaten soil. It is one of the most bizarre cemeteries in the world. Mausoleums are built of Italian marble and decorated with precious stones, and some even have air-conditioning. Many cost above $100,000 to build—more than most Culiacán homes. Inside are surreal biblical paintings next to photos of the deceased, normally in cowboy hats and often clasping guns. In some photos, they pose in fields of marijuana; in other tombs, small concrete planes indicate the buried mafioso was a pilot (transporting the good stuff).

As well as capos, many lieutenants or mere foot soldiers boast magnificent monuments. An alarming number are under twenty-five—and have died in recent years: 2009, 2010, 2011. On every trip I make to Culiacán, the graveyard expands exponentially, with new tombs appearing that are even more grandiose than the last.

One time I visit the Humaya just after Father’s Day. Mountains of flowers fill the cemetery next to banners made by grieving wives. Photos of the young fathers are printed colorfully on the canvases with messages in the voices of their children. WE LOVE YOU, PAPA, YOU WILL ALWAYS BE WITH US says one banner. For these youngsters, the spectacular tombs are the best memory they will ever have of their fathers.

On several occasions, I find people visiting their loved ones. They often bring bands and sit with their whole family sipping beer and singing along to the dead person’s favorite ballads. One time, I sit with three brothers mourning their father. One of them has brought along a voluptuous girlfriend dressed in jewels and revealing clothes. “Our dad was a farmer. And he grew the good stuff,” the youngest brother tells me with a smile and a wink. They put bottles of the old man’s preferred whiskey on his grave, in line with Mexican tradition. The deceased may have moved on, but they still have a presence.

But to what place have these dead traffickers traveled to? Did they ask God for forgiveness? Have they been allowed into heaven? Is there a special “gangster’s paradise”?

Mexico’s top Roman Catholic clerics say no. Violent narcos excommunicate themselves from God, the robed men shout from pulpits. They will not sit beside the lamb and the lion in the afterlife. Some priests in the countryside say otherwise. God forgives the sins of anyone who kneels down and makes his peace before death, they argue. And especially when capos give such generous donations to their country parishes—gifts that have historically been so common they even have their special term:
narco limosnas
, or narco alms.
¹

But as the drug war has escalated, many kingpins have said they don’t care what Catholic cardinals say. If they are not allowed in Rome’s house, they howl back, they will make their own.

The most virulent expression of narco religion is by La Familia Cartel in Michoacán. La Familia indoctrinates its followers in its own version of evangelical Christianity mixed with some peasant rebel politics. The gang’s spiritual leader, Nazario Moreno, “El Mas Loco,” or the Maddest One, actually wrote his own bible, which is compulsory reading for the troops. This sounds so nuts I thought it was another drug war myth. Until I got my hands on a copy of his “good” book. It is not an easy bedtime read.