It’s Saturday night at a rooftop bar in downtown Atlanta, and the band Orden Activa is about to launch into a Mexican ballad.
What seemed like a shy and reserved audience suddenly transforms as the opening chords of the trotting polka begin. The crowd rises to its feet and sings in Spanish as the dance floor dissolves into a sea of cowboy hats:
“I’m the ruler of the roosters
Of the Jalisco cartel.
I’ve got fighting cocks
Who duel for my crew.”
With their gently bobbing heads, matching leather jackets and knowing smiles, their act hardly screams controversy – or at least not to the casual observer.
Yet last month, a group that sang the very same song – “El del Palenque” (“He of the Cockfighting Arena”) – was barred from the United States in an unprecedented move that critics say raises troubling questions about free speech in America.
Their transgression, according to the State Department? “Glorifying (a) drug kingpin.”
The song is a narcocorrido: a ballad about the drug trafficking underworld. The band that wrote it – Los Alegres del Barranco – landed in hot water with both US and Mexican authorities recently when they performed the tune in the Mexican city of Zapopan.
That performance, in which the group sang about the exploits of El Mencho, the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, in front of a cartoon portrait of him, not only ended the band’s plans for a US tour but left them the subject of a criminal investigation on their home turf.
As one of six Mexican drug cartels the Trump administration has declared Foreign Terrorist Organizations, the Jalisco cartel is at the center of growing US-Mexico tensions over cross-border crime. Authorities in both countries took exception when video of the concert went viral.
The venue where Los Alegres del Barranco performed swiftly apologized; the Jalisco prosecutor’s office vowed to investigate; and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum warned the band may have broken the law. Then the US State Department revoked their visas.
“The last thing we need is a welcome mat for people who extol criminals and terrorists,” said US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau in a post on X. “In the Trump administration, we take seriously our responsibility over foreigners’ access to our country.” The band apologized on Facebook the next day.
While songs about the drug trade have been censored on and off in Mexico for years, observers say increasing pressure from the Trump administration to clamp down on cartels has fueled a new wave of bans on public performance of narcocorridos in several Mexican states. Even more worryingly, they say, are signs that Mexican bands are beginning to self-censor in the fear that upsetting US authorities could compromise their ability to tour.
The action against Los Alegres del Barranco is the first time the State Department has punished a Mexican band in this way, according to Elijah Wald, author of an English-language guide to the genre. Some critics paint it as the latest anti-Mexico move by the Trump administration, which has already strained ties with its immigration crackdowns and tariff policies.
“(These bands) have been saved up to now by the fact that nobody spoke Spanish,” Wald said. “And when I say ‘nobody,’ I mean the people who are enforcing this kind of silliness. The revoking of visas obviously has very little to do with the songs. It has to do with a politics of revoking visas.”
Old tradition, modern appeal
The State Department’s rebuke may have ruined Los Alegres del Barranco’s planned US tour, but it has done little to dent the popularity of either the band or the genre. If anything, it gave both a boost.
Figures from Billboard show the band subsequently gained over 2 million new listens on streaming services, proof if any were needed of the enduring modern appeal of a genre rooted in 19th century folk music that has long romanticized outlaws, outcasts and underdogs.
Early corridos or ballads celebrated the exploits of “famous bandits, generals, sometimes horses, sometimes fighting roosters as well,” according to Sam Quinones, a writer who covers music and the drug trade in Mexico and California.
“It was almost like a musical newspaper,” Quinones said. “This became a very common kind of entrenched genre of popular music.”
During Prohibition in the 1920s, a new subgenre – the narcocorrido – emerged to tell the tales of those smuggling illicit alcohol from Mexico to the United States, explained author Wald.
A century later and that subgenre is still booming. The most popular musical artist among US YouTube users in 2023 was not Taylor Swift, but the narcocorrido singer Peso Pluma.
Corrupted art form or moral panic?
But experts say a cultural shift took place when drug traffickers began paying musicians to write songs about themselves in the mid-1980s, when the legendary “King of Corridos” Chalino Sanchez began accepting commissions.
“He wasn’t necessarily the first, but he was the key figure in that shift, which significantly changed the economics of the business,” Wald said. “It meant anybody with money could commission a laudatory corrido.”
Since then, many singers and groups “have been sponsored by or have performed for specific figures in the narco-world, and are thought of as being aligned with particular cartels,” Wald said, leading to a situation that’s “definitely dangerous for the artists.”
Case in point: Chalino Sanchez was shot dead after a concert in Sinaloa in 1992. His murder remains unsolved.
Some fans, like Quinones – who is writing a biography of Sanchez – are critical of this shift.
“The corrido used to be about a simple man going up against power, knowing he was doomed, knowing he was going to die and fighting anyway,” Quinones said. “It became corrupted, in my opinion, when it became in praise of power, in praise of these bloodthirsty men with enormous power who killed wantonly.”
Others, though, dismiss the notion that narcocorridos encourage the violence and crime they portray, likening them to gangster-rap, video games or films like The Godfather.
“People say, ‘Oh, parents, don’t let your kid play Call of Duty, or your kid’s gonna grow up to be a shooter!’” said Ray Mancias, a 19-year-old guitarist who performed after Orden Activa at the show in Atlanta.
“I think that’s the way they’re seeing (narcocorridos) as well. They think if all these kids keep listening to it, that they’re going to get influenced by it and they’re going to start doing it. But at the end of the day, the way you grow up is your parents. No music is going to change that.”
Noel Flores – one of Orden Activa’s two singers – suggests authorities that try to ban narcocorridos risk shooting themselves in the foot.
“That’s just gonna make people want it more,” Flores said.
Canceling corridos
While some Mexican states have tried to ban the songs, and the US State Department their singers, Mexico’s President Sheinbaum has taken a softer approach – ruling out a nationwide ban and proposing instead that the government promote music about peace and love as an alternative – a position that has led to some ridicule.
“She’s trying the rather comical alternative of trying to sponsor nice music that people will listen to instead, which is charming,” Wald said. “But no, that’s not going to work.”
Of course, if authorities can’t find a way through the debate, it’s not only the bands that will lose, but fans in both Mexico and the US.
“With everything going on with (Trump), as a Mexican, cancelling corridos makes us feel more ‘less,’” said Emmanuel Gonzalez, who attended the concert in Atlanta.
Other fans have been rowdier about the idea of cancelling corridos.
When the singer Luis R. Conriquez refused to play drug-themed music at an April concert in Texcoco, Mexico, citing a local ban, he told the booing audience, “There are no corridos tonight. Should we just go home?”
They answered by trashing the stage. (Conriquez later defended his decision, saying he “must follow the new rules the government has set regarding corridos.”)
Oswaldo Zavala, a professor of literature and expert on narcoculture, says many musicians are self-censoring not out of deference to Mexican authorities, but “in response to Donald Trump’s presidency… the fear that (Trump) may revoke their visas that allow them to perform and produce their music in the US.”
A few days after their Atlanta concert, Orden Activa posted a video of their performance alongside the caption: “Let’s see if they don’t take away our visa. Don’t believe it’s a joke.”
Still, amid the fears there are those that take comfort in the irony that driving underground a form of music that has always celebrated outlaws will likely make it only more popular.
As another member of the audience in Atlanta, Violet Uresti, puts it: “I like the vibe. I like the way it brings people together. If they ban it, we’re still gonna listen to it.”