A typical song by Peso Pluma, one of Mexico’s most popular singers, might start with a guitar and a trumpet, sounding like something for the older crowd – but then come the lyrics telling of drug shipments, stacks of cash and diamond-encrusted pistols.
Peso Pluma has produced some of the most notorious recent examples of narcocorridos – ballads celebrating the exploits of the Mexican underworld that are hugely popular not just at home but across Latin America and the US.
One of them – a paean to a foot soldier of the Sinaloa cartel – probably led to recent death threats he received in the border city of Tijuana, forcing him to cancel concerts.
My God but Mexico is messed up.
