Los Alegres del Barranco’s US visas revoked for ‘glorifying drug kingpin’

[ad_1] The US State Division has revoked visas held by members of a Mexican band for "glorifying a drug kingpin".

Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau mentioned the band, Los Alegres del Barranco, had projected a picture of El Mencho onto a display screen at a current live performance in Mexico.

El Mencho, whose actual identify is Nemesio Oseguera Ramos, is the chief of the Jalisco New Era Cartel (CJNG), one of the vital feared transnational drug trafficking gangs.

The CJNG is one in every of eight prison teams which the Trump administration not too long ago declared "international terrorist organisations" as a part of its technique to "guarantee the overall elimination" of those teams within the US.

In a submit on X, Landau wrote "within the Trump Administration, we take significantly our duty over foreigners' entry to our nation".

He added that "the very last thing we want is a welcome mat for individuals who extol criminals and terrorists".

The band fell foul of each the US and the Mexican authorities on Saturday after they displayed a picture of El Mencho throughout their live performance within the Mexican metropolis of Zapopan.

It was projected whereas they performed a track which praises him as "a person of struggle who loves his household" and extols his exploits because the chief of the "cartel with 4 letters", a thinly veiled reference to the CJNG.

Narcocorridos, songs praising drug cartel leaders, usually are not unusual in Mexico.

Many bands enjoying norteña music - a style characterised by catchy lyrics typically sung to a polka-inspired rhythm and accompanied by an accordion and the twelve-stringed bajo sexto - are paid by drug barons to compose these songs.

Some bands depend on earnings early of their careers from being employed to play at non-public events, lots of that are hosted by folks concerned in or with connections to the cartels.

The track praising El Mencho isn't the one narcocorrido in Los Alegres del Barranco's repertoire.

An earlier track entitled The 701 is concerning the chief of the Sinaloa cartel, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, and the way he rose to quantity 701 in Forbes journal's listing of the world's richest folks.

Composed earlier than El Chapo was jailed, it describes him as "the world's most wished man" who isn't solely wealthy as a result of he has "many banknotes" but in addition as a result of he "can depend on the friendship of the folks", the track claims.

The live performance at which the band projected the picture of El Mencho got here simply weeks after relations looking for disappeared family members got here throughout a ranch that has been described by the authorities as a "coaching and extermination camp" for the CJNG.

A whole lot of deserted sneakers and suitcases, in addition to bone fragments and ovens, discovered on the ranch appear to point that the cartel used it to coach folks it had recruited forcibly or by deception, killing those that resisted.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum was amongst those that criticised the band.

Requested concerning the incident at her morning information convention, she mentioned that "this should not occur, it isn't proper" and ordered an investigation.

The singer of Los Alegres del Barranco appeared happy by the point out of his band in the course of the president's information convention.

Talking in a video printed on TikTok, he answered a fan's query about it, saying "how cool" it was and thanking folks "for all of the help now we have obtained".