Outrage begets outrage

The leader of a top Mexican norteno group says the band was blindsided this week by an international controversy that has erupted over its new song about the murders of women in Ciudad Juarez and suggests that the debate may be politically motivated.

“I was very much surprised,” says Jorge Hernandez, leader of Los Tigres del Norte, a veteran group based in San Jose, Calif. “The only goal we have is to get to the truth about the killings and ask the government to take action. Our song is essentially a plea for politicians to pay more attention to the problem.”

Over the last decade, more than 300 working-class women have been killed in the border town in the Mexican state of Chihuahua across from El Paso.

Many of the women were kidnapped on their way to work in the city’s maquiladoras, or assembly plants, and about a third of them had been raped. The killings, mostly unsolved, have drawn the attention of women’s groups, celebrities and civil rights advocates.

In the band’s latest album, released this month, Los Tigres express outrage over the serial homicides in a plain-spoken corrido, or narrative ballad. The song boldly suggests police corruption may be contributing to a coverup, and it pointedly challenges Mexican authorities to address what it calls “a national disgrace.”

“I think we’ve come up with a very direct way to express what we wanted to say,” Hernandez told The Times.

In recent news accounts from Mexico City, however, relatives of some of the victims accused the band of exploiting the killings in the song, “Las Mujeres de Juarez” (The Women of Juarez).

“The mothers say it’s profiting from a tragedy. They don’t want it coming out on the radio,” Victoria Caraveo, head of the Chihuahua Women’s Institute, told Reuters earlier this week. Additionally, in a story published Thursday in the Mexico City daily El Universal and headlined “Corrido Censored in Chihuahua,” Victor Valencia, head of the Chihuahua state assembly, criticized the song, saying it adds to “an atmosphere of terror” that is bad for border business because it “generates a negative image of Ciudad Juarez.”

The bandleader questioned the motives of politicians who have called for a ban of “Las Mujeres de Juarez.”

“He [Valencia] says he wants to clean up the name of Ciudad Juarez, and let’s hope he does it,” Hernandez responded. “But it defies logic to think a song by Los Tigres would spur his concern at this late date. If he really wanted to defend his city, he should have started a long time ago.”

Los Tigres are no strangers to controversy. They helped create the narco-corrido in the 1970s with ballads about drug smuggling and violence. More recently, they have drawn fire on both sides of the border for songs that defend undocumented immigrants and attack corrupt Mexican politicians.

Ironically, Hernandez says, it was the strength of the campaign to raise awareness of the border murders that prompted Los Tigres to include the song in their new album, “Pacto de Sangre” (Blood Pact). Wherever they traveled, reporters always asked them when they planned to address the murders in their music.

The group commissioned Paulino Vargas, author of their pioneering narco-corrido hit “La Banda del Carro Rojo” (The Red Car Gang). To remain true to the facts, Hernandez says, Vargas watched a Spanish documentary about the Juarez killings.

Although reporters from many countries are now asking about the controversy, Hernandez says that the band has no regrets.

“What we sing is what we feel,” he says, “and most people share those feelings.”