Can sweet songs prevail over bloody ones? Mexico is giving it a try.
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 2 hours ago
- 4 min read
By JAMES WAGNER
One winner sang a ballad fusing mariachi and hip-hop. Another belted out a song she wrote about a missed opportunity with a crush. A third wooed voters with a booming ode to Mexico.
Their stage looked much like a knockoff of Eurovision, “American Idol” or “The Voice.” Except the organizers weren’t a television network or production company, but the Mexican government.
The national music contest, the first-of-its-kind “Mexico Sings,” ended Sunday night as the crowning event of an unusual, monthslong government campaign involving more than 15,000 contestants. The goal? To move popular Mexican music away from drug cartel culture and toward more wholesome lyrics.
“Here begins the new generation of Mexican artists who show that Mexico does not need to promote crime and violence, but that with love we can sing for hope and for the Mexico we all want to build,” Sergio Maya, 21, the singer who won best performer, said at a news conference Sunday night.
He and his supporters face steep challenges in reaching that goal.
Corridos, traditional storytelling ballads, have been a popular part of Mexican culture since the 19th century. But in recent decades, a prominent genre has been narcocorridos, recounting — sometimes in graphic detail — the violent, real-life exploits of drug traffickers.
Narcocorridos and modern descendants like corridos tumbados — which combine singing, rapping and traditional Mexican music — have exploded in popularity in the last few years, breaking records through artists like Natanael Cano and Peso Pluma.
But as Mexico has wrestled with the effects of organized crime, particularly amid pressure from President Donald Trump to crack down on cartels, a movement started sweeping the country this year to counteract music deemed damaging to society and Mexico’s image.
Critics argued that narcocorridos promoted the violence and criminal activity that have ravaged the country. Several municipalities and states went as far as virtually banning the genre, making it a crime to play music that celebrates the drug trade and other crimes.
Defenders of the music say that banning songs does not address the problems of crime and violence.
Popular Mexican musicians, including Luis R. Conriquez and Grupo Firme, soon announced that they would stop performing those songs, and even faced backlash from fans as a result. Another powerful motivator also emerged for artists: the threat of losing U.S. visas, as one group did in March after performing with a cartel leader’s face displayed onstage.
President Claudia Sheinbaum has said she opposes outright narcocorrido bans, and called for promoting music with different messages instead.
“This effort is primarily aimed at changing song lyrics, so that all of the condoning of violence, drugs, abuse and the disparagement of women changes, and so that there are all kinds of songs, about love, heartbreak, childhood, whatever,” she said in August.
In April, the Mexican culture ministry and the Mexican Music Council opened the competition for online submissions. The theme of the inaugural contest: “For peace and against addictions.”
Musicians had to be between 18 and 34. The songs had to be three minutes or less, and in Spanish, an Indigenous language or Spanglish, and have a foundation in traditional Mexican music. Contestants were split into six regions: three in Mexico and three in the United States.
The prize for each winner was a contract with an independent, national or international record label.
On Sunday, the winners of each region plus a few other contestants performed at a historic theater in Mexico City. Common themes were love, immigration and Mexican culture on both sides of the border.
“There are people who don’t feel represented by these narcocorridos and this is an opportunity to say, ‘Look, glory also comes in another form,’” Roger Gregorio, 30, said in an interview Friday. (An engineer, he performed a song he wrote about his community, in the Yucátan Peninsula, in Spanish and Mayan.)
Over 220,000 people voted online on Sunday for best song (won by Carmen María González, from Tijuana, for her pop tune) and best performer (Maya), while a jury of experts voted separately (their prize went to Galia Siurob, also from Tijuana).
González said in an interview she was grateful that the Mexican government was promoting young artists with lyrics unrelated to cartels. She moved to Mexico City six years ago to pursue a career in music and, like many in the competition, worked other jobs to make ends meet. She funded her own album in 2023, which she recorded in her closet, and works at a restaurant part-time now.
“This was always my dream,” Siurob, 19, said Sunday. “It’s really crazy.”
Several participants and organizers said narcocorridos became popular because they reflected a harsh reality, and also because listeners dreamed of the lives of luxury depicted in the songs. Still, they said they were hopeful that non-narco music would also succeed.
Miguel Ángel Trujillo, the Mexican Music Council director, pointed to Peso Pluma’s most popular song “Ella Baila Sola,” which is not a narcocorrido.
With this new competition, he said, “a seed has been planted of, ‘Hey, if we listen to this, we’re supporting a violent movement in our country.’ And we’re all tired of seeing so much violence.”
Before the final, more than 9 million people had tuned into the competition on public television in Mexico, said Claudia Curiel de Icaza, Mexico’s culture minister. It was also streamed online.
The influential Tex-Mex band Intocable helped the contestants polish their songs during the contest and even performed during the final. And several large record labels, such as Universal and Warner music groups and Sony Music, will be among those vying to sign the three winners.
“The industry, the government and the youth united for a message of peace,” said Curiel de Icaza.
The finalists who did not win prizes Sunday said they felt like they had. All of them will go on a government-run tour of Mexico and the United States.
And the idea, Trujillo said, is that this competition returns annually.