A Brief Overview of the Censorship of the Mexican Corrido – Part 1

he corrido is under attack.

Juan Carlos Ramírez-Pimienta
San Diego State University
ramjua@gmail.com | juan.ramirez@sdsu.edu

The corrido is under attack. Every day, we wake up to new reports of groups and solo artists being fined for singing corridos, and others who have had their visas canceled or denied renewal to work in the United States. Although the intensity of this binational campaign is unprecedented, the phenomenon itself is not new. In Mexico, there is a long tradition of musical censorship—and certainly of corrido censorship. Possibly the most well-known historical musical prohibition dates back to colonial times, involving the jarabe gatuno or pan de Jarabe, as it was also known. At the beginning of the 19th century, this rhythm was banned for allegedly being lewd and hypersexualized music.

In relation to the corrido, Armando de María y Campos, in the first volume of his book La revolución mexicana a través de los corridos ("The Mexican Revolution Through Corridos"), speaks of a ban in Mexico City in the late 1950s. He was writing in the context of the death of Eduardo Guerrero, the famous printer of hojas sueltas (broadsheets), and also the “death” or at least the closure of such businesses, like Guerrero’s, which printed broadsheets with news and corridos. María y Campos wrote literally:

“Urban organization wrings the neck of the swan of tradition. A municipal ordinance prohibits singing corridos in public squares. The troubadours have to emigrate in search of better climates and less demanding officials.” (p. 55)

Regarding censorship of corridos dealing with drug trafficking and drug traffickers, sociologist Luis Astorga documented the phenomenon in Sinaloa during the 1980s, stating that the first efforts to censor the dissemination of drug trafficker corridos occurred in that state in 1987, during the administration of Francisco Labastida Ochoa. Astorga added that this ban was rather odd because, even though these corridos supposedly couldn’t be played on the radio, a used car lot was being advertised on television using “La camioneta gris” by Los Tigres del Norte.

A few years later, in 1989, there was another case—apparently involving a narcocorrido, but in reality, it was a corrido about the murder of an influential journalist in Tijuana. The song was part of Los Tigres del Norte’s album Corridos prohibidos ("Forbidden Corridos"), which largely consisted of drug trafficking corridos. One was dedicated to Pablo Acosta, “El Zorro de Ojinaga,” and others lacked a specific, recognizable protagonist, such as “La mafia muere” ("The Mafia Dies"), a corrido that, according to composer Pepe Cabrera, was inspired by a visit in the late 1970s from some women from the Sinaloan mountains who were complaining about abuses committed during Operation Condor.

Despite the album’s title, the forbidden corridos were not actually banned—except for one, the one about the journalist. The title Corridos prohibidos was just a marketing strategy. This was confirmed to me by Enrique Franco, who served for many years as the lead composer and producer for Los Tigres del Norte. The title “artistic director” was used in those years. The only song on the album truly banned was “El Gato Félix,” a corrido written by Franco himself. He added that the ban didn’t come by direct government order but rather from a powerful local businessman from Tijuana, who was directly involved in the murder of influential journalist Héctor Félix Miranda—nicknamed, appropriately, “El Gato Félix.”

As for censorship, on the other hand, self-censorship was already a part of what would later be identified as the narcocorrido phenomenon. Jorge Hernández of Los Tigres del Norte has stated on several occasions that when performing “La Banda del carro rojo” during the 1970s and 1980s, he would lower his voice when saying the word “cocaine.” Similarly, the popular singer Francisco “Charro” Avitia would cautiously add a couple of critical stanzas to the corrido “El Pablote,” dedicated to the Chihuahuan Pablo González, “El rey de la morfina” ("The King of Morphine"). I should clarify that this corrido is not the one I have proposed as the first corrido dedicated to a drug trafficker. The El Pablote corrido recorded by Avitia (who actually pronounced it “Paulote”) is a later version, dedicated to the same figure, Pablo González, but written by Merced Durán about two decades after González’s death in the late 1930s.

To this newer version of El Pablote, Charro Avitia would add a couple of stanzas when performing it live on Televisa programs in the 1980s. In one of the verses he added at the end, he made sure to criticize drug trafficking and send a message distancing the song from any glorification.

Charro Avitia would self-censor on shows like Siempre en domingo hosted by Raúl Velasco, or En vivo by Ricardo Rocha—both Televisa programs. At the time, Televisa promoted itself as “the television network for Mexican families.” All this happened during the era of the so-called “Tigre” Azcárraga, father of the current president of Televisa. The corrido in its new, self-censored, televised version ended like this:

For being poisoners
Death should not spare them,
Because they are the cause
Of so many people dying.

Here is the corrido as originally recorded:

And here is how Charro Avitia sang it on open television: