Peso Pluma, One of Mexico’s Biggest Stars, Threatened by CJNG Cartel Over El Chapo Songs

MEXICO CITY— Mexican megastar Peso Pluma was all smiles on stage Sunday as the closing act of a two-day-long music festival in the nation’s capital. He held the mic towards the Mexico City crowd of an estimated 100,000 as they sang in unison the initials “J.G.L.” in Spanish, referencing Joaquin Guzman Loera, alias El Chapo. 

The song “Siempre Pendientes” (Always Ready), with roughly 316 million listens on Spotify, is sung in the first-person style of traditional Mexican corrido music about the life of a Sinaloa Cartel member.

“I take care of the plaza of señor Guzmán,” Peso Pluma sang loudly during the chorus.

Early Tuesday morning, four so-called narcomantas—banners with messages left by criminal organizations in public places—appeared simultaneously in different areas around Tijuana warning Peso Pluma to cancel his upcoming concert on October 14.

“It will be your last performance because of your disrespectful loose tongue,” the banners said, signed CJNG, the Spanish acronym for the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. A man was arrested after allegedly hanging one of the mantas, local media reported.

The 24-year-old Peso Pluma, real name Hassan Emilio Kabande Laija, has nearly 11 million Instagram followers and is considered at the avant-garde of the uber-popular corrido tumbado genre. Known for slick guitar riffs, big horns, and a slightly hip hop inspired cadence to his nasally delivery, “El Doble P” is crossing over to audiences worldwide with his love ballads like “Ella Baila Sola.” He appeared in front of U.S. audiences on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and playing Coachella’s main stage earlier this year. 

But songs like “Siempre Pendiente” are another side of his music that is inspired and derived from the narcocorrido genre, a form of traditional Mexican ballad that emerged in the 70s and 80s, where musicians made tracks about the exploits of real-life drug traffickers. The narcocorrido genre became widely popular in the 21st century and even spawned other similar genres like narcorap.

The open references to the Sinaloa Cartel place Peso Pluma adjacent to various ongoing turf wars in several parts of Mexico, including Tijuana. 

The border city and its surrounding area have long been disputed territories, often referred to as plazas when discussing areas of control by criminal groups in Mexico. The city’s modern drug wars began when the now-defunct Guadalajara Cartel splintered in the late 80s and 90s, and spawned groups led by former members El Chapo and Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada in Sinaloa, and the Arellano Félix family mostly around Tijuana. The power in Tijuana ebbed and flowed between factions who bled out of those initial groups over the years. Other criminal groups have also moved into the region more recently, perhaps most prominently the CJNG. Tijuana annually ranks as one of the cities with the highest homicide count in the country as different gangs continue to fight for control.

In at least two songs Sunday, Peso Pluma openly sang about the incarcerated El Chapo and his son, Iván Archivaldo Guzmán, who is alleged to be the current leader of the Chapitos faction of the Sinaloa Cartel, along with his brothers. In one song called “El Gavilán”, Peso Pluma refers to him as “Don Iván.” Iván Guzmán currently has a $5 million dollar bounty on his head by the U.S. government.

In the past, Peso Pluma has refused to discuss his narco-inspired songs in interviews and once hung up on an L.A. Times reporter who asked. Attempts to reach Peso Pluma and his representatives by VICE News were not immediately returned.

While the musician was born in the state of Jalisco, from which the CJNG takes their name, it’s believed that part of Peso Pluma’s family is originally from the small Sinaloan town where El Chapo also hails from: Badiraguato. He grew up in a suburb of Guadalajara, the state capital of Jalisco, and later spent a couple years as a teenager living in Texas, before returning to Mexico and relatively quickly achieving international fame.

Peso Pluma has not publicly acknowledged the threat, nor made any comment about his upcoming Tijuana concert. But certainly he cannot take it lightly. 

Numerous musicians related to Mexican narcocorrido music have been murdered or died in mysterious circumstances over the years. Chalino Sanchez, who Peso Pluma is often compared to for their unorthodox yet hypnotic singing styles, was infamously shot to death in Sinaloa in 1992 in a crime that has never been solved. Popular crooner Valentín Elizalde was gunned down after a concert in the border state of Tamaulipas in 2016, allegedly for performing a song about the Sinaloa Cartel that threatened their enemies while on their turf.