DEL Records CEO Ángel del Villar Gets Four Years for Violating Kingpin Sanctions

"Socalj" for Borderland Beat

José Ángel del Villar, Producer and CEO of the record label Del Entertainment, was sentenced in the United States to 4 years in prison for doing business with a Mexican concert promoter with ties to the CJNG.

Ángel del Villar, who was also singer Gerardo Ortiz's former manager, violated the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act, for which he was also fined $2 million.

After the trial ended last March, which included Gerardo Ortiz's testimony about having been deceived by Del Villar, he was found guilty of doing business with Jesús Pérez Alvear's Gallística Diamante company. This was after the company and Alvear was sanctioned by the Treasury Department for facilitating money laundering for the CJNG and its financial arm, Los Cuinis.

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Owner of DEL Records, Ángel del Villar Found Guilty of Violating Kingpin Act with Sanctioned Music Promoter

"Socalj" for Borderland Beat
 

The CEO of a Latin music conglomerate and his talent agency were found guilty by a jury today of conspiring to violate the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act by conducting business with a recently slain Guadalajara-based concert promoter designated for money laundering for the CJNG cartel and Los Cuinis.

José Ángel Del Villar, 44, of Huntington Beach, California, the CEO of DEL Records and its related talent agency Del Entertainment Inc., was found guilty of 10 counts of violating the Kingpin Act and 1 count of Conspiracy to Transact in Property of Specially Designated Narcotics Traffickers in Violation of the Kingpin Act.

Co-defendant Del Entertainment, as a corporate business entity, was also found guilty of all the same 11 counts.

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Singer Natanael Cano Cancels Concerts After Being Threatened by Los Mata Salas in Hermosillo, Sonora

"Socalj" for Borderland Beat

The performances in Jalisco were cancelled after the narcomanta was found in Hermosillo, Sonora on January 5. The group Los Mata Salas accused the artist and other singers of financially collaborating with Los Salazar, a breakaway cell in conflict with the Los Chapitos faction of the Sinaloa Cartel.

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Peso Pluma Cancels October Tijuana Concert Following Threats by CJNG

 "Socalj" for Borderland Beat

On the day that Peso Pluma attended the MTV VMA Awards, CJNG threatened the singer.

On Sept. 10, two days prior to the narcomanta threats, Peso Pluma was the closing act of the two-day Festival Arre in Mexico City. During his performance of the corrido song "Siempre Pendientes," Pluma held out his microphone to a crowd of roughly 100,000 concertgoers who sang out the initials "J-G-L" in Spanish to reference Joaquín Guzmán Loera, "El Chapo." The lyrics are written from the perspective of a member of the Sinaloa Cartel as he sings, "I take care of the plaza of Señor Guzman."

"This is for you, Peso Pluma. Abstain from performing on Oct. 14 because it will be your last performance because you're disrespectful and [your] loose tongue. Show up and we will fuck you up," Att. CJNG.

The October 14, 2023 concert in Tijuana is no longer listed on Peso Pluma's Ticketmaster "Double P" tour page. His record label, Prajin Music Group announced today that the concert in Tijuana has been cancelled.

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Banning Narco-Corridos

Narcocorridos: Mexican ruling party proposes ban on songs that glorify drug trafficking.

Mexico city - A new proposal from Mexico's ruling party could send musicians to prison for performing songs that glorify drug trafficking.

The law would bring prison sentences of up to three years for people who perform or produce songs or movies glamorizing criminals.

"Society sees drug ballads as nice, pleasant, inconsequential and harmless, but they are the opposite," National Action Party lawmaker Oscar Martin Arce told The Associated Press on Thursday.

The ballads, known as "narcocorridos," often describe drug trafficking and violence, and are popular among some norteno bands. After some killings, gangs pipe narcocorridos into police radio scanners, along with threatening messages.

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The Mexico's Narco Culture

Mexicos narco culture sings praises of drug violence.

On Tuesday, joggers discovered the decapitated boides of three men near a bullfighting ring in Tijuana, yet more casualties of Mexicos rampant drug violence.

While many Mexicans would be revolted by the grisly murders, there is also a popular subculture that celebrates this sort of violence.

Worldfocus correspondent John Larson, producer Bryan Myers and field producers Megan Thompson and Ivette Feliciano report on narco culture.

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Down The Narco Corridor

Everybody knows about Mexico’s bloody drug cartel wars, the narcotics mafia, executions and the state’s often inadequate attempts to curb the menace. But did you know about the controversial genre of music that all this has spawned?

A narcocorrido is a narrative song that probably has its origins in Mexican folk corrido songs—songs that tell a story about what’s going on around the singer or composer’s society. Add “narco” to that and the meaning becomes more sinister.

Corridos have had as their subject things like illegal immigration to the US and gangsters or the lives of Mexico’s homeless, but narcocorridos are about the country’s notorious drug cartels and their activities, very often with lyrics that are approving of such things.

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The Danger of Singing About Drugs

Mexican crooners sing about drug cartels, and sometimes find themselves the victims of violence.

Special to GlobalPost

A man plays his accordion while singing corridos (ballads) glorifying Mexican drug traffickers at the chapel of narco-saint Jesus Malverde in Culiacan, northern state of Sinaloa, July 12, 2007.

The story of a drug cartel hood who dissolved the bodies of 300 victims in acid might dominate news reports and then R-rated movies. But in Mexico, it is also the subject of popular songs.

Santiago Meza, a 45-year-old who confessed last week to the grisly work he committed for crime bosses over the last nine years, is revered in lively ballads with names such as “The Cook.” “I have got many women, and I make a lot of money, because I am a specialist, the best cook,” croons the singer of Explosion Nortena, a group from the border city of Tijuana, where Meza was arrested.

Mexican musicians are increasingly singing so-called narco corridos, or drug ballads, as the nation suffers from an unprecedented wave of drug-related bloodshed.

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Mexico's Forbidden Songs

Can a musical genre be considered so dangerous as to be banned from the radio? Yes, according to the authorities in some parts of Mexico who have forced radio stations to take action in an attempt to stamp out the culture of "narco corridos", which they accuse of glamorising drug trafficking and gangsterism.

Los Tigres del Norte

Corridos, or ballads, have been a Mexican tradition - especially in the north of the country - for at least 100 years.

The songs, based on polkas and waltzes, feature lyrics backed by accordions and brass bands.

The Mexican Revolution, which lasted from 1910 to 1917, triggered hundreds of corridos about legendary figures such as Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata.

But over the past 30 years the biggest growth area has been the narco corridos, which are based on the real lives of drug smugglers.

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Ballads Of The Mexican Cartels

The news of Mexico's bloody cartel war is reflected in a controversial folk-music genre called narcocorridos, or drug ballads. They're like journalism put to song — telling stories of drug lords, arrests, shootouts, daring operations and betrayals.

It's a slow night on Calle del Taco in the border town of Reynosa, Mexico. Lovers sit in their vehicles eating tacos and sipping bottles of cold beer while the trios warm up: musicians with scarred instruments, wearing cowboy shirts buttoned tight across paunches and open at the top, machismo-style.

"In San Jose, Costa Rica, they took him prisoner, now the whole world knows how the ballad begins of Rafael Caro Quintero," the musicians croon in harmony. They're singing an older narcocorrido about the 1985 arrest of a Mexican druglord who is also under indictment in the U.S. for the torture and murder of DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena in Mexico.

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Narco Corridos

In the next coming posts we will be exploring the significance of the narco ballads and how they have impacted the drug cartels and the drug trafficking in Mexico.

A narcocorrido or drug ballad is a Mexican music and song tradition which evolved out of the norteño folk corrido tradition. It uses a danceable, accordion-based polka as a rhythmic base. Corridos have long described the poor and destitute, bandits and other criminals, as well as illegal immigrants to the United States. The first corridos that focus on drug smugglers—the narco means drug—have been dated to the 1930’s.

Narcocorrido lyrics refer to particular events and include real dates and places. The lyrics tend to speak approvingly of the criminal activities.

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