MEXICO CITY — The U.S. State Division has revoked the visas of musicians in a well-liked Mexican band after the group flashed big-screen photographs of the infamous Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, generally known as El Mencho, reputed chief of the highly effective Jalisco New Technology cartel.
The band, Los Alegres del Barranco, projected a likeness of the secretive capo throughout a live performance Saturday on the Telmex Auditorium in Zapopan, a suburb of Guadalajara, triggering protests.
The group “portrayed photographs glorifying drug kingpin ‘El Mencho’ — head of the grotesquely violent CJNG cartel,” Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, wrote Tuesday on X.
Because of this, the State Division revoked the work and vacationer visas of band members, wrote Landau, who served as ambassador to Mexico throughout half of President Trump’s first time period.
“I’m a agency believer in freedom of expression, however that doesn’t imply that expression ought to be free of penalties,” Landau wrote. “Within the Trump Administration, we take significantly our accountability over foreigners’ entry to our nation. The very last thing we’d like is a welcome mat for individuals who extol criminals and terrorists.”
The Trump administration has designated six Mexican cartels, together with the Jalisco gang, as international terrorist organizations.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has supplied a $15-million reward for data resulting in the arrest and/or conviction of El Mencho.
The photograph of a younger El Mencho that flashed on the display is among the many solely public photographs of the reputed kingpin, who’s believed to be 58.
He started his profession as a small-time drug seller in California. El Mencho went to jail after his 1992 arrest for promoting heroin to an undercover police officer in San Francisco.
After his launch from a U.S. jail, he returned to Mexico, reportedly grew to become a police officer and mob hit man, and labored his approach as much as turn out to be a founder of the Jalisco New Technology cartel.
His son, Rubén Oseguera Gonzalez, generally known as El Menchito — reportedly the cartel’s former second in command to his father — was sentenced to life in a U.S. jail final month after his drug-trafficking conviction in federal district court docket.
Even earlier than Washington moved to cancel the musicians’ visas, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum had known as for an investigation into the incident wherein El Mencho’s picture was projected.
Mexican authorities have been making an attempt to discourage constructive depictions of drug traffickers, whose exploits are sometimes lionized by bands reciting standard corridos, or ballads, exalting the felony life. Officers view such characterizations as de facto ads for Mexican organized crime teams, that are among the many nation’s largest employers.
The live performance at which the picture of El Mencho appeared got here just a few weeks after a scandal over the invention of a former cartel coaching camp within the countryside about 35 miles outdoors Guadalajara. Human rights activists say many cartel recruits might have been killed on the website, the place searchers discovered a whole lot of footwear and articles of clothes, together with charred bones.
Mexican authorities have rejected the notion that the positioning was an “extermination camp,” labeling it a coaching facility.
The camp, authorities mentioned, was one of a quantity of coaching grounds for El Mencho’s Jalisco New Technology cartel, which is amongst Mexico’s largest — and most violent — felony teams. The cartel has a presence in america and past.
Los Alegres del Barranco, with origins the western state of Sinaloa, is a well-liked band each in Mexico and amongst immigrant communities in america. The band was about to embark on a U.S. tour, with performances scheduled in Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee, Alabama and California.
After announcement of the visa cancellation, Pável Moreno, the band’s accordion participant and second vocalist, mentioned in a TikTok video that the group was “shifting ahead,” and thanked the group’s followers.
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