Mexican Band’s California Shows in Jeopardy After US Revokes Visas Over Narco Imagery

Los Alegres del Barranco will likely have to cancel its U.S. tour, including a performance in Morgan Hill, after the State Department revoked the popular Mexican band’s visas for “glorifying [a] drug kingpin.”

The band — known for “narco ballads” or narcocorridos — drew attention from both the U.S. and Mexican governments after projecting an image of a Sinaloa drug cartel leader onto a screen at a recent concert in Mexico.

The group, from the Mexican state of Sinaloa, was scheduled to perform at the rodeo grounds of Rancho Grande de Morgan Hill on April 27. The concert promoter has not officially confirmed the cancellation and did not respond to KQED’s request for comment.

“I’m a firm believer in freedom of expression, but that doesn’t mean that expression should be free of consequences,” U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau wrote in a post on X. “In the Trump Administration, we take seriously our responsibility over foreigners’ access to our country. The last thing we need is a welcome mat for people who extol criminals and terrorists.”

During its March 29 show in Guadalajara, the band projected the image of Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Ramos of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, one of the most feared transnational drug trafficking groups.

The concert took place just weeks after the remains of dozens of missing people were found at a remote ranch in the state of Jalisco, an incident that was linked to the cartel.

The CJNG is one of eight criminal groups the Trump administration recently declared “foreign terrorist organizations” as part of its bid to “ensure the total elimination” of these groups in the U.S.

“It was a lack of taste to say the least,” said Juan Carlos Ramirez Pimienta, a professor of border studies at San Diego State University, noting that Mexican leaders, including its president, were quick to publicly condemn the band.

In a statement and video posted in Spanish on social media several days later, the group apologized, claiming “it was never our intention to create controversy, much less cause offense.” The band promised to “take stricter measures” in choosing their visual and narrative content during performances.

However, the group, which performs regional Mexican music, also emphasized that its corridos — or ballads — are firmly rooted in Mexican culture and folklore.

“We reaffirm that our music is inspired by telling popular stories within Mexican music,” the group wrote.

The backlash against the band may have an impact on other Mexican performers in the U.S. Junior H, a Mexican singer known for his corridos tumbados — a blend of traditional music with trap and hip-hop elements — avoided performing explicit corridos during his highly anticipated Coachella set last weekend, a year after Peso Pluma delivered multiple narcocorridos at the same festival.

Ramirez Pimienta said he’s not surprised that the U.S. government revoked the band’s work and tourism visas after such a controversial incident. However, he said there also seems to be another, more concerning element at play, given the Trump administration’s broader efforts to crack down on immigration and distance itself from neighboring countries.

“I do perceive another element — a political, ideological attack on Mexican-ness, Mexican identity,” he said. “The Mexican population perceives itself as being under siege — under attack — and I think they do so correctly, especially in these times. So that’s part of that whole scenario.”

Although corridos and the bands that perform them have become a major industry in Mexico and are often associated with stories about drug cartels, the genre has humble origins, presenting “counternarratives” from common people struggling to survive, said Ramirez Pimienta.

“At least at the beginning, before it was a huge industry, they were tales from the underdog in order to make sense of what is happening in their lives,” he said, noting the corridos about migrants mistreated by Texas Rangers in the early 1900s. “I like to emphasize that corridos as a musical genre do not have a set ideology. Intrinsically, they are not one thing.”

Los Alegres del Barranco’s song celebrating El Mencho is not the only narcocorrido in its repertoire. Another song, “El 701,” tells the story of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the former leader of the Sinaloa cartel, who rose from humble beginnings to reach Forbes’ list of the world’s richest people.

But Ramirez Pimienta notes that, unlike some other bands in the same genre that explicitly perform corridos — often of the narco variety — Los Alegres del Barranco has a broader repertoire.

“Some other performers, if they were prohibited from singing corridos, they would have no act,” he said. “These guys also write love songs and rhythmic songs. So they would be able to give a concert without necessarily having to sing corridos.”