Mexico City – The United States Department of State has revoked musicians visas in a popular Mexican band after the group showed large images of the famous Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as El Mencho, a reputed leader of the powerful poster of Jalisco New Generation.
The band, the cheerful of the ravine, projected an image of the secret boss during a concert on Saturday at the Telmex Auditorium in Zapopan, a suburb of Guadalajara, triggering protests.
The group “portrayed images glorifying the Kingpin drug 'El Mencho' – Chief of the CJNG poster grotesquely violent,” wrote state vice president Christopher Landau, on Tuesday in X.
As a result, the State Department revoked the work and tourist visas of the band members, Landau wrote, who served as an ambassador to Mexico during the first mandate of President Trump.
“I firmly believe in freedom of expression, but that does not mean that the expression is free of consequences,” Landau wrote. “In the Trump administration, we seriously take our responsibility for the access of foreigners to our country. The last thing we need is a welcome carpet for people who extol criminals and terrorists.”
The Trump administration has designated six Mexican posters, including the Jalisco gang, as foreign terrorist organizations.
The US drug control administration has offered a $ 15 million reward for information that leads to the arrest and/or condemnation of El Mencho.
The photo of a young man The Mencho who blinked on the screen is among the only public images of the renowned Kingpin, who believes he is 58 years old.
He began his career as a drug dealer in California. The Mencho went to prison after his arrest in 1992 for selling heroin to a undercover police officer in San Francisco.
After his release from an American prison, he returned to Mexico, he became a police officer and murderer at the blow of the mafia, and made his way to become a founder of the New Generation poster of Jalisco.
His son, Rubén Oseguera González, known as El Menchito, according to the reports, the former second in command of the poster to his father, was sentenced to life imprisonment in a prison in the United States last month after his sentence for drug traction in the Federal District Court.
Even before Washington moved to cancel the visas of the musicians, Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum had requested an investigation into the incident in which the image of El Mencho was projected.
The Mexican authorities have been trying to discourage the positive representations of drug traffickers, whose feats are often leiocized by popular bands Corridosor ballads, exalting criminal life. Officials see such characterizations as de facto ads for groups of Mexican organized crimes, which are among the largest employers in the nation.
The concert in which the image of El Mencho appeared occurred a few weeks after a scandal about the discovery of an old poster training field in the field about 35 miles from Guadalajara. Human rights activists say that many posters recruits may have been killed on the site, where search engines found hundreds of shoes and clothing items, along with carbonized bones.
The Mexican authorities have rejected the notion that the site was a “extermination field”, labeling it as a training center.
The camp, the authorities said, was one of the several training fields for the New Generation Jalisco poster of El Mencho, which is among the largest and most violent criminal groups in Mexico. The poster has a presence in the United States and beyond.
The cheerful of the ravine, with origins the western state of Sinaloa, is a popular band both in Mexico and among immigrant communities in the United States. The band was about to embark on an American tour, with performances scheduled in Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee, Alabama and California.
After the announcement of the cancellation of the visa, Pável Moreno, the acordion of the band and the second vocalist, said in a Tiktok video that the group was “moving forward” and thanked the group's fans.
