Fonovisa Records/Associated Press The members of Los Tigres del Norte.The government of Chihuahua, Mexico, one of the cities most afflicted by violence in that nation’s drug war, has forbidden the norteño band Los Tigres del Norte to play there after a performance that included songs the government said glorified drug traffickers.
The Associated Press reported that Los Tigres del Norte, whose principal members were born in Mexico and are based in California, performed in Chihuahua, the state capital, on Saturday, playing a set that included the group’s song “La Reina del Sur (The Queen of the South).” The hit 2002 song was inspired by the Spanish author Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s novel “La Reina del Sur,” about the rise of a female drug baron named Teresa Mendoza, and helped spawn a Telemundo television series about the character.
The Chihuahuan government said that the band had violated a city ordinance that prohibits songs that glorify traffickers and that the organizers of the concert would be fined “at least 20,000 pesos” (about $1,600), according to The A.P. Javier Torres Cardona, a government official, told The A.P., “We ask concert organizers and the artists themselves to think about the difficult situation the country is in.”
On its Twitter account Los Tigres del Norte wrote that the band “had no knowledge” that such songs were prohibited and that it “supports, respects and promotes strict enforcement of the law” as well as the “right to freedom of expression.”
A report in the “Arts, Briefly” column on Wednesday about a Mexican city’s ban on the group Los Tigres del Norte after it performed songs that officials said glorified drug traffickers misidentified the city and referred incorrectly to it. The city is Chihuahua, not Ciudad Juárez, and it is Chihuahua that is the capital of the state of Chihuahua, not Ciudad Juárez, another city in that state.