CJNG Cartel warn Peso Pluma not to come to Tijuana

The Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) Cartel has threatened violence against Peso Pluma should he choose to go through with his next scheduled performance in Mexico, Vice reports. After the 24-year-old corridos tumbados superstar played in Mexico City Monday night (September 11), narcomantas — banners put up in public places by cartels to send loud messages — were seen across Tijuana Tuesday morning telling him to keep out. “It will be your last performance because of your disrespectful loose tongue,” they read in Spanish.

Per Vice’s account, the strong reaction to Pluma’s Mexico City show could be due to his performance of “Siempre Pendientes,” a narcocorrido sung from the perspective of a member of the Sinaloa Cartel, rivals of CJNG, especially in disputed territories like Tijuana. “Cuido la plaza de Señor Guzmán” (“I take care of Señor Guzmán’s ‘plaza’”), Pluma sings with his collaborator Luis R Conriquez, using a slang term for the territory of a cartel, and referring to either Joaquin Guzman Loera (El Chapo), or his son, Iván Archivaldo Guzmán, who currently runs the cartel and has a $5 million government bounty on his head. (In “El Gavilán,” another Pluma/Conrizuez collab, they refer to the younger Guzmán as “Don Ivan.”)

Elsewhere in the show, Pluma held his mic out to his audience of about 100,000 as they sang El Chapo’s initials, “J.L.G.,” in unison. Pluma was born in Jalisco (the origin state of CJNG) but is said to have ancestry in Badiraguato, Sinaloa, the small town where El Chapo was born.

Peso Pluma has not yet addressed CJNG’s threats, and he went on with his performance of “Lady Gaga” at the 2023 MTV VMAs as planned Tuesday night. (The night also saw him lose the Best New Artist award to Ice Spice.) As Vice notes, however, cartels have a history of killing narcocorridos singers who cross them. The 1992 Sinaloa murder of Chalino Sanchez remains unsolved, and Valentín Elizalde was killed after a 2016 concert in the border state of Tamaulipas, allegedly because he performed a song about the Sinaloa Cartel while on enemy turf.

The FADER has reached out to a representative of Peso Pluma for comment.