Nothing escapes from the terrible, not even the music
Regional Mexican Music not only enjoys great popularity in Mexico, it is also the most popular genre among Mexican immigrants in the United States. However, there are many artists who have been harmed because they are accused of having some kind of relationship with the cartels.
Julión Álvarez, for example, lost his position as judge in the La Voz Kids program on Televisa, the largest television network in Latin America.Now, the inclusion of Pérez Alvear and Leone in the black list of the Office of Control of Foreign Assets of the United States (OFAC) assumes that all their assets and properties that are in the country or are handled by US citizens will be frozen and their suspended visas.
The music promoter and the photographer will not be able to do business in the United States either. Pérez Alvear is linked directly with Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes El Mencho and with Abigael González Valencia, leaders of the CJNG since April 2015.
Regional Mexican Music is back in the spotlight of justice in the United States. After the accusations against the singer Julión Álvarez and the soccer player Rafael Márquez, the Treasury Department has included another Mexican in his black list of drug trafficking: Jesús Pérez Alvear.
The musical promoter is linked to artists such as Álvarez and Gerardo Ortiz, two of the greatest exponents of the genre. Pérez Alvear has been recognized as a drug trafficker. It also carries the accusation of money laundering through concerts for the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) and for Los Cuinis, the armed wing of this criminal organization.
According to the undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, Singal Mandelker, the treasury is concentrating on suspects who work for Mexican drug lords and who support them to maintain their opulent lifestyles at the cost of trafficking deadly drugs in the United States.The accusation of Pérez Alvear is for the presumed help it offers the CJNG and Los Cuinis in order to make use of the Mexican music industry to launder money and to glorify criminal activities.
The US bureaucrat points to a perennial polemic in the country: that of the narcocorridos, songs that narrate the "prowess", the failures and the falls of the capos. The compositions, sometimes banned from Mexican radio, are usually made under request and with the approval of the criminals.In the case of Julión Álvarez, he is not one of the musicians known for the narcocorridos, but Gerardo Ortiz has successes such as Dámaso, the son of Dámaso López, who facilitated one of the first escapes from the prison of Joaquín Guzmán Loera El Chapo.
The Treasury Department, meanwhile, has pointed to the Italian-Venezuelan photographer Miguel José Leone to lead a prostitution network that enrolled models and participants of beauty contests in Europe and South America for the bosses of the CJNG and the high commanders of Los Cuinis. Leone, admitted to the fashion world, was one of Pérez Alvear's partners, according to the Mexican authorities.
The photographer had been arrested in Puerto Vallarta, one of the busiest destinations in the Mexican Pacific, in 2015, but was released a year later.Washington points out that Pérez Alvear's way of operating is through the organization of musical shows at major fairs. Chucho Pérez uses violence to obtain concessions to hold these concerts through his company, Gallistica Diamante. Pérez Alvear allegedly monopolized the entire business to launder money: from the sale of tickets and drinks to parking.