I like to work
And if the order is to kill
that is not questioned
The stanza is from Sparrowhawk II, a song performed by Mexican Peso Pluma, 24, and his cousin Tito Double P. It has 56 million views on YouTube. It is not one of Peso Pluma's greatest hits, but it is the type of lyrics that have made part of Chilean society uncomfortable, especially politicians, who have been advocating for days for the Viña del Mar Festival to cancel the artist's participation. They consider that his songs are an apology for drug trafficking and violence and that giving him a platform in the massive musical contest implies normalizing drug culture. The debate over his participation has escalated to the presidential palace of La Moneda and Congress. The academy, for its part, is divided between those who advocate suspending the show and those who defend that this will not change the fact that young people listen to it. What it will do, they propose, is close a discussion, when the security crisis that the country is going through forces it to be opened.
Peso Pluma is not an artist that receives much media attention in Chile. His name did come up when the magazine Rolling Stone named his song best song of 2023 She dances Alone or when he overflowed the Movistar Arena as part of his international tour that raised 1.8 million dollars. An opinion column by sociologist Alberto Mayol, however, changed the situation last week by proposing that in a public event, broadcast on a state channel, he would give a platform to a promoter of narco culture.
The text caused several shocks. Representative Joanna Pérez, of the centrist Democrats party, presented a bill to prohibit the participation of artists who promote drug trafficking and other criminal activities in massive events financed with public resources, while the board of Chilean National Television (TVN) , the public television channel that is in charge of part of the management and transmission of the Viña del Mar Festival, requested this Tuesday to cancel the participation of the Mexican singer, arguing that “it cannot share, transmit, or promote repertoires alluding to violence, drug trafficking and other elements related to the so-called narcoculture.” Now, the Municipality of Viña del Mar and Canal 13, the other members of the festival commission, must make a decision.
So far, Mayor Macarena Ripamonti, a member of the Democratic Revolution of the Frente Amplio, has not commented on the controversy. For the festival, the television channels, which act as producers of the event, must propose a list of artists to the municipality and this is the one that approves or discards each one. This newspaper tried to contact Mayor Ripamontti without success.
“If this matter escalated as it did, it is not because the column is extraordinary nor because the amount of public that regularly reads me is gigantic,” Mayol tells EL PAÍS. “It was because, precisely, it touched the heartstrings. He awakened the feeling that we at least have to discuss this problem seriously at the political level and not remain inactive.” Marisol García, a journalist specialized in Chilean popular music, considers it necessary to debate popular music and its links to violence and its effects, but she believes that this discussion far exceeds the figure of Peso Pluma. “In recent years there has been a neglect in what is developing in trap, where minors appear with weapons or apologies for violence. “It is necessary to discuss it, but I have not seen a previous concern for this type of debate and I am surprised that it is suddenly established by the arrival of a successful musician.”
The researcher adds: “Some urban music opens a field of debate because it advocates consumption, the eroticization of minors and violence in a worrying way. But I doubt that the noise that the Featherweight controversy is making reaches the levels of greater depth and courage that these discussions require. I don't have much confidence that this controversy will get where it needs to go,” adds García.
Anthropologist Carla Pinochet, researcher at the Millennium Nucleus in Musical and Sound Cultures (CMUS), rules out the efficiency of censorship mechanisms, which can also be accommodating depending on the authority in power. “What happened to Featherweight? That before not many people knew him and now everyone knows him,” says Pinochet. “Instead of banning the music that is heard today in the urban peripheries, let us propose specialized programs to discuss urgent problems such as drug culture and that we are not being able to address as a society. The media can play a very important role, the workshops where young people create their digital productions, in popular libraries… We must listen to those who are listening to this music,” says the researcher.
Chilean philosopher Lucy Oporto believes that Peso Pluma's participation should be canceled, although she sees it as difficult due to the economic interests involved. “It is a danger to the city, already deteriorated. “I wouldn't be surprised if something similar to what has already happened happened, on the occasion of the narco-wakes and narco-funerals,” he says from Valparaíso, where he lives, the city neighboring Viña del Mar. “Apparently, the collective fascination that these young people have woken up pseudoartists In other young people, and in many educated adults (Marcianeke, without going any further), it is due to what they represent: the ability to quickly earn money, fame and power of influence, as an apotheosis of the consumer society and its scourges, although that implies the extinction of the human, physical and psychological, and the annihilation of youth,” maintains Oporto.
The debate on drug culture catches Chile at a sensitive moment. The country faces a serious security crisis, with an increase in violent crimes such as homicides by firearm. A couple of weeks ago, three people—including a 13-year-old girl—died as a result of a shooting during the recording of a music video by an urban artist in the town of La Victoria, a popular and symbolic area of Santiago. Last Saturday, a 10-year-old girl was murdered in Maipú, a popular and populated municipality, and on Monday it was learned of the murder of a man in an area near the crime scene.
Subscribe here to the EL PAÍS Chile newsletter and receive all the key information on current events in the country.
#Featherweight #Viña #del #Mar #Festival #visit #Chile #uncomfortable
