César Renato Suárez, 36, shaved head and goatee, tattooed to the walnut. Friend of the Cartel de Santa. Also hairy, tattooed. All together they have represented for almost two decades the rap version of the hitman. With his violent lyrics, his kilos of drugs, weapons, “the crazy people on the corner”, “I’m not scared of violence, I’m ready for everything.” The group of hip hop Mexican, originally from the brave land of the northeast, Nuevo León, who has made an apology for street violence and has counted in his rhymes the aspirations of the brave neighborhoods of Monterrey has suffered this week a dose of reality. Suarez, aka Millionaire, has been arrested for allegedly beating a 29-year-old man to death in July. The police captured him a few days ago while he was eating at a restaurant. Real death breaks out again in a band that has sold records singing it. The lyrics of the songs have crossed the barrier.
The day Millonario was captured, there were two trends on Twitter that were confused: El Cartel de Santa and El Cartel de Santa Rosa de Lima. The second is a criminal organization that has been fighting for control of Guanajuato for five years. They had arrested one of their operators. The fine line between those who apologize for narcoculture and those who exercise it blurred even more the day one of the members of the music group stepped on jail, like the other.
Having a rap group in Mexico and calling it Cartel de Santa — in reference to the tough neighborhood of Santa Catarina, in Monterrey — is in itself a provocation. Although unlike other genres of norteño music, such as narcocorridoThey did not necessarily praise a drug lord, but spoke to the “kids in the neighborhood.” His themes, with more influence gringa (from the United States) that ranchera, they sneaked into the alleys of all the marginalized corners of the country. And with death, weapons and the parakeet as a flag, they became the soundtrack of the street since the early 2000s.
Millionaire has not been the only one of the group to step on jail. The undisputed leader of Cartel de Santa, Eduardo Dávalos de Luna, alias Babo, who founded the successful record company Babilonia Records, was in prison for eight months for having shot a friend to death in 2007. The case was a scandal, since Babo and Cartel de Santa were already well known, and their vocalist managed to overcome 40 years jail time for the forgiveness of the murdered’s wife and alleging that it had been in self-defense, not intentionally. Also, for a bail of almost $ 8,000.
In 2008 he told it in a song he wrote from prison. In it he talked about how friends he and Ulises Nayit were and that what happened that night outside his house was a mistake. That he wanted to kill another person, the group’s driver, Miguel Chávez, but that he shot the ground and the bullets ricocheted off his compadre. “I remember that afternoon when you came to visit me, just let me know that the traitor of Miguel Chávez was planning to kill me, that he should shoot me, because the vato carga cuete, the only thing he talked about was that he was going to kill me,” he reads. one of the verses of the theme Life things.
Chávez’s declaration that Babo had shot to kill both of them and the three shots in Ulises’s back were not enough for him to avoid prison. And Babo, who like Millionaire, had sung to violence, was the first to cross the line. Until that moment they only dressed as hitmen, spoke like them, moved like them and justified them in their lyrics. Four albums later, Cartel de Santa was still a hit. In 2010 they won a Latin Grammy for best urban music album with Syncopation.
“He who walks in shit cannot come out clean: he gets dirty or stinks,” Millonario declared in an interview for The Day on the occasion of his new album in 2016 Millionaire without crown. He says that he gave the nickname himself, because he wanted to become tremendously rich with rap and that it had saved him from joining the drug trade. A year earlier, a film about the life of these young people from the neighborhood was released, The bosses. And he was nominated for an Ariel for his supporting performance in the role of a hitman nicknamed The bomb.
The film narrated in 90 minutes what they had explicitly described in their songs. How the hitmen operate from within and how they recruit young people into their ranks. The plot: two boys who want to go buy marijuana in Santa Catarina, two “little snouts in the ghetto”, the director Jesús Rodríguez told this newspaper, Chiva MF. And that anyone could feel identified with those young people who had nothing to do with the crime scene, but who one day ended up there. In a reality that many prefer not to look at, but that sometimes makes too much noise.
Monterrey, in addition to being the cradle of the genre of rappers who apologize for violence, has also been the scene of the war on drugs that then-President Felipe Calderón waged, from 2006 to 2012. The terror that unleashed the rupture between the cartel del Golfo and the Zetas stained cities and towns with blood. One of the starkest episodes was the 2011 Casino Royale bombing, which killed more than 50 people. And the day-to-day warfare of this city, the second richest in the country, was also portrayed in music.
Of the man who was allegedly murdered in July Millionaire nothing is known other than his name and age. José Guadalupe, 29 years old, found with a fatal skull injury. The crime was on July 15, but authorities did not implicate the singer until October 14. He had posted a story on Instagram telling him where he was having lunch.
Hours after the news was known, Cartel de Santa published a link on Facebook of the video clip of the song You and where Millonario collaborates with Babo and other rappers like Alemán and Adán Cruz. In the song Millionaire he announces: “I learned in the street, I learned in the neighborhood. Don’t expect me to fail, I’m the fucking Millionaire ”. And Babo also responded to his colleague’s arrest with a photo of his tattooed chest. Between the pectorals a direct message to the prison: “Life goes on.”
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