The week in Latin America: Peru's African legacy

Here are stories that made top headlines in Latin America this week, and highlights from our coverage of the region by Times reporters and your blogger here at La Plaza:

Significant court ruling in Mexico

In Mexico, the Supreme Court ruled that human-rights abuse claims against the military must be tried in civilian courts and no longer in closed-door military tribunals.

The ruling presents a test to Mexico's fledgling civilian justice system, still in dire need of reform, as well as President Felipe Calderon's military-led strategy against organized crime. Abuse claims against Mexico's armed forces have skyrocketed since soldiers and marines were dispatched to the streets in 2006 to combat the country's drug cartels.

Searching for the missing children of El Salvador

Times correspondent Ken Ellingwood was recently in El Salvador, where he reported a profile of an organization, named Pro-Busqueda, which uses the modern tools of social media as well as "old–fashioned grunt work" to locate missing children from El Salvador's brutal civil war.

Read the story here. 

Excavating Afro-Peruvian history

From Peru, Times correspondent Tracy Wilkinson offers a look at an acclaimed singer who is seeking to reclaim and celebrate the country's rich history of African migration and culture.

One such icon of the Afro-Peruvian past, says singer Susana Baca, is the instrument known as the cajon, or box, which Baca has incorporated into her records. "A lot of people saw this as the music of the slaves," she explains. "They were ashamed of it."

Gun scandal grows in the United States

With wide implications for Mexico and its conflict against organized crime, the Fast and Furious gun-running scandal continued to reverberate north of the border. This week, the federal government imposed a tougher rule for the reporting of semiautomatic weapon sales in border states.

Revelations from the scandal, in which deadly weapons were knowingly "walked" into Mexico by U.S. agents, confirm that the United States government has been essentially arming both sides of the drug war in Mexico.

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Photo: Peruvian singer Susana Baca, left, in the village of Santa Barbara, Peru. Credit: Giancarlo Aponte, For The Times

A senseless end for Facundo Cabral, and shame in Guatemala

The brutality and senselessness of armed conflicts in Latin America -- guerrillas, cartels, paramilitaries -- can often seem to know no boundaries. In shootouts and massacres, civilians and migrants usually make up the bulk of the victims, no matter the era.

Facundo Cabral, the folk singer from Argentina who was killed in Guatemala City on Saturday by gunfire reportedly not intended for him, was as civilian and migratory as you can get in Latin America.

Cabral was eighth-born to a poor family in Buenos Aires in 1937, and later grew up in the far southern tip of Argentina, the province of Tierra del Fuego. He ran away from home at age 9 with the intent of making it back to the capital and seeking a meeting with then-President Juan Peron. The boy, gone for four months, had heard Peron "gave jobs to the poor" (links in Spanish).

His singing career took off in 1970 with an international hit, "No soy de aquí, ni soy de allá," or "I'm Not From Here, and Not from There." In spoken verse that precedes one famous video recording of the song, Cabral says, "I am not liberty, but I am he who provokes it." Cabral's greatest hit has been recorded some 700 times and in 27 languages.

After the rise of the military junta in Argentina, the singer went into exile for a time in Mexico. By 1996, he was designated a United Nations "Worldwide Messenger of Peace." Cabral, 74, toured and performed actively across the region, which is what took him for a planned series of concerts in Central America beginning last week.

He performed in Guatemala City on Tuesday and in the city of Quetzaltenango on Thursday. Early on Saturday morning, while riding to the airport, the vehicle Cabral rode in was ambushed in what authorities suspect was an organized-crime hit intended for his promoter Henry Farina, a Nicaraguan.

As of Tuesday, police in Guatemala have arrested two men in connection to the attack. Cabral's body arrived to a stricken Argentina Tuesday, carried by a Mexican air force jet.

Mourning and a sense of national shame have taken hold among many in the troubled Central American nation where the beloved folk singer died. His killing was seen as yet another senseless death in a country with one of the worst crises of violence and impunity in the region. Mexican drug cartels, pushing south, are invading territory and threatening entire governments.

Artists, performers and human rights activists have reacted with regret and soul-searching in recent days. In a letter to a newspaper, the Guatemalan singer Ricardo Arjona wrote: "As a Guatemalan, I deeply regret the impact this news will generate among international opinion. As a friend and colleague, I will lament the absence of Facundo forever."

Fans gathered before the National Palace in Guatemala City on Saturday, expressing further shock, sadness and anger. One sign held by a mourner read: "Sorry to the world for the assassination of Facundo." Guatemalans want peace and justice, the gathered said in signs, "not just for Facundo Cabral but for the future of our children."

President Alvaro Colom has declared three days of national mourning.

In what would be one of his final concerts in Guatemala City on Tuesday, Cabral told his audience: "I have given you my thanks. I will thank them in Quetzaltenango. And after that, whatever God wishes, because he knows what he does."

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Image: A 1973 poster for a Facundo Cabral concert at the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City. Credit: El Pueblo de Tierra.

Pop star Kalimba freed in Mexico, in a case that grabbed headlines

A judge in a city on Mexico's Caribbean coast ruled there was insufficient evidence to try pop singer Kalimba on rape charges, ordering him released and ending a case that for weeks generated snickering front-page headlines in the Mexican press.

Kalimba had been accused of sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl in a hotel room in Chetumal, in Quintana Roo state, after a night of partying in December. The performer denied the accusations in television interviews. A day after a judge ordered him detained to face the charges, the singer, 28, was arrested in Texas on an immigration infraction and sent to the Yucatan Peninsula.

Kalimba Marichal is a former member of the pop group OV7 and was the voice of Simba in the Latin American version of "The Lion King."

His case was a boon for tabloid headline-writers. The same day that he was arrested in Texas, authorities in Mexico state announced the capture of a suspected hitman in Ciudad Nezahualcoyotl, Damian Ramirez Encinas, also known as "El Kalimba." The tabloid Metro juxtaposed the two arrests with the headline, seen above: "The Original and the Pirated Copy."

But the case also cast attention on Mexico's dysfunctional justice system, as Reuters notes. Kalimba emerged Thursday from the Chetumal jail where he was being held with tears in his eyes, thanking God.

Kalimba was reportedly working on an English-language record in Texas, but the singer hasn't announced it. Watch Kalimba convincingly perform a cover of the Jose Jose classic "El Triste" in a well-known clip, a difficult feat for any vocalist.

— Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Photo: The front-page of the Mexico City tabloid Metro, Jan. 21, 2011. Credit: DJgeo.tumblr.com.

Kalimba, Mexican pop star, sought on rape allegations [UPDATED]

UPDATE: News outlets in Mexico were reporting Thursday evening that Kalimba has been detained by U.S. immigration authorities in Texas. Details were not immediately available.

 

A Mexican judge in the Caribbean state of Quintana Roo on Wednesday ordered the arrest of pop singer Kalimba on charges that he sexually assaulted a teenage girl in a hotel room in December.

Authorities in the tourism-heavy state have alerted the attorney general in Mexico City, where Kalimba lives, that an arrest warrant has been issued for him, and law enforcement authorities in other states have also been notified (link in Spanish).

Since the allegations surfaced late last month, the case has snowballed in typical gossip fashion, mixing sex, celebrity and race.

Kalimba was in Chetumal, a city south of Cancun near the border with Belize, on the night of Dec. 18 for a DJ gig at a venue called Buda Bar. He reportedly was accompanied back to his hotel by a manager and two teenage girls who worked at his event as hostesses. At some point early the next morning, alleges one of the girls, age 17,  Kalimba raped her.

Kalimba has maintained in interviews that he did not assault anyone and that the accuser accompanied him to to the airport the next day -- a sign, he says, that anything that happened that night was consensual. Kalimba has not said whether he knew the girls were minors before having them over at his hotel.

Members of the accuser's family, along with the Quintana Roo Atty. Gen. Francisco Alor Quezada, say Kalimba forced the sexual encounter and should face justice. Alor has promised in interviews that Kalimba will face jail time if the allegations are proven. The singer's supporters, meanwhile, have charged on social-networking sites that the two girls who spent the night in his hotel room are out for money and fame.

The case is also drawing attention because Kalimba is afromestizo -- a minority Mexican with dominant African racial heritage in a country where a wide majority of the population is mixed Indian-Spanish. On social-networking sites and in some tabloids, the case has generated jokes and innuendo over Kalimba's race. One tabloid recently used the headline "Se Las Ve Negras!," which can mean he faces a difficult time or is in trouble while also using a word for black or dark, on a cover story on Kalimba's case.

In Mexico, physical difference is often highlighted or mocked in public forums -- a fact many Mexicans say is harmless and not rooted in racism. The jokes often extend into the largest media platforms in the country. In a report last year, The Times' Tracy Wilkinson examined the use of actors in blackface on a popular morning show on the Televisa network during the World Cup in South Africa.

Kalimba Marichal, 28, is a familiar face in Mexican pop. He began working as a child screen actor at a young age, and provided the singing voiceovers for Simba in the Latin American version of Disney's hit film "The Lion King."

He then began performing in a pop group named OV7, alongside his sister M'Balia, and then started a solo career in 2004. Kalimba was born in Mexico City and has a daughter.

The singer's whereabouts were not known Thursday. If charged and convicted of raping a minor, Kalimba would face between 25 and 50 years in prison, according to Quintana Roo state law. The manager with Kalimba during his night at Buda Bar, Gerard Michel Manel Aguilar, is also sought on assault charges.

The singer has defended himself on Twitter, where he's made frequent references to his Christian faith. "Regardless of what happens, thanks to all those who believe the truth," the singer tweeted on Jan. 3. His account has been inactive since the Jan. 4.

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Photo: Mexican pop singer Kalimba. Credit: Yucatan.com.mx

For the record: A previous version of this post said Kalimba is 27. An earlier version also gave an incorrect headline for a tabloid report.

Rising Mexican banda crooner Espinoza Paz pours on the romance

Halfway through his Friday night concert in Mexico's biggest indoor auditorium, the Mexican banda crooner Espinoza Paz lost his black cowboy hat. It either fell off or disappeared in a scrum of fans who scrambled to touch him during one of several times he left the stage to come near.

When it happened, some in the audience nervously sat up. In folklore as in banda music, a vaquero without his vaquero hat is like Samson without his locks.

Paz didn't miss a beat. The singer kept performing, finishing a two-hour show with his shaved head exposed to the lights above. Along the way, he gained two toy gifts, barrages of kisses and hugs, and the singalong adulation of more than 9,000 fans who sold out the stately Auditorio Nacional in Mexico City's Chapultepec Park.

The venue, coveted by any Mexican performer, is also known as the "Colossus on Reforma."

It was a crowning and emotional night for the singer and songwriter, a milestone in Espinoza Paz's fast rise from undocumented farm laborer in California's Central Valley to teen idol of Mexican regional music.

Expect to hear the name more. With immigrants and their children increasingly building fluid lives, north and south, the genre is all but assured to be a hot-selling scene on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border for years to come. Paz -- with his rural roots, rags-to-riches story, and handsome looks -- is its golden boy.

"You know, they say the audiences in Mexico City are the hardest to please," a beaming Paz told the crowds in his unvarnished ranchero voice near the end of his set. "So thank you for believing in me. Thank you for showing up. I thought it was just going to be me and my manager."

Near the stage, throngs of women up from their seats were held back by security guards in business suits. They screeched out Paz's name and reached toward the stage. One lucky lady got a two-song serenade: Paz's grandmother, pictured above.

Three Kings Day in Mexico, a holiday in flux

It might be hard to imagine, but the streets of Mexico City these past few days have been more jammed than they normally are with vendors hawking food and cheap gifts. Today, Jan. 6, is Three Kings Day. In Mexico that means the happiest day of the year for boys and girls who wait with giddy anticipation for the "reyes magos" to bring them presents.

And this being Mexico, Three Kings Day is also another healthy excuse to have a big street party.

Consider the scene this week at the Alameda Central, the downtown Mexico City park historians describe as the oldest planned urban green space in the Americas. There are mechanical rides, snack stands, carnival games, and the main draw: enormous stages where children pose for photographs with three live "reyes magos" in elaborate beards and costumes. They're meant to represent the "wise men" who in the Bible followed a star to Bethlehem where the baby Jesus had just been born, bearing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Today, after opening presents, families in Mexico break a traditional rosca de reyes, a circular breadloaf coated in candied fruits.

"It's a beautiful tradition, whether it's here or anywhere else," said Antonia Perez, who watched as her grandchildren played inside huge inflatable spheres floating on pools of water, a popular new "ride" at the Alameda Central reyes magos fair. (Watch original video by La Plaza here.)

It was almost 1:30 a.m. this morning, and kids in sparkly crowns and face-paint were out way past their bedtime with parents in the late-night valley chill, as if they were on a Sunday afternoon stroll.

For almost two weeks since the fair sprung up, the nightly crowds at the Alameda appear endless, waiting in long lines for their photo session with their reyes magos chosen from the 40 stages set up by photographers who were awarded permits to operate in the park. The feria is sensory overload, from the screeching Tilt-a-Whirl rides blasting cumbia and electronic tribal music, to the outrageous reyes magos stages, outfitted with neon lights and (surely unlicensed) replicas of figures from the "Toy Story" franchise.

Here's a little of what it sounds like.

Jonas Brothers cancel concert in Mexico over security fears

Popular U.S. boy band the Jonas Brothers have cancelled a concert in the Mexican city of Monterrey over security concerns. The concert, scheduled for Oct. 21 as part of a Latin American tour, no longer appears on the group's official website or MySpace page, although dates in Mexico City and Guadalajara are still listed.

Monterrey, Mexico's most prosperous city, has suffered increasing drug-related violence in recent months, with two mayors in the metropolitan region killed since August. A grenade attack on civilians in another Monterrey suburb earlier this month left 14 people injured, including children. The concert cancellation comes at a loss of 22.5 million pesos, or about $1.8 million, El Universal reported (link in Spanish).

The Disney-backed band, known for such hits as "SOS" and "Burnin' Up," apologized to its fans in Monterrey in a statement that circulated on fan sites.

"Due to the recent series of unfortunate events in the city of Monterrey, Mexico, the Jonas Brothers, in consultation with Live Nation, have decided to cancel their upcoming concert date scheduled for October 21st at Estadio Universitario," the statement said. "The Jonas Brothers are grateful for the overwhelming support from their many fans in Monterrey and while they wish to apologize to everyone who planned to attend the concert, this difficult decision was made out of their great affection and concern for their loyal fans in the region."

Comments on one fan site expressed dismay for Jonas Brothers fans in Monterrey, but also concern for the security climate south of the border. "I think they really shouldn't go to Mexico AT ALL," one commenter said at JonasWorld.org.

But a fan in Mexico begged to differ. "Oh c'mon, i'm from Mexico, and to all of you out there, gotta say that its not as bad as it seems!!!"

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Photo: The Jonas Brothers in concert in 2008. Credit: Getty Images

Mexico releases then retracts official bicentennial song

Mexico's Public Education Ministry, the third federal agency to take over the organization of upcoming bicentennial celebrations, proudly unveiled last week the official song for the festivities, a bouncy tune by pop star Alexs Syntek.

But once the song -- titled "The Future Is Millennial" -- was uploaded onto YouTube, reaction was almost uniformly negative, almost brutal. The criticism must have stung because now officials are saying, "Nevermind."

Over the weekend, a ministry spokesman said in a radio interview that the bicentennial events do not have an official song after all. Syntek's track, co-written with composer Jaime Lopez, is just intended to "motivate" the festivities, the official said.

A day after the song was made public, Syntek announced on Twitter that the reaction was so strong and personal against him that he is temporarily leaving the social networking service, referring to the "hundreds of people nailing their fists into my stomach."

Syntek's now unofficial official bicentennial song is embedded below.

As the bicentennial date nears, Sept. 16, Mexico is clearly not unified in expectation. In a letter to the editor in Monday's edition of La Jornada, a group of university students proposes that instead of spending millions of pesos on a party, the government should give out scholarships to the many young people in Mexico who cannot afford a higher education (link in Spanish).

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Los Tucanes de Tijuana: Banned in their namesake border city

It's like the Beatles being banned from returning to Liverpool, the Red Hot Chili Peppers being yanked from stages in Los Angeles, or Jay-Z's music stopped in a source of his inspiration, New York. Since last November, Los Tucanes de Tijuana, one of the most recognizable bands in the Mexican norteño regional genre, are banned from playing in their hometown and namesake, the border city of Tijuana.

The ban is a result of a 2008 concert in which the band's lead singer sent his regards from the stage to the city's most notorious and wanted men, "El Teo and his compadre, El Muletas." The city's get-tough police chief, Julian Leyzaola, was outraged.

Leyzaola pulled the plug on shows by Los Tucanes as they prepared to perform at the city's storied Agua Caliente racetrack in November. Leyzaola said the band's polka-driven narcocorrido songs glorify drug lords and their exploits and are therefore inappropriate to play in a city that has suffered soaring drug-related violence in recent years. The band, with millions of record sales and a fan base as broad as the international border, hasn't been allowed to play in Tijuana since.

In an interview with Richard Marosi of The Times as they prepared for a show in San Diego (as close to Tijuana as they can currently get), Los Tucanes said they don't intend to glorify narco bosses but instead merely write songs about the realities around them.

"I'm not justifying them, or approving of what they do," singer Mario Quintero told Marosi. "The señor [Leyzaola] shouldn't fault us for the corridos as if we're responsible for the killing of his police."

Authorities in Mexico widely disapprove of norteño bands that sing about the drug trade, banning their songs from radio airwaves and even threatening jail time for narcocorrido producers (link in Spanish). The effort is especially vigilant in Tijuana, as Marosi reported in a story in 2008.

For 'Chicas Gaga,' the daily stage is Mexico City's subway [Updated]

Three young women are attracting notice in Mexico for videos showing them singing Lady Gaga songs on Line 3 of the Mexico City subway system. The amateur performers -- Jeny, Jackie and Ale -- entertain commuters on the busy metro system with other recognizable covers, such as the 1990s hit by 4 Non Blondes, "What's Up," and Beyonce's "Halo."

Their most popular interpretations are of Lady Gaga singles, which began appearing and spreading on YouTube. Now there's a Facebook fan page.

In a video interview with the tabloid El Gráfico, seen above and here with more video (in Spanish), Jeny and Jackie -- who is only 11 years old -- say they made 130 pesos in tips in the first hour they performed on the metro. The massive subway system, one of the busiest in the world, is also known as a moving marketplace of unlicensed vendors and performers hoping to score a few pesos from passengers.

[Updated at 12:05 p.m.: Well, looks as though the strains of psuedo-stardom have done in the "Chicas Gaga." El Gráfico now says that "irreconcilable differences" are splitting up the group. One member, recent addition Ale, reportedly took to her Facebook account to allege that no one cared about the original two members until she began posting videos on YouTube. She also alleges that the youngest member Jackie is "exploited" by her mother. That's show biz?]

The original two "Chicas Gaga" started performing together about two years ago, they say. Three months ago, Ale joined them to form a trio after she heard Jeny and Jackie sing Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" and couldn't resist asking if she could sing along.

"I accept it for the 15 minutes of fame that it is," Ale says in the interview.

"I do have plans to do this, I don't want to be a 'one-hit wonder,'" says Jeny, who also plays guitar for the trio.

So if you're in Mexico City and you want to see the "Chicas Gaga" sing, where can you find them? The girls tell the paper they usually perform in the afternoons and evenings, in the first three cars of Line 3, mostly between the Eugenia and Copilco stations.

("But sometimes we leave to go eat," Ale says.)

Be sure to carry change!

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City