Transcription
[Music] [Music] Welcome, welcome. Thank you for being in the fourth episode of the fifth season of Red Territory. This exclusive video podcast from MBC Noticias about public security, organized crime, memory, and justice. I am Óscar Valderas, head of the criminal nation column. In this fourth episode, I will tell you about a regional Mexican singer who moved between the invisible borders of organized crime, who, seeking fame and fortune, found death and, once again, a strange performance by the authorities who wanted to hide the real killer. The living definition of that phrase that says, "His corrido ran out." Let's begin. Red Territory. Red Territory with Óscar Valderas. Fifth season. In the year 2007, a man emerged with force in the musical genre known as regional Mexican. He had been stubbornly playing his accordion and composing his own narcocorridos for 5 years with the hope of reaching the ears of millions, until on the first anniversary of the wrongly called war on drugs, he achieved his goal and placed himself on the list of the most listened-to musicians in Mexico and the United States. That man was called Tomás Eduardo Tobar Rascón, although almost no one called him by his first name, nor by the surnames of his parents who gave birth to him in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1981. He preferred his musical nickname, Tito Torbellino, a nickname born from his family's claim that he had an indomitable energy, unruly like a hurricane and stubborn like a natural phenomenon. His story as a musical narrator of organized crime is similar to that of many others with a tenacious mission. Thomas Eduardo one day discovered that school didn't fulfill him as much as composing songs, and he forever closed the doors of classrooms. At 14, he picked up an accordion gifted by his father and began to play intuitively. Fascinated by the exaggerated stories seasoned with marijuana and cocaine of the narcos on the border between Sonora and Arizona, the young musician decided in 2002 that he would no longer write for others, but for himself, and he would become rich and famous by praising massacres and capos, shootouts and "luchonas." He wanted to imitate and surpass the trajectory of music greats who have lent their voices to organized crime, such as Los Tigres del Norte or Chalino Sánchez. In his mind was the obsession of becoming the icon of the new generation of narco-jugglers. But by following their steps, Tito Torbellino was extinguished. His extinction was the subject of several conspiracy theories about the true reason that led to his accordion being silenced forever, and the versions about his demise fueled the attention of what is now almost a journalistic genre, the murders of narco corrido singers. But let's go back to 2007, the first full year in which President Felipe Calderón militarized public security in this country. It is also, by the way, the year of the first anniversary of the death of narco corrido singer Valentínalde, "el gallo de oro," who was murdered at the expoferia in Reynosa, Tamaulipas. There, after finishing his show at 3 in the morning, a commando riddled him with high-powered weapons, AK47 and R15 rifles, supposedly for singing the corrido "A mis enemigos" which antagonized the Zetas. Then, lords and masters of the Zulas. And it is precisely in that convulsive year in which Mexico changed forever, that Tito Torbellino was heard on all stations with his album "El Distinguido," which includes 17 songs, among them "El Señor de las Montañas," an ode to the founders of the Sinaloa cartel. And thus he wrote: Fugitive from justice, the lord of the mountain, also chief of the city, friend of a good friend, enemy of enemies. Happy and in love. Yes, he was, he is, and he will be. That is why the southern sky protects him from afar, even if it's cold or hot. Culiacán is hot. May is the most dangerous. There is protection and attention. A colonel backs him. He is a soldier by rank. His father inherited it to him. Those lyrics drove radio listeners crazy who believed they had found the voice of their generation, who see the Sinaloan narcos as the Robin Hoods of their time. His career took off with the force of a tornado. His voice became a reference in this controversial musical genre. And Tito Torbellino, unrestrained as he was, left no pauses in his rise to stardom. Look, when one song finished its cycle on the radio, another appeared that hooked his fans, and another after another after another. These are hits like "Te la pasas," "Comando X," "Cosas del [ __ ]" and more. The recipe for success was inexhaustible. Tito Torbellino sang about homicides and the crowd followed him. He tuned his voice to massacres and his followers applauded him. Before terrifying us, that violence amused us. Those close to Tito Torbellino enjoyed the fame of their relative and friend. They reveled in his money, his luxurious lifestyle, and his new connections with the elite of artists in Mexico and the United States. But some viewed the new shine of the singer and accordionist with suspicion. They feared he was flying too close to the sun and that at any moment his wings would burn and he would fall precipitously to the ground. Something in particular worried them. Tito Torbellino appeared in numerous interviews, changing the version of the secret ingredient of his fame. To some, he said he wrote his songs based on what he saw in the media and what his friends and acquaintances within organized crime told him, such as Pedro Valenzuela Mesa and Alfredo Beltrán Leiva. But to others, he said he only wrote about his own survivals, his own private experiences, which led people to think that the singer was indeed involved with the cartels. He never confirmed it, but he never denied it either. The ambiguity with which he moved in the legal and illegal worlds helped him become a musical legend. But organized crime does not like that double game. You are either with them or against them. And vagueness is paid for with life. Tito Torbellino's lucky star followed him for several more years and was extinguished on May 29, 2014. The icon of regional Mexican arrived that Thursday in Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, where the next day he had a performance scheduled in the city. Hours before the first rehearsal, he decided to stop with his team at Plaza Tutuli to eat. Among all the places, at 3 in the afternoon, he chose the restaurant Red, a place decorated almost entirely in red with oriental motifs. He ordered sushi and a cold beer, and his musicians accompanied him with more chalafria, rolls, and ramen. Diners at other tables murmured about the man in the hat who attracted all eyes. They whispered, wondering if it was Tito Torbellino himself, until two men dressed in black resolved that doubt. They entered through the main door, one stayed at the entrance frame, and the other trotted to the table of the man who was monopolizing attention in the restaurant. Without a word, the hitman fired six times with a 9mm pistol, two shots to the singer's head, the rest in the chest and extremities. The chaos facilitated their escape, and Tito Torbellino's blood on the floor mixed with the red decoration of the restaurant. Ciudad Obregón police took 12 minutes to arrive, according to the police report. 12 minutes that we will never know if they would have made any difference because the singer passed away inside municipal patrol car 132 long before reaching the General Hospital of Ciudad Obregón. That day, the bullring announced that all performances were canceled in mourning, and that same day, condolences were not long in coming. Singers like Espinosa Paz, El Comander, La Banda del Recodo, and even comedians like Mar Chaparro lamented the homicide, surely feeling in their bones the fear of being the next musicians murdered. A profession that has become high-risk in a warring Mexico. And to the surprise of the murder, doubts arose. Who and why had Tito Torbellino been killed? A musician praised mainly in northern Mexico? The answer is a mystery until now because a convenient murder occurred only a few weeks later, and all by accident, I insist, very convenient for the authorities. Shortly after Tito Torbellino's homicide, in a precarious house in a popular area of Ciudad Obregón, a party was organized without any major pretenses. The celebration would have gone unnoticed. Except that near midnight on July 24 of that year, a man and a woman argued heatedly in a corner. The woman turned her back on her partner and left him talking alone. And he, enraged, pulled out his pistol and shot her dead. The femicide, as it was seen by an agent of the state investigative police who was on a day off, but strangely was carrying his service weapon, and there he killed the murderer while trying to stop him. Conveniently, the forensic experts of the then prosecutor's office collected the body of the femicide victim, noticed his resemblance to the man who appeared in the surveillance videos of the Red restaurant, the one who had killed Tito Torbellino. They performed a genetic comparison, and boom, the deceased was Tito Torbellino's killer, and with the homicide in the morgue, the case of the narco singer was closed, and the secret of the reason for the murder would have been taken to the grave. But this story has an unexpected twist, like the ones we like at Red Territory. Because 3 years after the murder of our protagonist had been closed, a solitary man crosses on foot with a calm pace at the San Ysidro crossing in Southern California. It is October 11, 2017, and that man strangely surrenders to DEA agents, and the first thing he does is confirm his identity. Sajid Emilio Quintero Navidad, alias "El Cadete," cousin of Rafael Caro Quintero, the narco of narcos and founder of the Guadalajara cartel. "El Cadete" has negotiated to surrender in the United States, tired of fleeing the authorities. He wants to spend some time in prison, use the cell as a break, and become a protected witness under Uncle Sam's wing. "El Cadete," then 36 years old, recounted his crimes before a Federal Court in San Diego, California, and spoke of his methods for bringing cocaine from Bolivia and Guatemala to Mexico and the United States, his methods for laundering millions of dollars, his kidnappings to maintain power in Sonora, and there he also told something that the federal agents who handcuffed him when he voluntarily left Mexico did not know: that he had another nickname, they called him "El Mata Músicos" (The Musician Killer). Sajid Emilio Quintero Navidad told the authorities that he was behind Tito Torbellino's homicide. It was false that the killer had been killed at that party. That man was just a scapegoat to close the case and shake off the pressure from fans who demanded justice. The reasons surprised more than one. According to the cousin of the narco of narcos, Tito Torbellino had broken his word by singing only for capos close to the Sinaloa cartel. Quintero Navidad would have caught him making songs for the rival cartel, which at that time could have been the Gulf Cartel or the Nueva Familia Michoacana among the most relevant. And that would have been sufficient reason to murder him, as simple as wanting to work for more clients. And to elevate Tito Torbellino's figure to the category of legend, it was speculated that the singer wrote a song in which he predicted his death, a corrido in which he spoke of the end of life and asked for cruel revenge. The song is called "Al que se animó" and thus he wrote: If they kill me with bullets, I want to die with courage. Even if my body is torn to pieces, but answering them, I am content. If I die for not being sincere, don't even bury me, please. But if I die because I defend what is mine and what I have, do me a favor. Let the horn and the fire resound until it brings down the one who killed me. In life, I do harmful things, also fine things. I got a bit of everything. And in the end, he says goodbye to both his children and his mother. Not without first reminding them that he has specifications about how he wished to be buried in life, and that the band accompany him to the cemetery. It would be like my last party with all my people who accompanied me. May my sincere brothers mourn me as I die. Many more narco corrido singers would die in the following years. There is the case of Alex Quintero and Luis Mendoza. Most will fall into an impossible dilemma. Sing for a single cartel and one day sing for others to make more money, and for that they end up executed. Or be murdered for refusing to sing for rivals who seek them out to put them in a bind. Be that as it may, and however it may have been. In Mexico, being a musician in the war on drugs has become a highly dangerous profession. Tito Torbellino's story reminds us that fame offers little protection and fortune little defense. Singing about organized crime is a game like Russian roulette. Thank you very much for joining us in this fourth episode of the fifth season of Red Territory. In the next episode, the fifth, I will tell you about a brave neighborhood photographer with a secret life. He was a wedding and 15th birthday photographer and at the same time reported on organized crime in his state under a pseudonym. Thus, he revealed several murders and the links of local politics with crime to the country, until someone from the mafia discovered his second profession. Don't forget to follow this channel, please share this podcast on your social networks, and turn on notifications so you can be among the first to see and hear our fifth episode. Thank you, thank you very much for being with us. Until next time. [Music] [Music]