The band was scheduled to play at a Sinaloa festival this Saturday
Grupo Firme will no longer be performing in Sinaloa this weekend after receiving death threats from a drug cartel. On Wednesday, the band canceled their Mazatlán show shortly after a “narco manta,” or banner, appeared in their native Tijuana threatening to kill the band if they performed at in Sinaloa.
“Grupo Firme, if you play at the Mazatlan Carnival we will kill you all,” read the message written on a banner in southern Tijuana. “Remember that you live in Tijuana. We will kill even the guy who puts the lights on.” Next to the message was a severed head, according to El Universal.
In their statement addressing the cancelation, Firme and its management company Music VIP wrote that they were “profoundly saddened” to cancel the show but that they were left with no other choice. “For Music VIP, the well-being of the people who’ve been with us through this journey: our family, which is all of you, our fans, is and will always be the most important thing,” read the statement. “We hope to come together soon to sing, celebrate, and continue making history together.”
Hours after the threat, Jorge Medina and Josi Cuen — who were scheduled to perform at Carnaval Mazatlán Wednesday — announced the cancelation of their own show. Opera singer Plácido Domingo, Spanish star Alejandro Sanz, and Banda La Adictiva are still slated to play at Carnabal Mazatlán this weekend.
Firme’s show cancelation due to a cartel death threat comes less than two years after Peso Pluma and Fuerza Régida were forced to cancel their shows in Tijuana after similar narco manta threats — supposedly on behalf of the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación — were placed around the city. It’s unclear which cartel placed the message and severed head for Grupo Firme.
While Peso Pluma and Fuerza Régida have long sung about the narco lifestyle, Mexico president Andrés Manuel López Obrador lauded Firme for not doing so, and even played the band’s song “Ya Supérame” during a press conference. The former president has long spoken out against the prevalence of narcocorridos. “There’s really good music for young people… that Firme song I love and young people do too,” Lopez Obrador said in June 2023.
