A Reuters item reports that in crime-saturated Mexico City, thieves are dressing in mariachi drag (elaborately embroidered suits, wide-brimmed somberos, humongo guitars) to rob music-lovers.
Mingling among the roughly 1,700 licensed mariachi who serenade people with raucous folk songs in a central city square are hundreds of "pirate" mariachi more adept at picking pockets than strumming guitars, city officials say. In a city where organized crime gangs make an easy living from armed assault and kidnapping, police fear the bogus musicians could trick people into taking them home to play at family parties, where mariachi are a popular treat. "Since the end of last year we have been seeing mariachi who are not mariachi," said Jose Luis Tamayo, the government official in charge of a crackdown to weed them out.
Update: Boing Boing reader Chris Goodwin says this is total FUD — fear, uncertainty, and elaborately embroidered doubt — on the part of the mariachi union (Ed.: there's a mariachi union?). He says:
I'm in Mexico City at the moment and am amused and bemused by this story: I think it's a Mariachi Union-created urban myth that feeds off the fear and paranoia that Mexico City is a dangerous place. Which it is and is not. I've seen a few similar stories in the Mexican and foreign papers about this in the last couple of weeks. What the stories lack are convincing evidence that this is really happening.
"We have reports of muggings," says the cop. "They are pinching wallets." "They are crooks," says a mariachi. "People who let them into their homes will be robbed." But no arrests or statements from people who have been robbed are included in these stories. Robbed to the sound of sweet, romantic rancheros. Ah, Mexico City.
In fact what is happening is a turf war. Poverty is forcing many mariachis out of rural and small-town Mexico into the city.The complacent mariachis who have controlled the business at the Plaza Garibaldi for decades are suddenly being forced to really sing for their suppers, and the influx of rural mariachis has cut prices.
So the complacent mariachis have spread the fear of pirate mariachis who will rob unsuspecting clients as they play their violins and croon of impossible love. And the idiotic thing is that they have cut their own throats because potential clients are now worried about hiring any mariachis.
Believe me, just imagine the expense, for a poor Mexican who is thinking of becoming a thief, of getting five guys kitted up in elaborate mariachi costumes, supplying them with costly musical instruments, making sure they can play, and then dividing the proceeds of an occasional purse snatch to pay for their dastardly life of musical crime.
Pirate mariachis: urban myth.
