On May 15, 1992, Chalino Sánchez was handed a mysterious note while performing onstage in Mexico. After that night, he was never seen alive again.
In the late 1980s, Mexican singer Chalino Sánchez rose to fame as the “King of Corrido,” referring to the genre of music made up of ballads about drug lords and associated gangsters. Sánchez performed songs about cartels, drug trafficking, and true crime, and his sincere lyrics resonated with fans who understood the struggles of life in some of the poorest and most violence-plagued areas of Mexico.
Sánchez was born in Sinaloa, Mexico in 1960, and he grew up surrounded by poverty and violence. When he was just 15, he killed a man who had raped his sister. A decade later, his brother was murdered at a hotel in Tijuana.
Shortly after his brother’s death, Sánchez wrote his first corrido, the type of traditional narrative ballad that he later became known for. While serving time in prison for petty crimes in the 1980s, Sánchez continued writing songs, transforming the violence-riddled stories of his fellow inmates into poetic verses.
Upon his release, Chalino Sánchez recorded his first demos. He sold cassettes of his music from the trunk of his car and started performing at quinceañeras. By the early 1990s, Sánchez was popular throughout Mexico and Southern California — but his fame came at a price.
Public DomainChalino Sánchez reads the note that was handed to him onstage during what would be his last concert.
In January 1992, Sánchez was performing in Coachella, California, when a man jumped onto the stage and started shooting at the singer. Sánchez returned fire, but he missed his target and killed an audience member. In the aftermath of the incident, Sánchez became paranoid, but he was still determined to show up for a planned series of concerts in his home state of Sinaloa.
So, on May 15, 1992, Chalino Sánchez took the stage at the Salón Bugambilias in Culiacán. While his band played the first notes of a song, someone in the crowd handed Sánchez a note. Nobody knows what it said, but Sánchez was visibly shaken by its contents. Still, he continued the concert, and he left the club with two of his brothers, his cousin, and several women at the end of the night.
As the group was driving through Culiacán, they were pulled over by armed men who identified themselves as police officers. They told Sánchez that their commander wanted to speak to him, so the singer got into their car. He was never seen alive again.
The next morning, two farmers found Sánchez’s body in an irrigation canal with two bullet holes in the back of his head. To this day, the identity of Chalino Sánchez’s killers remains unknown. Were they cartel members who were angry about their portrayal in one of the singer’s narcocorridos? Or had the murder Sánchez committed nearly two decades earlier come back to haunt him? And what exactly did the note that he was handed onstage have to do with his death?
Learn more about the music used in our podcast. History Uncovered is part of the Airwave Media network. Learn more about your ad choices by visiting megaphone.fm/adchoices.
