Fed up with persistent violence, officers within the metropolis of Chihuahua in northern Mexico accredited a ban final week forbidding musical acts from performing songs with lyrics that degrade girls.
Mayor Marco Bonilla of Chihuahua stated in an video replace final week that the regulation banned the efficiency of songs that “promote violence towards girls” or encourage their discrimination, marginalization or exclusion.
Mr. Bonilla stated that those that violate the ban might face fines starting from 674,000 pesos to 1.2 million pesos, or between about $39,000 and $71,000.
The Metropolis Council accredited the ban unanimously on Wednesday amid an increase in killings of girls throughout Mexico in recent times, and as Chihuahua, a metropolis of about 940,000 residents, is scuffling with its personal circumstances of violence towards girls. Just lately, Mr. Bonilla stated, about seven out of 10 calls to 911 in Chihuahua have concerned circumstances of home violence, notably towards girls.
“Violence towards girls has reached ranges that we might contemplate like a pandemic,” he stated. “We will’t permit this to occur, and we can also’t permit this to be normalized.”
It was unclear from his message who would impose the fines or how the ban on misogynistic lyrics can be enforced. Cash raised from the fines will likely be channeled to a girls’s institute in Chihuahua and a confidential girls’s shelter, stated Blanca Patricia Ulate Bernal, a Chihuahua metropolis councilwoman who proposed the ban.
Ms. Ulate Bernal stated in a submit on Fb final week that the regulation will apply to live shows and occasions within the metropolis that require a municipal allow. She added that the ban would assist be sure that girls have the fitting “to take pleasure in a life freed from violence.”
Mr. Bonilla, Ms. Ulate Bernal and different council members didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
The lyrics ban was handed a few month after Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, criticized songs often called corridos tumbados, or entice ballads, whose lyrics glorify drug smugglers and violence.
“We’re by no means going to censor anybody,” Mr. López Obrador stated at a information convention in June. “They’ll sing what they need, however we’re not going to remain quiet.”
The approval of the ban will not be the primary time town of Chihuahua has taken a robust stance towards the efficiency of sure songs. Citing excessive ranges of drug violence, Chihuahua banned the long-running band Los Tigres del Norte in 2012 after a live performance throughout which the group carried out three songs often called narcocorridos, which have fun the exploits of drug traffickers. The town additionally fined the live performance organizers 20,000 pesos, or about $1,600, on the time.