Alejandro Fernández, actor of “Mátalas”, at the Viña del Mar Festival on February 21. Adriana Thomasa (EFE)
Alejandro Fernández’s performance at the Viña del Mar Festival on February 22 sparked renewed controversy over classic ranchero Mátalas for “apologizing for femicide,” as former Chilean social development minister Karla Rubilar and the Chilean network opposed condemned violence. 20 years after its release, the song’s composer, Manuel Eduardo Toscano (Catemaco, Veracruz, 70 years old), assures in a telephone interview with EL PAÍS that he will change one of the most controversial verses of the song. But not all. The author reiterates that the new version eliminates “the strong” but retains the controversial metaphor between death and love. “It’s officially recorded. I think it’s time to do it by putting the new part. I also sent it to Alejandro [Fernández] ‘ he tells this newspaper.
The controversy that accompanies the song is mostly centered on one of its verses: if you want to enjoy her pleasures, get a gun if you will, or buy a dagger if you will, and become a womanizer. “It was the composer’s fault, my servant, but I already have a new verse,” he confesses, then prepares his voice, intones, and begins to sing the variation on one of his verses: if you want to enjoy its delights, try She it satisfy him in what you want, try to give him everything he wants and become a woman killer. Kill her with an overdose of cuteness…
The author insists that with the change he “takes away the power” and kills with a knife and a gun. But he defends that the word “kill her” — which he’s trying to use to metaphorize the term “love” — needs to be continued in the song. “Composers always go like a radar, looking for the word and the phrase. One day I heard someone say, “I’m going to kill you with a squeeze.” I thought something had to be done that talked about killing in terms of sweetness, killing with caresses, and that’s when the topic started to come up,” he explains.
UNAM gender studies researcher Amneris Chaparro confirms that the variation of the verse “does not change the meaning of the song”. “A singer isn’t going to turn a person into a womanizer, but these kinds of songs normalize the relationship between inequality and violence,” she says. The researcher also highlights the context of existing violence in Mexico to understand the severity of this normalization. In the country, 10 women die every day from femicides, which generally go unpunished.
Chaparro assures that a song that might seem harmless or funny hides meanings that might have a different trend. “Here is also the hegemonic and traditional male role, which represents the character of domination through the exercise of violence against women and against other men,” he explains.
Composer Manuel Eduardo Toscano poses for a portrait with Vicente Fernández, father of Alejandro Fernández.RR.SS.
It’s not the first controversy surrounding Mátalas. The violence that has shaken Ciudad Juárez since the late 1990s — the song premiered in 2003 — and led to dozens of enforced disappearances and femicides, led to it being banned in some areas of Chihuahua state, the composer recalls. “The politician shields himself by believing that by removing the song there will be no more disappearances of women. I wish that were so, it was a miracle,” he defends himself. In 2020, actress Angélica asked Aragón to stop singing the song, believing it normalizes violence. So Toscano sent a new version to El Potrillo in which he changed “kill her” to “love her”. “I knew I was going to lose strength. The word is kill them, what needed changing was the verse,” he defends.
Public complaints about possible excuses for femicide have not hit the classic rancher exclusively. In 2017, Café Tacuba, one of Mexico’s most popular bands, stopped playing La Ingrata in their live shows. In this 1984 hit, one of his verses could be interpreted from this perspective: “So now I gotta give you some bullets so it hurts.”
Toscano feels people were responsible for making the song a classic and believes they accepted it and now know it for what it is. “My songs have always been a bit controversial, that’s part of the job. They also criticized me a lot for the rata de dos patas recorded by Paquita la del barrio,” he explains, laughing again.
He wrote the song for Vicente Fernández. It was recorded as it was sung, but that first version never came to light. “It will continue there, saved. Father’s love made him give it to his son. That’s how it came into the hands of Alejandro Fernández”. The composer well remembers the conversations he had with Vicente Fernández in a palenque in Coatzacoalcos, in Veracruz. There, the singer told him that his son had already recorded it, and he recalls with a laugh what happened just a few months later when the song became a hit. “Mijo, if I had known it was going to be a big hit, I wouldn’t have given it to Alejandro’s Bastard,” he says.
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