Montreal recently had a new slogan: “French-speaking metropolis of America”. But another slogan would fit just as well: “Montreal, Metropolis of Garbage”…

Posted at 7:15 p.m

A walk through the streets of the central districts is enough to convince the skeptics: torn garbage bags, chicken carcasses and other table scraps lying on the street, old socks with holes, greasy paper, handkerchiefs rolled into a ball. Every day the pedestrian is exposed to the contents of the garbage bag of his contemporary. And it’s anything but a croquignolet, to use one of Transport Minister Geneviève Guilbault’s favorite words.

To the garbage bags that line the sidewalks, we must add the mattresses, furniture, and other small appliances that our roadside neighbors leave behind.

Why go to the eco center when you can throw everything at home… it’s so much easier!

And what about cigarette butts, which would make up 30% of litter in Montreal?

On Thursday, our colleague Isabelle Ducas reported on our pages⁠1 about the deplorable state of the roads around McGill University: Students returning home are emptying their apartments, leaving most of their belongings on the sidewalk. The situation repeats itself every year without the city finding a solution! That’s not serious !

Remember that Quebecers are the fools of the country’s waste management with 716 kg of waste per capita in 2021, a 5% increase from 2018.

We can say that Montreal is a beautiful showcase that highlights exactly this specificity of Quebec. No wonder author Claude Meunier decided to bring back his character of Pôpa from La Petite Vie. We have an existential problem with our garbage.

But it is not the solutions that are missing to discipline the population.

Starting with making households pay for the waste they produce. This idea, defended by many, including Professor Pierre-Olivier Pineau, is already being used in Beaconsfield, as well as in several cities around the world.

A waste tax can take several forms: an annual tax based on household size, a tax based on the weight of waste generated, or, as in some cities, the distribution of X bags of rubbish after which the other bags are paid for. In all cases, low-income households benefit from an exemption or special measures.

This tax would result in individuals being made aware of their uncontrolled waste production and forced them to compost, recycle and… produce less waste.

Then there’s the way we’ll collect garbage that no longer holds water in 2023.

As Montreal Centre-ville organization executive director Glenn Castanheira once said, Montreal’s waste management is worthy of the Middle Ages…

It’s high time plastic bins were made compulsory for all single family homes and ground floor condos.

Garbage dumps should also be set up in neighborhoods to prevent garbage bags from appearing on the sidewalks several days before collection.

And to prevent garbage bags from piling up around these potential landfill sites, there are no 36,000 solutions: better surveillance is needed, accompanied by severe fines, to deter offenders.

Same treatment for Montreal dog owners who are worse off than Parisians. Those who don’t pick up their pooch’s poop deserve a hefty fine.

After all, a little courtesy wouldn’t hurt anyone. If each of us were to take care of the small piece of pavement in front of our door, that would be a giant step.

The Montreal Metropolitan Community (CMM), which brings together 82 municipalities, completed its public consultation on waste management a month ago. A report must be submitted by the end of the month, and if Recyc-Québec gives the green light, the Metropolitan Residual Materials Management Plan (PMGMR) 2024-2031 will go into effect.

But the solutions contained in this plan are still very tentative.

You have to have the courage to use the strong method if Montreal is not to become the “capital of the garbage bags”.

The singer Chalino Sánchez, in a file image.RR SS

It was two bullets. boom boom The body of Chalino Sánchez, 31, was found with two holes in his head next to a road in Culiacan, Sinaloa. It was May 16, 1992. Just the day before, during a concert, he received a citizen’s letter. Chalino reads the newspaper carefully. His face turns yellow, he wipes his sweat with one hand and starts singing Soul in Love as if nothing had happened. This episode at his last concert was documented on home videos of the time, and the threatening letter has been known as the obituary ever since. Its contents, like most in the musician’s life, remain unknown, another among the many alleged exploits and misfortunes that accompany any popular hero. Chalinos Corridos, descended from humble immigrants and with a not very privileged voice, triumphed in the United States and Mexico, reviving Mexicanism north of the border; a phenomenon that has reappeared thanks to the new artists of the Mexican region who take the ancient idol as a reference and teacher.

The stories that have surrounded the life of Rosalino Sánchez Félix – as her real name is – have created a mythical character, a legend that walks a fine line between reality and fiction: violence, problems with the law and an unforeseen one fatal outcome later. The musician was one of the greatest representatives of the corrido and the narcocorrido. His stories, narrated, distorted and some unverified, have produced a character who could star in his songs. One of the hosts of the podcast Ídolo: The Ballad Of Chalino Sánchez, Alejandro Mendoza, tells this newspaper about the problems of immersing yourself in a story full of voids. “[La falta de veracidades] That was the first hurdle when we started researching. They tell a story in which many elements are hearsay, there is no way to verify them. We said, “Let’s start with what are the rumors and what are the verifiable facts,” he says.

Most tap of the hurdle

He was born in 1960 in the small farming community of El Guayabo near central Culiacan, surrounded by the violence that was erupting in Sinaloa. He was the youngest of a humble and large family of eight siblings. “He grew up in a place with few opportunities and surrounded by violence. It was the same violence that drove him to be violent,” stresses Mendoza. His father died when he was six and his older brother Lucas Sánchez took care of the siblings. Lucas described him as a “violent” person in an interview on YouTube with Margarito Music. This perception supports one of the most widely held theories of his youth. After a man raped his sister, Chalino attempted to take justice into his own hands and shot him dead. This fact is usually related to the fact that he went to the United States, fleeing violence and looking for opportunities.

Sinaloan singer Chalino Sánchez.RR SS

In 1984 – after one of the gaps in his story – Chalino accumulated a season of misfortune. One of his brothers was found shot dead in a Tijuana hotel room. The singer related it in one of his corridos, which he named after his brother Armando Sánchez: In the city of Tijuana, gentlemen, this happened. A brave man died, a coward killed him. Without giving him time for anything, he was shot seven times…

Prison, criminal world and paper and pencil

Chalino went to prison the same year that Armando lost his life. Professor and researcher in literary and cultural studies at San Diego State University Juan Carlos Ramírez-Pimienta asserts that the unknown also surrounded this event: “There are many things that we take for granted but that we don’t examine can. I’ve tried to confirm your stay in the Tijuana prison, but it’s very difficult. I didn’t find the name of Rosalino Sánchez among them. It’s very common for people to enter with a false name.

Chalino made contact with the criminal world in prison and wrote Corridos when asked. He told the stories of these criminals and sometimes glorified them. Ramírez-Pimienta says that the commission phenomenon is very common in this genre. “They are commissioned runs or paid runs. There are singers who say that all their corridors are paid for. Very high quality singers who say it openly […] Not only do you have to order a corrido, you also have to ask for permission [a los cárteles] get something,” he argues.

Portrait of the singer Chalino Sánchez.RR SS

He crossed the border without papers towards Los Angeles, California. He began working informal jobs, from working the Coachella fields to buying and selling cars. In the late 1980s he met producer Ángel Parra, who led him to record his first tape at San Ángel Studios, El corrido del sapo, with Los Cuatro de la Frontera, a northern group. He was one of the first musicians to absorb the harsh stories that lived in Mexico at the time. He didn’t have a privileged voice, but his songs were successful. “He offered a democratization of the possibility of singing. One said: “If he sings, I can even sing”. He was a great performer,” says Ramírez-Pimienta. Mendoza shares this thesis and extends it: “She sang with her heart, with passion. It’s also very Mexican. I think that Chalino is the chronicler of the underworld of that time, which had cross-border drug traffickers and other types of crimes. He also sang about love.

Coachella: a before and after

The legends that spoke of Chalino as a brave and violent guy were confirmed in 1992 during his performance at the Plaza Los Arcos bar in the city of Coachella, California. Accordionist from Los amables del Norte (the group he performed with), Nacho Hernández, narrated on the podcast. A man in the audience, Edward Gallegos, got angry with the singer for not interpreting El gallo de Sinaloa. He drew a pistol and fired. Chalino, who went on stage armed, also drew his pistol. Filming began. One citizen died and several were injured. Chalino was hospitalized due to the effects of the bullets; and Gallegos, imprisoned. The story helped project his image, and tape sales and audiences at his subsequent concerts increased. In an interview with Margarito Music, producer Ángel Parra reported on this popularity: “In the first recording, 300 [copias]and the last one was 31,000″.

Advertisement for a Chalino Sánchez concert in Coachella, California (USA). RR SS

A few months after becoming famous in the United States, Chalino returned to Culiacan to do some concerts. The stories, collected by experts like Ramírez-Pimienta, speak of people advising him not to travel to Sinaloa. Revista Espejo director Alejandro Sicairos coincided with the violent times the state was experiencing and in which the singer took pride in representing the man who rose from poverty. “He liked to walk the streets a lot. [de Culiacán], which show how he overcame the original situation of backwardness, poverty and misery. He went surrounded by people and good vehicles. The times I had to see him, he was like a normal citizen, but a standout,” he recalls.

There was a “remarkable and visible” dominance of organized crime in Culiacán in the 1980s, comments Siqueiros. The second generation of the Sinaloa Cartel was developed, led by Amado Carrillo, Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo and a beginning Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán. The journalist says that the armed groups had influence both in the government and in the police chiefs. Chalino gave his last concert in his city, at Bugambilias Hall. He read the obituary notice and the next day a car and van carrying people dressed as Federals — it has not been confirmed if they were agents — shot at the singer. The reason is not yet known. It was only two bullets.

success and legacy

Chalino’s marketing was forged between word of mouth and selling cassettes in places like street markets or flea markets. During the ’80s, Los Angeles saw the emergence of gangsta rap, a variant of rap that explores the violence of life in the toughest and most marginalized neighborhoods. Mexicans and Afro-Americans met in the suburbs of the big city and exchanged their cultures and styles. Chalino’s lyrics were consistent with those of the movement: violence, drugs and cartels, which helped gain public acceptance. “What Chalino Sánchez is doing is re-Mexicanizing a generation that was not connected to their Mexican roots,” comments the researcher.

Chalino has arrived in the present. “At the moment there are t-shirts with Chalino’s face. When you put a character or person on a t-shirt, it becomes part of pop culture. It transcends what he did in life and is there as a symbol,” reflects Mendoza. The dispersal of the new regional Mexican artists in the United States explains the new revival of Mexicanness. At the end of this note, 13 songs of the regional Mexican genre remain on the Billboard Hot 100 list – the catalog of the 100 highest grossing singles in the United States. Below the warlike corridors and couches. Although some lyrics have shades reminiscent of Chalino’s lyrics, Ramírez-Pimienta believes that the biggest influence of these new artists is Ariel Camacho.

Mural honoring Chalino Sánchez in the city of Paramount, California (USA) Unique Nicole (Getty Images)

The stories that have surrounded the singer have made him a legendary figure, reflected in dozens of songs in allusions to his character, crossing the line. An example of this is Change! – the song by C. Tangana together with Carín León – where they sing to this environment that leads the character of the brave man to be the rooster of the pens, as happened with the singer from Sinaloa. In Ídolo, Alejandro Mendoza starts a reflection summarizing the tragic moment of the musician’s death. “Whoever wanted Chalino dead screwed it up because it made him last forever.”

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