“I wanted to study and become a soldier, but I liked the fast life better.” That’s a line Roberto Salazar suggested including in the song about his life. The 26-year-old American had exchanged text messages with a Mexican songwriter he hired to write a drug ballad called Narcocorrido. Salazar wanted a song about his double life as a Marine and a cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl dealer. And he wanted it to be a corrido, a genre of music closely linked to the drug trade. Everything changed on February 7, 2022 when Salazar was arrested and the contents of his phone were revealed. The revelation that he had commissioned a corrido only came to light on April 21, when US prosecutors announced that he had been sentenced to 12 years in prison for drug trafficking.
At the time of his arrest, Salazar had already spent seven years dealing drugs and six years as an active member of the Marines Corp. According to his mother, Carmen Salazar, he was a very shy and sickly child. He was rushed to intensive care with a virus when he was just 18 months old and had angina surgery when he was four. But Salazar thrived at school. He was a good student, athletic and sociable. “When he was 10 years old, everything changed in our family,” Carmen Salazar said in a letter to the court. His father was deported to Mexico and the Salazars moved to Tijuana to start over. “Everything was an adventure for my son. He always saw the bright side no matter how dire the situation was,” his mother wrote in the letter.
Versions of Salazar’s life diverge when he was a teenager. His family says he was a young man who did the best he could under the circumstances: he taught himself to play the drums, joined a music group at an evangelical church, and spent much of his time doing community work and helping the homeless Essen provides for people and raises money for his church. However, other court documents say he has experienced many challenges, such as his father’s addictions, economic difficulties and the constant traveling back and forth across the border. At the suggestion of his father, Salazar became involved in the migrant and drug trade as a teenager.
In 2015, when he was about 17 or 18 years old, Salazar recruited one of his classmates from Southwestern Community College in Chula Vista to smuggle drugs into the United States and ship them to different parts of California. On his father’s orders, Salazar paid his friend — identified as an SI in court documents — $2,000 for each shipment that crossed the border. For months, SI smuggled drugs into the United States. He stashed kilos of cocaine and methamphetamine in cars and shipped the drugs to the Los Angeles area. A year later, Salazar’s father was deported back to Mexico and Salazar joined the Navy. “Pursuant to his plea agreement, Salazar recruited, managed, and paid for multiple drug mules both before he joined the Marine Corps and while he was on active duty,” prosecutors said in their press release.
By this time, Salazar’s methods had become more sophisticated. Co-conspirators met at a garage, picked up the cars hiding the drugs, and shipped them to California and Nevada. Orders were placed in encrypted messages and payments were made through digital applications to avoid detection. When no one else could deliver the packages, Salazar did it himself.
In early 2017, his older sister became seriously ill and died. Salazar’s sister – who also enlisted in the Navy – wanted her brother to stay away from crime, and he decided to rise through the ranks to honor her memory. The Marines and the drug trade—two seemingly irreconcilable worlds—defined Roberto Salazar and shaped the course of his life. He became a radio operator and worked on a base in the border town of San Diego, but according to Assistant US Attorney Robert Miller, it was just a front.
That same year, Salazar gave birth to a baby girl and after various problems with his daughter’s mother, he won custody of the child when she turned two years old. “He combed her hair, dressed her, fed her, picked her up from daycare every day and tucked her in before she went to bed. I was amazed at what a good father he was,” his mother wrote in the letter to the court. His attorney argued that Salazar tried to get out of the drug business, but that his Marine salary was not enough to care for his daughter.
Roberto Salazar and his daughter. With kind approval
Meanwhile, Salazar formed his own team of drug traffickers and in 2021 recruited two former Marines, identified in court documents as AU and JR. AU drove a blue BMW with several kilos of drugs across the border at least five times. The drugs were hidden in cars and fake license plates were used to evade checks at immigration checkpoints. JR, also recently discharged from the Marines, dealt the drugs in a white BMW and followed the same procedure. But within months, his associates were spotted. At this point, they shipped thousands of fentanyl doses to the southern United States. However, they had begun to take risks: they left the drugs in supermarkets and other public places, narrowly avoiding arrest and sometimes getting caught.
It was the summer of 2020 when Salazar — a father, churchman, Marine, and drug dealer — contacted the songwriter in Mexico about the corrido, a musical tradition that’s been around in Mexico for decades. These songs tell epic stories of heroes and villains. They are a kind of oral history, sharing stories about the everyday and the extraordinary. After the drug war broke out in Mexico in the mid-2000s, narcocorridos rose in popularity despite censorship and criticism that the songs justified crimes. Famous drug lords were cast as the protagonists of narcocorridos, and these kingpins often paid money to appear in the lyrics.
But many songwriters have reclaimed the music genre and called for it not to be criminalized. “What the corridos are telling is a consequence of what’s happening in Mexico and not the other way around,” explained Oswaldo “Walo” Silvas, lead singer of Banda MS, one of Mexico’s most famous groups, who recorded a corrido for the video game franchise call of duty in the past year. Silvas told EL PAÍS that a good corrido must have three elements: a catchy melody, good harmony and lyrics that reflect a true story told from an unbiased perspective. “A corrido is new,” he said. For example, the song Banda MS wrote for Call of Duty is based on the fictional story of a Mexican agent who works for an elite crime-fighting group.
In Salazar’s case, according to the Los Angeles Times, he wanted his corrido to focus on his work as a Marine. However, the Attorney General’s Office also said that the text concerned his activities as a drug dealer. The full version of the song was not included in the court summary, nor was the identity of the songwriter hired.
In late 2022, eight months after his arrest, Salazar pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute controlled substances, including heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, and fentanyl, and to importing fentanyl from Mexico into the United States. The move came after two of his closest associates also signed an agreement. Hoping that he would get a second chance, Salazar’s friends and family asked for mercy so that Salazar could continue to care for his daughter. But the crimes he confessed to were serious, leading to a life sentence of 10 years and a maximum fine of $10 million. In the end, Salazar was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
His family said he was truly sorry, but the authorities considered his actions a serious offense. “Mr. Salazar betrayed his oath to the Marine Corps and posed a significant threat to our national security by participating in an illegal operation to smuggle fentanyl into the United States,” NCIS Special Agent in Charge Todd Battaglia said Marine Corps West Field Office.
US authorities did not say whether Salazar was working with a cartel or a larger criminal organization to sell fentanyl, a drug that has caused tens of thousands of overdose deaths in the US every year and strained ties with Mexico. In 2014, nine people were convicted of trafficking in fentanyl. In 2021, that number rose to 1,533, and according to official figures, more than 86% held US citizenship. “I know I made a mistake,” Salazar told the judge before his sentencing.
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