From Café Tacvba concerts to organized crime dancers

The Mexican band Café Tacuba in a promotional image.

On May 2, 2019, the Mexican band Café Tacvba launched a cry for help. That morning some assailants stole the truck that was transporting his music equipment, on the highway between Mexico City and Veracruz. In addition to the robbery, they kidnapped and brutally beat two workers from the group, who were later released. "We call on the authorities to help us in the recovery of our work tools," was the desperate message they launched through social networks. Two years later, that despair has turned into mute. It is not that the band has recovered their equipment, no, if not that it has apparently appeared in the hands of an extravagant organizer of cumbiera parties in Puebla.

Omar Rojas - or "the impressive Omar", as he calls himself in his presentations - is a plump, dark-haired man who claims to earn a living by putting together dances with his Fania 97 group, one of the most popular in Puebla. He sets up the speakers, mixing consoles, and cheers up the cool microphone in hand. "Fania is here, daddy!" "Softly!" "Taste!" On Thursday afternoon he made a live broadcast on Facebook, in the same week that Puebla media have accused him of using the equipment stolen from Café Tacvba at their parties. Rojas, who in a mocking

began his fuss with a song by the

, was

to notice that the band was among his virtual audience. "Do not go to burst the speakers, they are expensive," wrote the stolen musicians in the comments of the live.

The name of Rojas has jumped to the pages of the national newspapers of Mexico after the criminal section of

de Puebla reported that Fania 97 was entertaining with the stolen equipment. The news immediately went viral and the followers of the Mexican band reacted indignantly. According to the publication signed by journalist Edmundo Velázquez, “Omar Rojas presumes to his friends that the high-tech sound and light instruments [that he uses in his bailongos] are the same ones that were attacked by the band and that they were sponsored by leaders. of organized crime in Puebla ”.

Velázquez explains in a telephone conversation with EL PAÍS that he consulted former workers and people close to Rojas to confirm his exclusive. These sources told him that Rojas entertained organized crime parties and that suddenly he included high-tech equipment, valued at millions of pesos, in his presentations. "He boasted to his people about the staff who got the team because Arturo Romero had sponsored him," the reporter explains. Capo Romero, nicknamed

, is one of those gangsters who accumulate investigation files for their dark criminal shenanigans, which include kidnapping, extortion, robbery. Velázquez explains that his sources told him that El Cachibombo bought the musical equipment stolen by a gang that is dedicated to robberies on the highway between Mexico City and Veracruz. “Many leaders, who have control of different areas of the capital, bought and still buy the cargo that is stolen in Mexico-Veracruz. Part of the cargo is sold with street vendors or given to enter markets, but on that occasion all the equipment was very precious. El Cachibombo paid the majority, ”explained a source consulted by the journalist.

According to the local press, the capo controls, among other areas, the notorious Unión Market, in Puebla, and the San Miguel prison in that same city. As is often the case with these types of mobsters, they like to show off their good life with parties and riot. And to put rhythm to his bacchanalia he hired Fania 97. But he was not the only one. Criminal groups such as Los Robin Hoods and the gang of another capo known as El Grillo are among Rojas' clients, according to Velázquez's investigation. “Omar Rojas himself, on his Facebook accounts as well as on the official Fania 97 channel, Panzitas TV, boasts when he plays for criminal gangs. In the videos it can even be seen that, in the first minutes of the dances, during the start of his

, he thanks El Grillo del Mercado Morelos and the people of 46 Poniente for inviting him to play ”, Velázquez writes in one of his chronicles.

Omar Rojas has not responded to the allegations that have been made to him from the local press. The music entrepreneur did not respond to calls and messages from EL PAÍS. Café Tacvba did not respond to requests from this newspaper either. On Thursday, the governor of Puebla, Miguel Barbosa, reported that Rojas is being investigated for his alleged link with organized crime. “It is under investigation and there are many more details, but I cannot say more because it is part of the secrecy that must be maintained in this type of case. We are going to investigate and we are going to see how far things go, ”said Barbosa, the governor who holds a press conference every morning similar to the“ morning ”of the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. That same day, but in the afternoon, Rojas made his transmission on Facebook, in which he even greeted Café Tacvba. The band,Perhaps resigned by the loss of her team, she reacted with mockery and even ironically asked that the poblano put them

, one of the most famous songs of the group.

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