Monterrey, Mexico: The mayor of a Mexican town who survived two drug cartel assassination attempts has gotten his own "corrido," a genre of Mexican folk song that in recent years has been more devoted to glorifying the exploits of drug traffickers than public servants.
But in a Mexico desperate for heroes, plain-talking Mayor Jaime Rodriguez Calderon seems made to order: The song dedicated to him is called El Bronco, or The Unbroken One.
"I'm not one of these politicians who hides what they think. I'm facing things that require you to have a strong character," said the mayor of the town of Garcia, a suburb of the northern industrial hub of Monterrey.
The town of 50,000 is surrounded by mountains and ravaged by violence because two former allies — the Gulf and Zetas cartels — now fight a bloody turf war over the smuggling routes to the United States.
Calderon, who has the fit, stocky, no-nonsense bearing of the horseman he is, talks about his struggle against the cartels since he took office 18 months ago.
"I fired all the police and then I began to close the businesses the cartels ran to finance themselves," he said. "I began to impose order on the city... and that got this gang angry and they reacted."
He's unbroken, but not without feeling: He sometimes tears up, as he did when he attended the funeral of a 26-year-old bodyguard killed in the latest attack against him, a carefully planned assault in March in which about 40 gunmen in 15 vehicles opened fire on the mayor's bulletproof SUV during a 20-minute shootout.
The young bodyguard is mentioned in the mayor's "corrido" as "a loyal bodyguard and a great ally."
"When I heard it [the song] I had conflicting feelings, because it suddenly made me remember an event that one wants to forget," he said. But the song also gives him a boost, he said. "It pushes me to keep going."
