Recent events have shown that massive commercial success is no guarantee of safety. One of the big stories in the music world this year has been the rise of regional Mexican music, the term given to the loosely connected web of genres that have thrived in rural Mexico. In recent months, regional Mexican music has exploded in popularity in the US, but its biggest names have faced death threats from cartels. Last month, the massive star Peso Pluma cancelled a planned concert at Tijuana’s Caliente Stadium after the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación, one of Mexico’s most notorious drug cartels, posted death threats against him in banners around Tijuana. Now, the California band Fuerza Regida have done the same thing after receiving similar threats.

Fuerza Regida, from San Bernadino, have been releasing music since 2018, and they’ve had tremendous chart success, both in the US and Mexico, in the past year. “Bebe Dame,” a collaboration with the Texas band Grupo Frontera, was a #1 hit in Mexico and a #25 hit in the US. Last month, Fuerza Regida collaborated with Shakira on the single “El Jefe.” Like their collaborator Peso Pluma, Fuerza Regida work in the subgenre known as corridos tumbados, a newer take on the drug-trade story-songs known as narcocorridos. Like Peso Pluma, they have sung in praise of El Chapo, the mythic incarcerated leader of the Sinaloa Cartel. The Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación is a rival of the Sinaloa Cartel, and they seem perfectly comfortable with making threats against musicians.

Peso Pluma cancelled his planned Caliente Stadium concert after signed banners from the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación told him that his Tijuana performance would be his last. As The Los Angeles Times reports, Fuerza Regida were scheduled to play the same venue this weekend, but the Cartel made similar threats against them on similar banners, which appeared in Tijuana on Monday morning. On Monday night, the band announced that the show was cancelled “for reasons beyond our reach.”