Thread: The US Has Been Quietly Recording Pop Songs to Scare Away Would-Be Immigrants

The US Has Been Quietly Recording Pop Songs to Scare Away Would-Be Immigrants

Tess VandenDolder - Staff Writer,
07/14/14 @ 12:56pm in Politics

Image via Flickr/US Customs and Border Control (CC 2.0)

While the United States might get the most credit for its military prowess the American government's public diplomacy efforts are pretty top notch. At least that's the positive spin on the fact that the United States has been spending millions of dollars on quiet public relations campaigns designed to dissuade Central Americans from attempting to cross the border into America, including producing some rather catchy pop songs.

In 2004 U.S. Customs and Border Protection launched a P.R. campaign in Mexico entitled "No Mas Cruces," or "No More Crosses," which highlighted the deaths and other dangers faced by migrants attempting to cross the Sonoran desert to reach the American border.

Part of this campaign included the release of five songs, which are set in the popular and upbeat cumbia style, yet have lyrics that promise certian death for those attempting to illegal enter the United States.

The most popular of these songs, La Bestia or "The Beast," is currently in daily rotation at 21 well known radio stations throughout Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. The lyrics read, “migrants from everywhere, entrenched along the rail ties. Far away from where they come, further away from where they go. They call her the Beast from the South, this wretched train of death. With the devil in the boiler, whistles, roars, twists and turns.”

Produced with help from the D.C. based advertising firm Elevation, the CBP credits the popularity of La Bestia and other songs with reducing the number of deaths from migrants crossing the border.

While successful this P.R. campaign is really nothing more that propaganda, as the songs are accompanied by no notice that they were created by and paid for by the United State government, leaving Central American listeners to believe that they are jamming to the art of their peers rather than subliminal government messaging.

But that moral gray area isn't stopping the CBP's goal of preventing Central Americans from even attempting to cross the U.S. border.

Just this past week the agency announced the launch of a new million dollar “Dangers Awareness Campaign,” which will consist of billboards and pubic service announcement aired throughout Central America telling parents not to send their children across the border. No word yet if this campaign is going be accompanied by a hit single as well.

http://inthecapital.streetwise.co/20...be-immigrants/

Oh wow. Pop songs. Dang those scary old pop songs.

Well it is apparent that their little plan is either not working or backfiring completely. Don't they know that in central America they glorify devils and risks of death! Have the missed all the skulls and horns motifs romanticized by the smuggler culture???? Obama's regime is calling the illegals north and we have many of them on camera telling us that at the border!

W