El circo (song)
The lyrics describe two brothers, "Carlos" and "Raúl" (in reference to Carlos Salinas de Gortari, president of Mexico from 1988 and 1994, and his brother Raúl Salinas de Gortari), who form a "circus" (a drug cartel) and get rid of the other "circuses" in the country. After the brothers get wealthy, Raúl makes Carlos' money disappear (a reference to the Mexican peso crisis) and their circus ends. Raúl is jailed, while Carlos leaves the country, and the people are finally at peace, unless another circus arrives and the story repeats itself.
Carlos Salinas de Gortari
Several economists and historians have analyzed some of the events and policy mistakes that precipitated the crisis of December 1994. In keeping with the PRI election-year practices, Salinas launched a spending spree to finance popular projects, which translated into a historically high deficit. This budget deficit was coupled with a current account deficit, fueled by excessive consumer spending as allowed by the overvalued peso. In order to finance this deficit, the Salinas administration issued "tesobonos", an attractive debt instrument that insured payment in dollars instead of pesos. This may have been a response to three important events that had shaken investor confidence in the stability of the country: the Zapatista uprising, the assassination of PRI presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio, and the assassination of José Francisco Ruiz Massieu, Salinas' former brother-in-law, who was also the Secretary General of the PRI and whose murder was never solved during Salinas' presidency, even when Mario Ruiz Massieu (Francisco's brother) was the attorney general and in charge of the investigation.