Through detailed analysis of some (narco)corridos, along with the practice of taking them up and relating them to daily life, this essay explores how this musical and narrative genre interpellates its public as "el pueblo" (the people). Relying on the linguistic anthropological perspective on publics as reflexive entities, formed in the circulation of discourse, it examines the paradoxical emergence of el pueblo amidst ideologies that emphasize the role of power (whether that of organized crime or of the State) in public communication. Ethnographically, the essay is situated in the city of Tijuana, on Mexico's border with the United States and a crucial place in the imaginary of the world projected by the corridos. https://doi.org/10.22380/2539472X28