Adriana Alvarado / AP

A group of Mexican federal police stand in front of the prison in Piedras Negras, Mexico, late Monday.

MEXICO CITY -- More than 130 inmates escaped through a tunnel from a Mexican prison on the border with the United States in one of the biggest jailbreaks the country's beleaguered penal system has suffered in recent years.

Homero Ramos, attorney general of the northern state of Coahuila, said 132 inmates of the Cereso prison in the city of Piedras Negras had escaped through the tunnel in an old carpentry workshop, then cut the wire surrounding the complex.

Corrupt prison officials may have helped the inmates escape, said Jorge Luis Moran, chief of public security in Coahuila, adding that U.S. authorities had been alerted to help capture the fugitives if they try to cross the border.

Eighty-six of the escaped prisoners were serving sentences or pending trials for federal crimes, including drug trafficking, the Zocala newspaper reported. The rest faced state charges, it said.

Many challenges for incoming president
The jailbreak is a reminder of the challenges that await Enrique Pena Nieto, the incoming president, who has pledged to reduce crime in the country after six years of increased gang-related violence under President Felipe Calderon.

Many of Mexico's prisons are overcrowded and struggle to counter the influence of criminal gangs that can use their financial muscle to corrupt those in charge.

Ramos said that the state government of Coahuila was offering a reward of $15,700 for information leading to the capture of each fugitive.

Mexico's drug war: No end in sight

The Piedras Negras complex housed a total of 734 inmates, and the tunnel through which the prisoners escaped was about four feet wide, 9 1/2 feet deep and 23 feet long, Ramos said.

Piedras Negras is about 150 miles southewest of San Antonio, Texas.

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Mass breakouts
There have been numerous mass breakouts in the last few years from Mexico's penal system, and prison officials are frequently accused of complicity with drug cartels.

At the end of 2010, more than 140 inmates escaped a prison in the border city of Nuevo Laredo. This February, at least 44 people died in a fight between rival gangs at an overcrowded prison in northern Mexico.

More on this story from NBC's San Antonio affiliate WOAI.com

Pena Nieto has pledged to reform the prisons, though experts say he will struggle to make an impact unless he combines this with root-and-branch reform of the justice system.

Pena Nieto, 46, of the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party, will take office in December. The party was widely accused of corruption during its long rule between 1929 and 2000, and he has promised to break with that checkered past.

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Gang violence
Northern Mexico has been hit particularly hard by violence stemming from brutal turf wars between drug gangs that have overshadowed Calderon's conservative administration.

Calderon has used the military to try and crack down on the gangs, and has captured or killed many of the top drug lords.

President: Mexico gang-related deaths fall by 15 percent in 2012

But his efforts have come at a price.

Slideshow: Narco culture permeates Mexico, leaks across border

Mexico's drug war is also part of a drug culture with roots in music, movies and even religion

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Gang-related violence has surged on Calderon's watch, and fighting between cartels and their clashes with security forces have claimed more than 55,000 lives over the past six years.

Last week the Mexican Navy captured one of the biggest kingpins active near the U.S.-Mexican border, the leader of the Gulf Cartel, Jorge Costilla, known as "El Coss."

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Analysts forecast this would lead to an increase in criminal activity in northern Mexico as rival gangs fought for control of lucrative smuggling routes in the area.

Reuters and WOAI.com contributed to this report.

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Matt Sayles / AP

Members of the band Los Tigres del Norte perform at the 9th annual Latin Grammy Awards in Houston on Nov. 13, 2008. The band was awarded with a Latin Grammy on Feb. 12, 2012.

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- The capital of Mexico's Chihuahua state has indefinitely banned the famous norteno group Los Tigres del Norte from playing in the city after the band sang ballads glorifying drug traffickers during a weekend concert.

There have been other attempts in Mexico to ban the ballads known as "narcocorridos," but seldom have they affected a mainstream group as popular as Los Tigres.

The band has been a mainstay of norteno music for decades, with hits like "Contrabando y Traicion" (Contraband and Betrayal) and "Jefe de Jefes" (Boss of Bosses).

"The musical group will not get permits for future shows in the city limits, until such time as authorities decide otherwise," the city said in a statement.

The Chihuahua city government said the band violated a three-month-old city ordinance prohibiting songs that glorify traffickers, and that the concert's organizers would be fined "at least 20,000 pesos" ($1,585).

The band appeared Saturday at a concert organized as part of a cattle expo.

Cross-border methamphetamine trade booms amid Mexico's 'war on drugs'

A Twitter posting on an account linked to the band's official website claimed the group was surprised at the ban and was not aware of the ordinance.

The posting said the band had played "La Reyna del Sur," (The Queen of the South), a song believed to refer to alleged female drug capos like Sandra Avila Beltran, better known as the Queen of the Pacific.

City Governance Director Javier Torres Cardona said "we ask concert organizers and the artists themselves to think about the difficult situation the country is in."

Chihuahua hit hard
According to official figures, drug-related violence has cost the lives of at least 47,515 people in Mexico from December 2006 through September 2011.

Slideshow: Narco culture permeates Mexico, leaks across border

Mexico's drug war is also part of a drug culture with roots in music, movies and even religion

Launch slideshow

Chihuahua state, which lies on the U.S. border and contains Ciudad Juarez along with Chihuahua city, has been particularly hard hit by drug cartel violence.

On Monday, gunmen burst into a barber shop in Chihuahua and shot to death five young men, including one who was getting a haircut at the time, city officials said.

It is not the first time the Tigres del Norte have had run-ins over controversial songs.

One killed every half hour in Mexico drug-related violence

The group canceled a planned appearance at an awards ceremony in 2009 after organizers allegedly asked it not to play the song "La Granja" (The Farm). The song's biting lyrics appear to lampoon former officials and also allude to the violence unleashed in Mexico's war on drug cartels.

Since 2002, here have been several scattered attempts by local governments in Mexico to ban narcocorridos, which are a subgenre that updates Mexico's folkloric "corrido" tradition of singing about revolutionary heroes to tell the story of, and sometimes lionize, drug traffickers.

In 2011, Sinaloa state implemented rules to rescind the liquor licenses of businesses that play the songs.

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