elijah wald - corridos

8/11/2019 Elijah Wald - Corridos

1/7

Corridos

By Elijah Wald

Globe Correspondent

Two weeks ago, when a judge in Mexico City dismissed charges

against five men accused of murdering an American businessman

and reportedly compared them to Robin Hood, it must have

seemed to most Anglophone Americans like complete insanity. To

someone familiar with the Latin pop world, it sounds as if she had

been listening to too many corridos.

Ballads, the musical news bulletins which celebrated Robin Hood,Pretty Boy Floyd and thousands more, died out in Anglophone

culture with the rise of literacy and the media. Their Mexican

equivalent, however, is still going strong. On a bus in Guerrero, a

singer will climb aboard and sing a corrido telling the rhymed tale

of a massacre of peasants and laying the blame at the feet of the

governor. In a Chiapas street market, a cassette by Los Zapatistas

del Norte celebrates the triumphs of the guerilla leader

Subcomandante Marcos. And, in the United States, Los Tigres delNorte and Los Tucanes de Tijuana are on top of the Latin charts

with "narcocorridos,'' ballads of the drug smugglers who have

fallen heir to a tradition that once celebrated revolutionary heroes

like Villa and Zapata.

The continued success of corridos is a surprising anomaly in the

modern world. As other Latin styles turn to synthesizers and

carribean rhythms, the corrido groups springing up in NorthernMexico and the Southwestern U.S. continue to sing waltz-time

stories backed by accordion, bass, drums and bajo sexto, a low-

pitched 12-string guitar. Even folklorists are surprised. While the

music had a golden age in the early part of this century,

documented on two box sets from Arhoolie records, "Corridos and


2/7

Tragedias de la Frontera'' and "The Mexican Revolution,'' by the

1960s most experts thought its time was passing.

That changed when Los Tigres, "The Tigers of the North,'' vaulted

to the top of the charts in 1971 with "Contrabando y Traicion''("Contraband and Betrayal''). The ballad of a couple who smuggle

marijuana from Mexico to L.A. in their car tires, after which the

man tries to break up and the woman shoots him, was made into a

popular film, and started a new wave of corrido groups, with the

Tigres firmly ensconced as kings of the style. In the intervening

years, they have made some thirty albums, and 18 more songs have

spawned movies in which they make brief appearances.

Recently, though, the Tigres have found their crown in jeopardy.

Los Tucanes (The Toucans), a ten-year-old group, have rocketed to

the top of the charts with songs like "La Pinata,'' a hit from their

new "Tucanes de Plata'' album (EMI Latin), which tells of a party

with a cocaine-filled pinata. In this and other songs, the Tucanes

depart from tradition by celebrating not just the valor of the

working-class smugglers, but the power and flashy lifestyle of the

big drug lords, and the drugs themselves. As Enrique Franco

Aguilar, a San Jose songwriter who gave the Tigres some of theirmost influential hits, puts it, " 'Contrabando y Traicion' is Walt

Disney compared to the songs of Los Tucanes.''

The result has been an outcry on both sides of the border. Citizens'

groups have been formed, and the Mexican states of Chihuahua

and Sinaloa have banned narcocorridos from the radio.

Comparisons have been made to gangsta rap, though Anglophone

reporters often seem puzzled by the fact that the Tucanes'accordion-driven waltzes and polkas are more perky than

forbidding. (The Tucanes have further confused critics by pairing

the release of each corrido disc with a companion disc, such as

1997's "Tucanes de Oro,'' featuring love songs and boleros in the

popular "Tejano'' style of Grupo Limite and the late Selena.)


3/7

What critics often ignore is that the narcocorridos, as a tradition,

are only tangentially about drugs. Like our ballads of Jesse James

and Billy the Kid, the theme is less a celebration of crime than a

dislike of authority and big money. "The people who buy these

records are very poor, and are struggling under a system which isdevised to keep them marginalized,'' says James Nicolopulos, a

professor at the University of Texas who studies contemporary

corrido. "These people who beat the system, who break out of that,

are looked upon as culture heroes. And there's also the element of

conflict with Anglo-Saxon civilization, which is a long-running

theme in Mexican culture. Because the United States is so intrusive

into Mexico in terms of the drug policy, if you beat the system

you're also beating the cultural antagonist.''

In this, the narcocorridos hark back to the Mexican War of the

1840s, to folk tales of border outlaws, and most obviously to

corridos of the "tequileros'' who smuggled liquor into the U.S.

during prohibition. While providing entertainment and an

emotional release, they also reflect a viewpoint of which few

Anglo-Americans are aware: To rural Mexicans, the "war on

drugs'' is most visible as a flood of armed troops into agricultural

districts, borders and coastal areas, which have in no way halted

the flow of drugs -- indeed the police and soldiers are widely

perceived as completely in the pocket of the drug lords -- but have

been a source of harrassment, extortion and violence.

Corrido singers point out that the smugglers in their ballads tend to

end badly, either dead or in prison, and many narcocorridos

include at least a token admonishment against drug use. Indeed, the

Tigres' Grammy-nominated double CD, "Jefe de Jefes'' ("Boss ofBosses'') (Fonovisa) includes a couple of direct anti-drug songs.

Nonetheless, while drugs are becoming an ever-greater problem in

urban areas, there is still a perception among many Mexicans that

the trade is, for them, a largely economic matter and the buyers and

users are in the U.S.


4/7

On "Jefe de Jefes,'' the Tigres make this point directly. Two songs,

"Por Debajo del Agua'' (colloquially "Under the Table'') and "El

General'' ("The General'') imply that the real power behind the

drug trade is north of the border, and probably includes

government officials. The latter song is centered on GeneralRebolla Gutierez, the Mexican contact for the D.E.A. who was

dismissed after accusations that he was a close associate of the

drug lord Pablo Escobar. The song defends the General, suggesting

that he was removed because he could not be bought off, and goes

on to say, "The gringos certify other countries/ They don't want

drugs to exist . . ./ But tell me, who certifies the United States?''

As with the genre in general, the Tigres' message is decidelymixed, romanticizing the traffickers and gun battles even while

making more serious points. Since the Tucanes' upped the ante, the

Tigres have taken on a harder edge and "Jefe de Jefes,'' which

takes its title from a hit about a shadowy "Godfather'' figure, has

them abandoning the gaudy cowboy garb worn by all corrido

groups in favor of gangster-style leather, and doing both their

cover shoot and video in the forbidding ruins of Alcatraz.

Nonetheless, despite the popularity of narcocorridos, the Tigrescontinue to sing about plenty of other subjects. The album's first

single, "El Mojado Acaudalado'' ("The Wealthy Wetback'') is sung

in the character of an illegal immigrant who has made good money

in the U.S., but is joyfully returning to spend it in his "beloved

land.'' In a more overtly political vein, "El Sucesor'' ("The

Succesor'') is a barely veiled attack on the ruling PRI party, with a

departing figure (presumeably ex-president Salinas) handing over

"the keys to the store,'' and warning his successor that they have anice little business and he should just keep things moving smoothly

as they have for 100 years if he does not want to end up like

Colosio, the candidate assassinated during the last presidential

election.


5/7

Salinas, who came to symbolize the corruption in Mexican politics,

has been a fertile subject for corridos, including the Tigres' satiric

"El Circo'' ("The Circus''). Such songs are, in the opinion of most

older corrido fans, what gives the genre its continued importance.

"What the corrido is supposed to do is be a voice of the people,''Nicolopulos says. "It should be a counter-discourse to the

discourse of power.''

While the narcocorridos attract more press attention, these songs

remain the meat of the genre, though many are only performed by

local groups and issued on poorly-distributed cassettes. Any event,

from a local crime to the success of baseball star Fernando

Valenzuela is instantly set in verse and sung in bars and cafes.Several recent corridos tell of attacks by the "Chupacabras''

("Goatsucker'') a beast said to be rampaging through Mexico and

Puerto Rico. In California, there has been a whole cycle

celebrating Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers union, and

"Los Illegales,'' a recent song by Franco for the Fresno group Los

Pumas de Jalisco, mocks the xenophobia of Proposition 187, with

Governor Pete Wilson blaming immigrants for everything from

forest fires to earthquakes.

Franco strongly condemns the new narcocorridos, though he

credits them with having revived interest in the genre. His own

most popular songs have been socially conscious numbers that

provided the Tigres with some of their biggest hits of the 1980s.

"Tres Veces Mojado'' ("Three Times a Wetback'') told of a poor

Salvadoran who had to illegally cross three borders to reach the

U.S. "Jaula de Oro'' ("Cage of Gold'') was the lament of a Mexican

immigrant who found economic success but lost his culture and hiscountry.

Most recently, Franco has written and produced an album for La

Tradicon Del Norte (The Northern Tradition), a quartet of twenty-

something brothers from outside Tijuana. Released by BMG,


6/7

"Corridos Para los Buenos, los Malos, y los Feos'' ("Ballads for the

Good, the Bad, and the Ugly'') is Franco's answer to the

narcocorrido trend. "We think the drug traffic is a crime and

should be attacked,'' he says. "So we are trying to do something

different.''

La Tradicion are superlative musicians, with tricky accordion lines

and a rootsy sound that makes the Tigres and Tucanes sound

formulaic by comparison. Many of the songs Franco has written

for them are light, action-filled numbers like the hit, "Gallo de

Pelea'' ("Fighting Cock''), a machismo-filled boast ("Cocks and

women, the two things are pretty much equal,'' the chorus says.

"The cocks give me money, the women take it away.'')

"These songs are an escape for the public,'' Franco says, speaking

in Spanish. "It is the only way for the people to be silly, to create

their lies [myths]. We talk about the gringos who hit us, about the

bad government, about the police. But it is all fiction, right?''

Maybe yes, maybe no. Many of Franco's songs seem like more

than simple escapist fare. "El Lobo de Sinaloa'' ("The Wolf of

Sinaloa''), for example, is a portrait of a young hit man sellinghimself to the governor of a Mexican state notorious for its feudal

agrarian system and violent peasant-landowner struggles. Since a

Laredo sheriff won a suit against a corrido label, all such songs are

at least supposedly fictitious, and Franco says that the character of

El Lobo is his invention, but adds that it represents "the type of

person whom the politicians get involved with, young guys who

will do anything.''

Another song makes no pretension to fiction: "Rigoberta Menchu''

is a celebration of the Guatemalan peasant organizer who won the

1992 Nobel Peace Prize. Then there is "Declaracion de Guerra,''

which takes its plot from an old joke, but makes the point that

when the U.S. won wars against Germany and Japan it then gave


7/7

them money to rebuild, while when it won against Mexico it seized

half the country (Mexicans remain intensely aware that until 1848

virtually the entire Southwestern U.S. was part of the Mexican

Republic).

Franco feels that dealing with such subjects, albeit through fiction,

is part of his mission as a corrido composer. "Traditionally, all the

corridos were about real events,'' he says. "It was a newspaper. In

one song, I say that the Mexican people learned history by reading

a songbook.''

Today, despite the dominance of drug songs, he continues to have

faith in the power of the genre. "Too many of these 'artists,' inquotation marks, only want money,'' he says. "But when you have

a good interpreter the corridos can still have a very strong effect.

Because the people believe in these artists. If the artists wanted,

they could make a revolution. A great artist is more powerful than

a politician.''

elijah wald - corridos

Documents