corridos

Editors' note: We extend our heartfelt prayers to everyone affected by Hurricane Harvey.

When we consider where Latinos live in the U.S., we don’t usually think of states in the Deep South. We think of California, Texas, and New York; not Mississippi, Georgia, or Alabama.

Census reports, as of 2012, show that the states with the highest percentage of Latino residents are all in the West and Southwest, followed by Florida, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois to round out the Top 10. But if you rank states where the Latino population is growing the fastest, 8 of the top 10 spots are taken by Southern states. And each of those states has at least doubled its Latino demographic between 2000 and 2010.

Big demographic shifts are often accompanied by cultural consequences: new foods, new customs, and new music, not to mention new conflicts. So it’s no surprise that there is also a growing interest in Latino culture among Southerners who are making room for their new neighbors.

At the historic University of Mississippi at Oxford, one group is specifically devoted to exploring these cultural changes. The Southern Foodways Alliance (SFA), based at the university’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture, uses film, oral histories, the written word and stage events to document “the diverse food cultures of the changing South.”

In light of the troubling violence linked to the recent demonstration by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, the group’s mission statement sounds a needed note of acceptance: “Our work sets a welcome table where all may consider our history and our future in a spirit of respect and reconciliation.”

I’m proud to announce that I have been invited to participate in the 20th annual Southern Foodways Symposium, October 5–7 in Oxford, Mississippi. The theme of the cultural and culinary confab: “El Sur Latino.”

Though food, glorious food, will be the central focus of the gathering, music is also on the agenda. As editor of the Frontera Collection website, I’ll be speaking on the corrido, which is a primary focus of this archive. I’ll be joined by my colleague Gustavo Arellano, editor of the OC Weekly and author of the book Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America.

A man of many hats, Arellano is also a contributor to a section on the AFA’s website enticingly called “Gravy,” which features a collection of stories about the changing American South. His recent article “Song of El Sur” explores some of the Mexican-American music that features a Southern setting.

Arellano contacted me a few weeks ago to inquire about one such song from the Frontera Collection. It’s a rare, 78-rpm recording called “Enganche del Mississippi,” by Dúo San Antonio, recorded in the 1930s. He calls it “the oldest known Mexican song set in the South.” The title, which roughly translates as “The Mississippi Job,” uses a Spanish slang term for job or gig, but the word “enganche” formally means “hook.”

The double meaning suits the story. This short corrido is about Mexican workers who happily hop on a train in Texas, hired by a contractor (“enganchista”) for work in another state. At a stop in Houston, one man says he’d like to get off and stay. He receives this angry retort: “Why do you want to stay, seeing as you’ve been hooked?”

The song suggests the workers are not only trapped, but also not quite sure of their destination. When the train leaves Houston (at 2 a.m.), one of them asks the contractor if they’re going to Louisiana. No, he’s told, they’re passing through Louisiana and headed straight to Mississippi.

Unlike typical corridos, this one has no lesson or moral at the end. The duo signs off leaving us to imagine what happened to the train and its passengers. But for Arellano, the song presents a clear case of worker exploitation bordering on indentured servitude. It’s also an example of how corridos clue us into history.

“‘Enganche del Mississippi’ stands as an extraordinary account of Mexicans in a place and era barely documented by academics, let alone depicted in popular culture,” he writes.

Arellano mentions two other songs of woe that are linked, at least in passing, to Louisiana. One is “Canto del Bracero” (The Bracero’s Song), a 1950s tune by Mexican star Pedro Infante that laments the “sad life” of a temporary worker. The other is “La Tumba Del Mojado” by Los Tigres del Norte, about a fearful immigrant who lives in a basement in Louisiana because he’s a “mojado” (wetback): “I had to bow my head [in deference] to get my week’s pay.”

These songs are typical of working-class corridos, regardless of geographic setting. It’s much more of a challenge to find songs that are set in the South and refer to both food and Latinos.

The Frontera Collection includes a tasty buffet of songs with food as a topic, about two dozen recordings in styles ranging from merengue to cumbia. None are set in the American South, but many have a Caribbean twist, at least rhythmically. They include “Las Enchiladas,” “Menudo,” “Pico de Gallo,” “La Rajita de Canela” (The Slice of Cinnamon), and “Sopa de Pichon” (Pigeon Soup). There’s also a humorous song from Puerto Rico’s famed country singer Chuito El De Bayamon, whose gluttonous protagonist eats everything in sight but never seems to get his fill: “Me Quedé con Hambre” (I’m Still Hungry).

Arellano believes more songs about Latino food and the South will soon be on the menu. I agree. As the Latino population continues to grow in that region, so will its level of cultural expression. Just consider the array of presenters scheduled for the Foodways Alliance Symposium. They include an Ecuadoran pastry chef, a Mexican-American poet, a Guatemalan food journalist with NPR, a Venezuelan chef from Atlanta, an owner, also Venezuelan, of a Caribbean restaurant in Memphis, and the owner of an Atlanta taquería that “combines the traditions of his native Monterrey, Mexico, and his adopted American South.”

Also on the program will be a trio of women musicians from Los Angeles who form the band La Victoria, which combines mariachi music and social activism. The band will close the symposium with a live performance, featuring new corridos written especially for the event.

Vaneza Marie Calderón, who plays guitarron for the group, consulted the Frontera Collection this week as part of the research in writing the new corridos. I met her at the library of UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center, where the public can access complete songs in the Frontera archive, rather than just the 60-second snippets accessible from computers off-campus. I left the young musician at the computer, headphones on, carefully taking notes while listening to “Enganche del Mississippi,” the original corrido of the Mexican South.

“As Mexicans have made the South their permanent, instead of temporary, home, more tunes are beginning to incorporate it as a setting,” Arellano concludes. “This new wave is still in its infancy. A handful of twenty-first-century corridos talk horses and ‘los derbies de Kentucky,’ a nod to the Mexican-Americans who work in Kentucky’s horse-racing industry. Food is also becoming part of the conversation.”

That simply whets my musical appetite.

- Agustín Gurza

In the late 1970s, in between journalism jobs, I worked in the music industry, on the selling, not the producing, side. With absolutely no direct experience in the market, I took a job as Latin-music buyer for Pickwick International, a major record distributer on a national level. With a gargantuan warehouse in the San Fernando Valley, the company operated its own chain of record stores, Musicland, and supplied hundreds of record departments in national retail chains, including Sears, Woolworths, Montgomery Ward, and Kmart.

The problem was that Latin music wasn’t selling well in these outlets, despite a heavy Latino clientele in many of the stores. So I was brought on board in hopes I could fix the problem. The managers took a chance on me because in my previous job as an editor at Billboard, I covered the business and also tracked the sales charts for top sellers in Latin music.

That’s when I discovered that writing about the business and actually being in the business are two very different things. I was nervous, but truthfully, the solution wasn’t very hard to find. The records weren’t selling because the company simply wasn’t putting out the right product, for various internal reasons.  In a nutshell, the stores didn’t have the big hits by the big stars, so shoppers were turned off.

My job was to make sure we got the right records in the racks, then did enough promotion to win customers back. Sometimes even I was surprised by our success.

One of our biggest promotions featured an in-person visit by one of the major norteño acts at the time, Los Cadetes de Linares. These promotions were typical in those days. An artist would agree to visit a retail store and sign autographs for fans, while the dealer sold a pallet of records in a few hours. A win-win, as the cliché goes.

Los Cadetes were hot at the time, so we knew they would draw a crowd. But we never expected the masses that showed up at the Kmart store in Delano, California, to greet the singing duo, Homero Guerrero and Lupe Tijerina.  Of course, this was farmworker territory, the natural fan base for norteño music. People waited in line for hours and packed the aisles so thick that other shoppers couldn’t get to the toothpaste or the TVs. It was a mob, but a most orderly and patient one.

I was impressed by the professionalism of the two musicians. They stayed to sign the very last autograph. They were not exactly charmers; they didn’t smile and you couldn’t call them outgoing. But they didn’t complain, either. Dressed in matching guayaberas, they were serious and respectful, and that’s all their fans required. People approached them with a mixture of awe and delight. Even the star-struck Kmart employees proudly displayed their personally autographed posters, as you can see in one of the photos I took with my old Minolta 35mm manual camera (which explains the lousy focus).  In the other photo, Tijerina takes a copy of the LP Pistoleros Famosos from a fan to sign, while his partner signs a separate autograph with a curious boy looking over his shoulder.

That day, records by Los Cadetes sold like hot tamales. In the end, promotions like this helped drive Latin music albums to the top of Pickwick’s western-region sales charts. I wound up being sort of a star myself at the company. But it’s easy to look good when you’re simply making available the music by artists that so many people love.

Both members of Los Cadetes have now passed away, but their music is still played and sold. You can read my full biography of this enduring norteño duo here.

-- Agustín Gurza

Los Cadetes de Linares was a popular norteño duo composed in its prime by Homero Guerrero and Lupe Tijerina, both from the town of Linares, Nuevo Leon, south east of Monterrey, Mexico. They were particularly well known for their popular corridos, starting with their first single, “Los Dos Amigos” (The Two Friends), written by Tijerina. Their career together lasted a short eight years, until Guerrero’s untimely death. Yet, they left a lasting legacy through scores of recordings as well as appearances in films that carried the titles of their best-known ballads of outlaw bravado and tragedy, including “Las Tres Tumbas” (The Three Graves), “Cazador de Asesinos” (Hunter of Assassins) and “Pistoleros Famosos” (Famous Gunslingers).

Though often impersonated by bands that hijacked their name, the original Cadetes de Linares had an inimitable style that influenced a great number of conjunto and norteño groups, and many of their songs have been recorded by countless other artists. The Frontera Collection contains some 150 authentic Cadetes recordings, many written by Guerrero and Tijerina as individuals or as a team. They put such an unmistakable stamp on their music that they became identified as the interpreters of certain hits, even though many other top bands did their own not-so-memorable versions. There are almost two dozen renditions of “El Chubasco” in the collection, for example, including recordings by other top duets such as Los Alegres de Terán and Carlos y José, as well as Los Tremendos Gavilanes. But the one that is remembered, for its tight harmonies and irresistible accordion riffs, is the hit by Los Cadetes de Linares.

The full name of the band’s founder is Homero Guerrero de la Cerda, a singer and bajo sexto player born April 10, 1937, in El Popote, Nuevo Leon. His rancho, or small farming community, lies within the municipality of Linares, an area best known for its musical native sons. He was part of a large farm-working family that could not afford to nurture his childhood dreams to be a musician. Unable to buy a guitar, the boy made one by hand with wood and rubber bands. His older brother Benjamin taught him to play, and he performed at school and family functions, as well as in the main square of his hometown.

When he was just 16, Guerrero moved to Monterrey, the state capital and a vibrant mecca of norteño music in the 1950s. He took a job in a factory that produced paint pigments but continued to pursue his goal of breaking into the music business, frequenting the city’s well-known musical hangouts. There, he rubbed shoulders with other norteño musicians who would go on to make a name for themselves, including Salomón Prado, Juan Salazar, and Los Gorriones de Topo Chico.

Guerrero finally formed his own group in 1960, teaming up with Adan Moreno, the first in a string of accordionists who would work as his partner. Moreno, who was also from Linares, left the band in 1967 due to creative differences. Guerrero then hit the road, working his way along the migrant trail from Louisiana to Ohio and Michigan, then back-tracking to south Texas.​

In 1968, the traveling musician wound up in the border town of McAllen, working at the record-pressing plant of Discos Del Valle, the famed regional label. Owner Cristóbal García not only gave Guerrero a job but also his first break with a chance to record. On his debut album, Guerrero teamed with his second accordionist, Samuel Zapata. According to a biography by his subsequent label, Ramex Records, this duo was christened Los Cadetes de Samuel y Homero, using the military term for the first time. The name “cadets” was chosen, so the story goes, because Guerrero as a young man aspired to attend Mexico’s military academy, but he lacked the resources to pursue his military career ambitions.

That first record included songs – such as “La Menudita”, “Estoy Pagando”, “Las Puertas del Cielo” and “Ven a Buscarme” – that Guerrero would later re-record as Los Cadetes de Linares. But they produced no big hits. Within a year, family issues forced Zapata to leave the group.

Still seeking success in the music business, Guerrero moved again, this time to Houston where he partnered with his third accordionist, Candelario Villarreal, originally from Matamoros. The pair performed in dance halls and nightclubs around town and were eventually noticed by Emilio Garza, founder of Ramex, the label that would finally hit it big with Los Cadetes. But before that could happen, Guerrero would need to make one more change to his musical partnership. Friends were saying that the accordion accompaniment of Villarreal didn’t fit his style, so he replaced him with Lupe Tijerina, the highly respected musician who would remain his partner until death did they part.

Since both Guerrero and Tijerina hailed from the same hometown, a lucky new name was born: Los Cadetes de Linares. In 1974, Ramex printed only 200 copies of their first record, which became a runaway hit requiring many more pressings. The album included the Tijerina corrido that would become their first major smash, “Los Dos Amigos,” written by Tijerina. This marked the true beginning of Los Cadetes de Linares, who would go on to enjoy a series of chart-topping hits, such as “El Chubasco,” "Las Tres Tumbas," "Pueblito," "Regalo de Reyes," "Polvo Maldito," “Cruzando el Puente,” “Pistoleros Famosos” and many more. Aside from making an outstanding vocal duet, Guerrero and Tijerina were also composing partners. They wrote 23 songs together, including “El Caballo Jovero,” “El Tejanito,” “Tu Nombre,” and the aforementioned “Cazador de Asesinos.” Individually, Guerrero also composed more than a dozen songs, including the tear-jerker about a grown son visiting his mother’s gravesite, “Dos Coronas a Mi Madre.”

By the end of the 1970s, Los Cadetes had received multiple honors and gold records and had been featured on television programs that gave them international exposure, such as Raul Velasco’s Siempre en Domingo, the weekly variety show broadcast from Mexico City. Their appearancs in several classic Mexican films helped amplify their musical success.

Tragically, Guerrero died at the peak of the success he had sought for so long. The musician was killled in a car crash on February 19, 1982, while traveling on the road between Monterey and Reynosa in his home state of Nuevo Leon. After his partner’s sudden death, Tijerina composed a touching tribute that struck a chord with the band’s mourning fans. It was a bolero titled “Adiós, Amigo Del Alma," which roughly translates as Farewell, My Soul Mate, and it too became a hit.

Tijerina, admired by his peers as an accordionist’s accordionist, considered retiring after the loss of his longtime musical partner. But public clamor convinced him to continue with Los Cadetes de Linares.   So, the band’s original drummer, Ernesto Baez, took over as lead singer and bajo sexto player. Tijerina and Baez continued to play sold-out stadiums and appear on popular television variety shows.​

After Baez left the band in 2006, he was replaced by Rosendo Cantu. But the glory days of Los Cadetes de Linares had now faded, and the band’s success devolved into a bitter business dispute when Cantu claimed the rights to the name of the original duet. Meanwhile, Tijerina started another band under an unmistakable moniker, Los Cadetes de Linares de Lupe Tijerina. This was not the first dispute over the name and legacy of the band. Other ex-members also formed splinter groups using the name Los Cadetes de Linares, prompting Tijerina to assert that only two people, in fact, could claim to be legitimate “cadetes.”

Thus, when Tijerina himself passed away unexpectedly earlier this year, he was honored as “El Último Cadete,” the last cadet. On the night of July 4, 2016, Tijerina had barely played two songs of a concert in a town outside the city of San Luis Potosi, another stop on a busy tour schedule, when he suddenly fell ill and had to leave the stage, accompanied by his daughter Yahaira, who is also a performer. While his musicans caried on, he was taken by ambulance to a hospital, where he died of heart failure in the early hours of the following day. He was 69.

A new generation now carries on the music of the famous duet, with a modern twist. Yahaira Tijerina, sporting long blonde hair under a black cowboy hat and tight stretch pants, shows off her accordion skills in this video during a Florida concert. She also posted a recent Facebook video to warn fans against scam artists pretending to represent her late father’s interests. Meanwhile, Homero Guerrero Jr. performs and records norteño music under the name his father founded, but with a hip-hop variation in the spelling, Los KDT’s de Linares. One of the band’s music videos about a racy love affair has more than 2 million hits on YouTube. In another video featuring the catchy love song “Mi Niña Bonita,” the new band can be seen perfoming before a large crowd in the open plaza of the city where it all started, Linares, Nuevo Leon.

The younger Guerrero also recorded a song in memory of his father, “Lagrimas de Tu Hijo” (The Tears of Your Son), which was included in a Ramex Records compilation marking the 25th anniversary of the death of Guerrero Sr. The posthumous tribute album, entitled Homenaje A Homero Guerrero...25 Aniversario, also included two farewell tunes: “Despedida con Mariachi” by Raul Ramirez, and  “Adios Amigo del Alma” by his friend and musical partner Lupe Tijerina.

In the latter song, Tijerina visits the gravesite of his friend and collaborator to bid his last farewell: “I remember the old days, that we lived together as brothers. We shared sorrows, we laughed and we cried. Goodbye, friend of my soul. In my heart, there is no calm, but I must resign myself.”

Yo recuerdo aquellos tiempos que vivimos como hermanos. 
Las tristezas compartimos, y reímos y lloramos.

Adiós, amigo del alma.

En mi corazón no hay calma; ya me voy a resignar. 

-- Agustín Gurza

Related Post: My Memorable Meet-and-Greet with Los Cadetes de Linares

Recordings are more than just entertainment. They are windows on a culture. In the voice of artists, songs give us a glimpse into what people think and feel in a particular time and place. We hear it in Mississippi Delta blues, the Argentine tango, San Francisco ’60s rock, and a specialty of this archive, the Mexican-American corrido of the early 20th century in the Southwest United States.

There are more than 4,000 corridos in the Frontera Collection, and many tell tragic tales of the borderlands, often reflecting the immigrant experience. On that score, they are still especially relevant today, nearly 100 years later, as Mexican immigration has become a hot-button issue in the presidential election. A prime example is the work of Los Hermanos Bañuelos, a prolific guitar duo that recorded right here in Los Angeles during the 1920s and ’30s.

The Bañuelos brothers, Luis and David, left a trove of socially relevant, often satirical recordings that touched a sensitive nerve in the Mexican-American community at a time when discrimination and even hatred were overt. Because they recorded in the 78-rpm era, when discs could accommodate just one song preside, the duo made a number of two-part corridos, with stories that started on Side A and finished with the climax on Side B. Many of these recordings are listed, with recording dates and locations, in the authoritative discography by Richard K. Spottswood.

One of their most famous tunes, “El Lavaplatos” (The Dish Washer), contains much of the biting, bitter satire that marked the duo’s work. This two-part corrido (Vocalion 8349) tells the first-person story of a Mexican immigrant who seeks success in Hollywood but finds only menial labor and dashed dreams, and returns to Mexico more broke than before. Los Hermanos Bañuelos also shed light on police brutality and discrimination in another song, “El Corrido de Juan Reyna” (Vocalion 8383), about a celebrated criminal trial one might call the Rodney King case of its day. The song, written by Luis, recounts the case of Reyna, a young Mexican-American foundry worker who shot and killed a police officer while in custody. Reyna, who claimed self-defense and alleged police had used racial insults against him, later killed himself in San Quentin prison. Other notable songs by the duo telegraph the topic in their titles: “El Deportado” (The Deportee), “Los Prisioneros de San Quintín” (The Prisoners of San Quentin), and the seminal narco-corrido “El Contrabando Del Paso” (The El Paso Contraband). 

The theme in these and other corridos comes down to the mistreatment of Mexican-American immigrants in the United States. At one level, these are tragic songs about wounded national pride, and about those considered heroes, like Reyna, who stand up to defend it. The lyrics of the Reyna corrido unmistakably make the case: Insulting him insulted Mexico (Porque al insultar a Reyna/ A México se insultó) and he gave his life to defend his dignity and his nationality (Adiós Juan Reyna / Supiste defender tu dignidad, / Y hasta tu vida expusiste / Por tu nacionalidad.)

More than 80 years later, it’s easy to see a parallel dynamic in response to insulting comments about Mexican immigrants made in the current presidential race by Republican front-runner Donald Trump. (There’s even a modern corrido skewering Trump, by a trio called Tres Tristes Tigres.)

One song, “Adios, Estados Unidos” (Goodbye, United States), contains all the elements of the immigrant experience – defiance, disillusionment, deportation, and defense of national honor. The two-part corrido lays out in detail the humiliation encountered by immigrants from the moment they try to enter the country from Mexico. Of course, in those days, getting permission to cross the border was a walk in the park, compared to the insurmountable walls faced today. In fact, in the 1920s, Mexicans were welcomed as workers and exempt from immigration quotas. Many came across legally every day to work.

That doesn’t mean it was safe for the migrants, or good for their self-esteem. In one verse, the immigrant/protagonist mentions that he balked when ordered to the showers, a common practice at the border in the early 20th century. The migrant refuses because he says he already took a bath at his hotel, which rings with a sort of naïve innocence. But the border agent insists, saying he can go to the showers or he can “go to hell,” a phrase pronounced with such a thick accent in the song that it’s almost unintelligible, which makes it funny, but pathetic. Since the migrant doesn’t speak English and doesn’t understand the choice he was given, he says “yes,” sparking derision from the border guard (“el güero aquel se reía”). In the end, he winds up in the showers, anyway.

Here’s the episode as described in three verses:

De allí me fui a la frontera,
Fue mi primer desengaño.
Para principios de cuentas
Me despacharon al baño.

Yo les dije, “No, señores,
Ya me bañé en el hotel.”
Me dijeron, “You se baña,
Si no quiere, go to hell.” 

Yo el “go to hell” no entendía
Por no hablar nada de inglés.
Y el güero aquel se reía
Cuando yo le dije, “Yes.” 

The gauntlet Mexicans faced at the border was no laughing matter. They had to strip and then were sprayed with a cyanide-based pesticide, known as Zyclon B, as a treatment for lice. It was the same toxic substance later used in Nazi concentrations camps, according to historian David Dorado Romo. The El Paso native has written a new book about riots that erupted in 1917 as protests to the ignominious procedure imposed at the border with Ciudad Juarez.  The author first heard of the so-called “Bath Riots” from his great-aunt, who worked as a maid in El Paso. She had been regularly subjected to the humiliating disinfecting process, which made her feel like a “dirty Mexican.”

So this first impression of the United States was a far cry from the golden dream immigrants had imagined. In the song, the protagonist tells us that he had sold all his belongings back home in Mexico to find his fortune in the land where people scooped up money with a broom. Despite the initial humiliations at the border, he forged ahead, determined to reach the place where, people back home had said, there was “money by the piles.”

Crucé por fin la frontera
Tras muchas humillaciones.
Quería llegar hasta el sitio 
Donde hay dinero a montones.

But at the start of Part 2 on the B side of the record, he soon realizes his quest would be like looking for the proverbial pot of gold. You’ve got to sweat to put food on the table, he notes, and Mexicans are given only the hardest jobs.

Para sacar los frijoles
Hay que sudar mucho, hermanos
Solo trabajos muy duros
Nos dan a los mexicanos.

The next verses feature interesting though also perplexing observations. Unlike other songs that blame gringos for the discrimination, here the protagonist blames Mexicans themselves for their failure to assimilate. That’s not a bad thing in itself. Mexicans, the narrator notes, keep their citizenship “like good patriots.” They’re not like people of “other races” who betray their flags and become Americanized. And he concludes with this odd couplet: “That is why here, the Mexican has a very dark destiny, because he is not American, like the Filipino is.”

Pero el chicano, señores,
Trabaja con alegría,
Y guarda cual buen patriota
Su amada ciudadanía.

En cambio las otras razas
Luego se ciudadanizan.
Traicionando su bandera,
Luego se americanizan

Por eso aquí el mexicano
Tiene muy negro destino,
Porque no es americano
Como lo es el filipino.

The Filipino reference comes out of left field. But it reflects the kind of inter-ethnic conflicts that appear frequently in other Mexican recordings of the era, as described in “Gringos, Chinos, and Pochos: The Dialectics of Intercultural Conflict in Mexican Music,” a chapter in my book about the Frontera Collection. In this case, the song goes on to describe Filipinos as shameless and ugly people (“desgraciados tan feos”) who traffic in prostitution with American women (“comprando y vendiendo güeras”).

After that disagreeable detour, the song returns to the immigrant’s story. The man still can’t find work because he’s not a citizen. He then gets deported as a result of this “nasty crisis,” a possible reference to the Depression-era deportation and expulsion of Mexican workers to protect jobs for U.S. citizens. Naturally, he leaves with his head high, never having “betrayed my national flag.”

The final verse drips with bitterness about the man’s broken dreams. To those who stay behind, he “leaves this song as a souvenir,” along with “the broom I used to sweep up the money.” He ends with a sarcastic slam of the door: “How well we have been treated in this foreign country.”

Les dejo como un recuerdo
Esta sentida canción.
El tren ya va caminando,
Me llevan a mi nación.

También les dejo mi escoba
Con la que barrí dinero.
Ay, qué bien nos han tratado
En este país extranjero.

As I said, the theme still resonates. But there is one big difference with Mexican-American immigrants nowadays. They see no shame in staying here, becoming citizens and casting their votes in American elections. That is a trend that may have a huge impact on this year’s election outcome, diminishing the chances of any presidential candidate who chooses an anti-immigrant platform.

-Agustín Gurza