Fandango: Searching for the White Monkey (review)

Fandango: Searching for the White Monkey (2006), the DVD back-cover description suggests, "weaves together the stories of musicians as they struggle to revive a dying tradition of Veracruz, Mexico." To depict this invaluable visual document as such, in my opinion, is terribly misleading, but perhaps such is the case with most promotional blurbs. Far more than an exercise in preservation, the transformational journey rendered in this documentary speaks to deeper and far more complex issues of identity and community that contour the ever-expanding cultural borderlands of the Mexican diaspora.

Fandango (2006) was produced by Los Cenzontles Mexican Arts Center (LCMAC), a nonprofit cultural organization located in San Pablo, California. Founded by Eugene Rodriguez in 1989, the organization initially aimed to provide a space and positive experience for urban youth to both learn and explore the possibilities of traditional Mexican music and dance. The center gained nonprofit status in 1994 and its accomplishments have heralded countless awards and recognition since. Its mission remains the same, and its more prominent components include a school for the arts, youth mentorship programs, the Los Cenzontles touring group, and documentation efforts, of which Fandango (2006) forms a part.

The film's opening scene puts us in the passenger seat of a moving vehicle on a rainy night as it travels along a desolate rural road in the heart of southern Veracruz, Mexico, the cradle of the son jarocho. One can't help but wonder what lies ahead. Instantly, "movement" is felt and thus established as a theme that will guide the film. Likewise, the narrators begin to tell of el mono blanco, a mythical figure invoked by local curanderos who is said to descend the surrounding mountains at dawn playing his guitarra de son. He is at once a spiritual icon, a musician, a poet. Presumably, those traveling along the lonely road are in search of him. Among them are Eugene Rodriguez and other members of LCMAC, including Fabiola Trujillo, Lucina Rodriguez, Tregar Otton, and Hugo Arroyo. While in Veracruz they encounter a number of regional son jarocho groups and legendary musicians including Gilberto Gutierrez, Andres Vega, Juana Cobos, Los Utrera, Grupo Mono Blanco, and Los Cojolites. Eugene and company are introduced to new instruments and techniques, learn more about jarocho music and dance, further perfect their knowledge and practice of these traditions, engage local musicians in in-depth conversations, and ultimately take part in local fandangos, all night celebrations of jarocho music and dance.

Although some of the individuals accompanying Eugene are newcomers embarking on their first trip to Veracruz, others are returning. Just over ten years earlier, in 1991, Eugene brought a group of Chicano youth from inner city San Pablo to Veracruz and had them learn from the master folk teachers mentioned. Among the youth was Hugo Arroyo, then a shy preteen who did not speak a word of Spanish. His personal journey of discovery emerges as a point of reference that takes us from California's inner city to southern Veracruz and back, as he learns the art of the son jarocho and becomes a link in the emergent California-Veracruz connection, the movimiento jaranero, throughout the course of several years.

In the late 1980s, the film informs us, Eugene crossed paths with Gilberto Gutierrez of Grupo Mono Blanco from Veracruz, an ensemble key in the revival of the son jarocho since the late 1970s. Their collaboration soon took the revival in a new direction, as it transformed into a transnational youth movement across the U.S.-Mexico border in the 1990s, the movimiento jaranero. This new chapter is reminiscent of what occurred in Veracruz in the late 1970s, as a declining rural economy years before led to a decline in local cultural traditions, among them those of the son jarocho and the fandango. Relatedly, at this same time there emerged an urban-commercial...