Refried Elvis: The Rise of the Mexican Counterculture (review)

320 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies eration reconfigured the myth of Azdan as a place where they could rediscover their indigenous heritage . Again, populai music functioned as a dialectical symbolic force through which both wot king class and middle class Mexican-Americans could legitimize their past and their present as a subaltern group. In rhe final section tided "Music in die PostChicano Era," Peña reflects on the diveise musical expression within contemporary Mexican-American community. This includes techno-cumbias, techno-bandas and the ranchero. Although he recognizes new musical influences, he elaborates a weak assessment of othei musical genres such as hip-pop, rap, and other tropical-Caribbean influences on the wide range of Mexican-Ameiican musical groups and popular music. As Mexican-Americans enter the 21st century as a diverse erhnic group, theii musical expression reveals a complex cultural spectrum influenced not only by a rich cultural American/ Mexican heritage but also by the larger postmodern global village. Thus, in this volume Manuel Peña has successfully recovered and legitimized the history ofthe Mexican-American orquesta and popular music as a fundamental component of popular culture. This laborious scholarly enterprise and derailed study is an excellent source of infoimation foi those students of Mexican-American culture as well as for the average reader. Anthony Ñuño The University of Arizona RefriedElvis: The Rise of the Mexican Counterculture University of California Press, 1999 By Eric Zolov The tide of Eric Zolov's recent cultural history points to its double-sided approach; it endeavors to provide both a history of Mexican rock music and also a tale ofthe transnational commercial and cultural forces that gradually eroded the power wielded by rhe "Revolutionary Family" (primarily the PRI [Institutional Revolutionary Party]) over the constiuction of a vision of post-revolutionary Mexico and its values. Zolov places Mexican rocks rise and fall... and rise... within the context ofthe PRI's sttuggle to maintain its authority through the deployment of mythologies that include a pandieon of revolutionary heroes symbolizing Mexico: the nation, its people, and theii values . He concerns himself with how the counteiculture wears down the PRI's ability to promote the "revolutionary nationalism" that served its needs so well, which is an especially timely consideration given the PRI's recent loss of power in the 2000 presidential election when PAN candidate Vicente Fox won. One can only wondet whether a different party in control might lead to further crises in the cultuial hegemony instituted by the PRI in the wake ofthe Mexican Revolution. Zolov's book aiguës convincingly for the importance of rock music in the articulation of nationalism, institutional power, transnational forces of commerce and culture, and its place within both hegemonic and counterhegemonic discourses. Zolov's text sets a new standard for cultuial criticism, with its careful attention to historical documentation and its able analysis ofsocial and cultuial phenomena. In addition, Zolov thoroughly studies the importance ofthe transnational and national iecoid companies , emphasizing theii economic and social impact . "Around the world, rock music [...] served as both wedge and mirror for societies caught in the throes of rapid modernization" (10). Zolov's account begins in the 1950s, when rock 'n' roll arrived in Mexico, just anothei import from the United States. Fitst thought of as just anothei dance style (18), rock η roll quickly became a metaphot foi modernity, progress and cosmopolitanism but also, concomitandy, foi the desmadre of youdi culture (and the loss of buenas costumbres). Elvis, Bill Haley and the Comets, and the U.S. culture that they represented portended a new world where gendered roles (not to mention the nation and the family) could break down. The fust Mexican rock was limited to translations of rock songs (covers, called refritos, hence Zolov's title). In the late 50s, the decency league and the government were worried about U.S. rock; the answei, for the bands, theii piomoteis, and their Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 321 record labels, was a superficially "nonthieatening rebellion", i.e., rock 'h roll "contained" by virtue of being in Spanish (and avoiding English and auta of indecency that it catried) and a clean-cut image (72). By the mid-1960s, the student...