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YBARRA, EVA (1945– ) Eva Ybarra was born on March 2, 1945, and was raised in San Antonio, Texas. Ybarra has been playing the accordion for more than thirty-five years around southern Texas and the Southwest. She is the undisputed “queen of the accordion” in conjunto music, “la reina de la acordeón.” Along with Chabela Ortiz and Brown Express of San Jose, California, and the lesser-known Lupita Rodela of San Antonio, Ybarra is among only a few women in the history of traditional conjunto music to lead her own conjunto band. Moreover, Ybarra writes most of her songs, thereby creating some of the few conjunto tunes written by a woman. Ybarra was given her first accordion by her father Pedro at the age of four, and by the time she was six, she was playing in local restaurants, cantinas, and dance halls. Ybarra was raised in a family of musicians, including her mother, who was a singer and songwriter. She often practiced with her older brother Pedro Jr., also an accordionist , who along with their father encouraged Ybarra to pursue the instrument, despite the fact that there existed no woman accordionists as role models within the conventional male stronghold in conjunto music. Ybarra considers the radio her greatest teacher, because she listened for hours at a time to accordionists such as Narciso Martínez and Tony de la Rosa. Ybarra comments that she has known from the beginning that adopting the accordion as her own instrument would require more determination and effort than that required of men in this field of music. “What I dislike the most is when people try to compliment me by saying ‘you play really good for a woman’ [ . . . ] that’s like saying I don’t play as good as the men because we all know that I’m the only woman playing.” Ybarra’s playing style is unique, often described as “making the accordion cry with emotion,” and she has established inroads for other woman accordionists in contemporary conjunto music. As a master accordionist, Ybarra has been commissioned to teach accordion classes for the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Xicano Music education program in San Antonio, Texas, for several years. She has also served in a music apprentice project sponsored by Texas Folklife Resources in Austin, Texas, teaching young women the instrument. Ybarra has released two CDs, A mi San Antonio (1994) and Romance inolvidable (1996), both on Rounder Records. In January 1999 Ybarra joined las Madrugadores, Tish Hinojosa , Rosie Pérez, Shelly Lares, and Clemencia Zapata, to form las Super Tejanas, the first all-star Tejana music performance ensemble in the history of Texas music. Las Super Tejanas performed to a sellout crowd in Austin, Texas. Ybarra also participated in the Latino Music Oral History project of the Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History. She was one of the first five Tejano music artists selected to be part of this historic project to capture the life histories of significant Latina/o music artists in the United States. Ybarra continues to make her home in San Antonio, where, among other sites, she can be found performing live at the annual Tejano Conjunto Music Festival. SOURCES: RootsWorld (world music website). “La reina de acordeón”. Silja J. A. Talvi talks with accordion queen Eva Ybarra. www.rootsworld.com/rw/feature/ybarra.html (accessed July 24, 2005); Vargas, Deborah Rose Ramos. 2003. “Las tracaleras: Texas-Mexican Women, Music, and Place.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Santa Cruz. Deborah Vargas YOUNG LORDS (1968–1972) With the cry “All Power to the People,” the Young Lords advocated independence for Puerto Rico, a socialist society, and grassroots community services controlled by, and meeting the needs of, the people. In 1968 Puerto Rican youth in Chicago, many of them former gang members, started the Young Lords Organization . A year later Puerto Rican students in New York City affiliated and formed a second chapter. When these two chapters split, the New York group became the Young Lords Party. Chapters emerged in Newark, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 815 q Y q Bridgeport, Connecticut, and briefly in Hayward, California . Puerto Rican women were active in the New York Young Lords from the beginning, fomenting a “revolution within a revolution” and demanding that the Young Lords confront “male chauvinism” within the party and society. The Young Lords’ four major offensives addressed the challenges that Puerto Ricans faced in New York, and often women’s needs. During the 1969 Garbage Offensive, the Lords cleaned...
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