Pachangas: Borderlands Music, U.S. Politics, and Transnational Marketing

FOUR: Out of a Social Gathering, Music: Galvanizing Persons into Politics

Out of a Social Gathering,Music F O U R Galvanizing Persons into Politics Consumers are more malleable . . . They’re relaxed, in a setting where they’re open to new ideas. —a national marketer, on live-music events I view writing a song as a telling of a story. . . . in a very short span of time to put something together that would allow these people to see something . . . depending upon what your agenda is. Or, you bring about the people’s needs . . . and they learn from that as well. —a hidalgo county – based marketer and musician In this chapter, I demonstrate that political climate, political style, musical style, and the songwriter’s attitude resoundingly effect an audience’s entrance into politics. By analyzing musicians’ and politicians’ narratives about the production and reception of two political campaign songs—“El Corrido del Juez” and “El Aliseda es el Bueno,” written for Ed Aparicio and Ernest Aliseda , respectively—I elaborate on the mechanics surrounding the transformation of a song into a marketing vehicle for political identification. I argue that an understanding of the media package and the conditions of production are crucial to understanding the songs’ transformation. I relate politicians’ and musicians’ shared experiences with farm work and an economy of gifting to the position their music occupies in Hidalgo County politics. I also discuss why their potent products accumulate (or fail to accumulate) publics through their differing attitudes toward politics and Mexicano cultural expression. I pay particular attention to the corrido genre’s meaning, as a vehicle used to reify a relationship in a recognizable form within a musical tradition of political struggle. In other words, the corrido musical form makes a heartfelt sentiment recognizable to others through a performance indexed to a particular genre, the corrido. E L CO R R I D O D E L J U E Z ( T H E S O N G O F T H E J U D G E ) Voy a cantar estos versos I am going to sing these verses Para un juez que conocí For the judge that I just met Lleva por el nombre Ed His name is Ed Aparicio Aparicio Y por Ed estoy aquí And Ed is the reason why I am here El es el juez de la gente He is a judge for the people Su destino quiso asi Thus, he desired his destiny Digan, “Sí” por Aparicio Say, “Yes” for Aparicio Y adelante va a salir And he is going to win1 “The Song of the Judge,” which Cecilio Garza wrote, performed, recorded, and gave to political candidate Ed Aparicio, was a strategy for dealing with a particular situation. While the music’s effect on Hidalgo County was extraordinary (and helped reelect Aparicio), the situation out of which it arose was ordinary to persons like Cecilio Garza in two fundamental ways. First, Aparicio was a district court judge campaigning to be reelected, and second, he was raised in a situation of economic poverty, specifically marked by the particulars of being a migrant farm worker. To explain Garza’s “The Song of the Judge” as a strategy for handling a specific situation, I compare it to Cali Carranza’s “Campaign Music for Judge Aliseda”—also written for an incumbent district court judge who faced a district court reelection campaign in Hidalgo County (which he lost). Both campaigns integrated corrido-like songs into their marketing package, but the character of the songs and packages differed in significant ways. PA R T I : T H E PA C H A N G A E N C O U N T E R Ed Aparicio’s campaign was not going well when he decided to drive out to the fringes of Hidalgo County to visit a sympathetic friend. Aparicio had hired Rodd Lewis, a man many consider to be Hidalgo County’s best at pro88 Pachangas ducing and coordinating political campaign media, but this advantage was offset by the incredible political and financial clout of his opponent’s primary supporter, Ramón García—one of the most financially successful plaintiff lawyers in South Texas. At the time of the campaign, García was the chair of the Democratic Party in Hidalgo County. In addition to the party machinery, he had seemingly unlimited resources to utilize in this campaign; for example, he owned dance halls and a popular radio station. Even though...