Mexican American Corridos And African American Badman Ballads

Through the use of pathos, schemes, and tropes, Rodriquez offers his conflicting feelings about California and Mexico. By contrasting Mexico and California with these styles of writing, he sets up

During the 1960’s, the Civil Rights Movement wasn’t the only one occurring. Struggling to assimilate into American culture, and suppressed by social injustices convicted by their Anglo counterparts, the Chicano movement was born. In the epic poem “I am Joaquin” written by Rodolfo Gonzales in 1969, we dive into what it means to be a Chicano. Through this poem, we see the struggles of the Chicano people portrayed by the narrator, in an attempt to grasp the American’s attention during the time of these movements. Hoping to shed light on the issues and struggles the Chicano population faced, Gonzales writes this epic in an attempt to strengthen the movement taking place, and to give Chicanos a sense of belonging and solidarity in this now

The topic I’ve chosen to write about for this week’s journal is a song that I have been listening to recently titled Mojado by Ricardo Arjona, which translates to wetback. Ricardo Arjona is a Guatemalan singer and songwriter that sings about a variety of topics in his songs, such as love, sexuality, racism, and immigration. Mojado begins by narrating the story of an immigrant man that crosses the border. The lyrics state that although he has crossed the border, he has not been able to transform himself into the man he dreamed of becoming. The chorus then states, “If the pale moon slips through any cornice without any permission, why does the wetback need to show with visas that he is not of Neptune?” Arjona uses this comparison to show that

Mexican corridos and the subgenre, narcocorridos, are very popular in today’s Hispanic music culture. Like any other musical genre, there are people who are for corridos and people who are against them. The people against corridos frown upon this music, because they believe the lyrics and stories (in corridos) glorify and promote violence, drug trafficking, and criminals. In their eyes, corridos are so problematic, they believe the best thing to do is to erase and/or ban corridos from all music culture. They believe that banning corridos would somehow stop sending people the “wrong” message. On the other hand, the audiences that enjoy corridos feel a connection to the stories and lyrics. Typically, this audience is made up of Mexicans, Mexican-Americans, and Hispanics. Although some people believe that corridos glorify criminal acts, others feel like these songs tell the stories people are too scared to talk about, or that is not often seen or heard in the popular media. These songs mirror stories of people’s

As a placebo for a changing guard, La Virgen de Guadalupe proved highly successful. The iconic image of La Virgen de Guadalupe remains static in both form and symbolism until the mid twentieth century, when a new movement among Mexican-Americans emerges in California, dubbed the Chicano movement. As visual propaganda becomes a large part of the movement, a significant body of art with common themes and styles, known as Chicano art, follows. This shift in subject matter among Mexican-American artists toward a specific social and political agenda began earlier, as evidenced by the work of Rivera, Orozco, and Posada, but, it isn’t until the mid 1960’s that national or religious iconographic images are recycled to support a larger political or social agenda.

The immigration story of the United States includes groups of individuals from many different countries, one such group was that of the U.S.’s southern neighbor Mexico. In the book, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945, George J. Sánchez writes about the Mexican immigrants’ experience migrating to California and settling there, particularly in the Los Angeles area. Sánchez argues that many Mexican immigrants felt “betwixt and between” their homeland and the United States, and his book examines the forces pulling them in both directions. On the one side, Americans wanted the Mexicans in the

Mexican folk songs or corridos have encounter great change over the years. Some of the changes of corridos can be credited to the different culture we live in now. Corridos in the past have been about the Mexican-American War, but most recently corridos began to be about life struggles such as immigration and the violent drug war. While the topics of corridos have changed over the years, corridos keep a familiar format with focusing on key issues of oppression, daily life, and socially relevant events. In addition, corridos may help spread attention to events going around society that has not been brought up in the media. This at time may be informative or controversial depending on what the artist feel like talking about. Corridos try be about current issues to stay revelate in the music industry. Corridos have a huge following in Mexico because of its strong roots. Its speculated that corridos originated during the Mexican-American war to narrate the battles and war generals of those wars. Much has changed since that Mexican-American war era, but one thing still remains and that the popularity of corridos. Although corridos have much of the same structure as the past, they have changed in a great deal because of the different trends going on in society

Anyone who is indigenous or anything related to indigenous culture seems to have been left in the past. The irony doesn’t escape the fact that people think the Mexican revolution signified the end of colonial oppression and the overthrowing of the tyrannical rule of Spain, yet it somehow still existed. The Mexico that is portrayed in Alla en el Rancho Grande, almost seems like a copy of Spain with an added quirk that makes it slightly different. This emulation of Spanish culture is easily seen by the mere way in which the characters in the film dress and act. Alla en el Rancho Grande, represents the similarity to Spanish culture in their slight twist on matador-styled clothing that hails from Spanish bullfighting. There’s also this sense of Spanish romanticism that is portrayed through boleros and mariachi. However, more than anything the sense of machismo and honor is represented even stronger than in Spain as something that will forever define Mexican culture, this is showed in the climax of the movie where both men duel off over their shared love for the same woman. More than anything, Alla en el Rancho Grande has a clear agenda: to ironically show an international audience that Mexico is essentially a quirkier Spain. In fact, Alla en el Rancho Grande makes a strong stance that Mexico is no longer indigenous, it has transformed into something more refined and European. Through the absence of indigenous

In “The Country Just Over the Fence,” author Paul Theroux wants the reader to understand the differences between the life and customs between the United States and Mexico by using the three rhetorical appeals; ethos, pathos, and logos. Theroux goes into detail when talking about the significance of the border, describing it as something he has never seen. He talks about Mexico having a common idea of Mexico being very violent due to the murders through drug cartels. This fact is also common in the American perspective of Mexico and could be considered a contradicting stereotype.

There are multiple topics that are embedded in Cervantes book, Emplumada. Most of the topics deal with the trials and tribulations of having a misconnection with her own culture. The topics I will be analyzing about are how Cervantes tries to resolve her own sense of split identity--Mexican and American--through her poetry in “Emplumada.” The poems I chose from Emplumada are, “Beneath the Shadow of the Freeway,” “Refugee Ship” and “Oaxaca, 1974”. I will begin with an analysis of each poem, the interpretations of the three sections in the book, and will conclude with Cervantes resolutions in her split identity. After doing a thorough analysis of the poems, I hope to have a better understanding of how Cervantes found her identity.

With that of culture comes our identity through music. The “death of the blues” serves as an example in how culture is put up to the challenge of change. Melody, Chinatown, and Big Mat represent “the loss of folk culture which accompanied the Great Migration of Black people from the rural South to the industrial North” (Waldron 58). As we begin to read, we are able to interpret their lives and identity in the South through Melody’s music. This

Everyone has heard, “Remember the Alamo”, but the Alamo remembered today is not reality. Rather than seeing the Alamo as a symbol of Texas independence or American spirit, Richard Flores contends that the resurrection of the Alamo in the 1880s by Anglos was about social class and racial identity. To prove his argument, Flores presents the actual history of the Alamo, compares two women who influenced the Alamo—Clara Driscoll and Adina De Zavala, and analyzes the representations of the Alamo in film. Flores structures his argument by first presenting a social theory to explain why and when this occurred and then presents his evidence. In the greater context, Flores’s work attempts to explain the history of Anglo and Tejano relations in

“RG,” the entitled chapter of Oscar Casares’ Brownsville, presents a unique perspective of the division of culture and social respect that exists between Anglos and Hispanics within the Borderland communities. Moreover, throughout the analyzed passage, RG, the narrator, critiques his neighbor’s physical and macho appearance while simultaneously justifying his criticism to the audience. Furthermore, it becomes apparent throughout the paragraph that the narrator’s selected words are like weapons of “sharpen blades” (Casares 28) that are utilized to protect him from readers. The passage’s use of tone along with metaphorical concepts and sentence structures assists the unravelment of a deeper philosophical meaning within the narrator’s wording.

Border corridos revolve around the Texas-Mexico border and illustrate the effects of the The Mexican-American War. During the Mexican-American War, Mexico lost the battle and the state of Texas, which made the Rio Grande the national border. As a result, Mexicans who lived on the other side of the river had to decide between America and Mexico. The people who chose to stay in America became “Tejanos (Texan-American)”(Davis, Lecture) and their culture, language, and property were respected due to the signing of the “Treaty of Guadalupe” (Flores, 167). However as Anglo-American settlers moved into Mexican territory, a “land-grab” was institutionalized, which sold most of Mexicans’ lands for cheap prices, due to the Mexican population’s unawareness. Not only that, but Texas officers known as “Texas Rangers” discriminated and violently treated ethnic Mexicans (Davis, Lecture). The border corridors reflect the interethnic conflict between whites and Tejanos and portray the injustice during those times. Similarly, Badman Ballads portrays the oppression of one ethnic groups towards another. This ballad illustrates blacks discriminated by whites during the

The border between the United States of America and Mexico always had been always a theme for a lot of discussions. And, in the book “Sunshine/Noir II” Juanita Lopez and Michael Cheno described, through texts, their point of view about the topic. Both authors represent that the control of the border has become way more restrict and militarized. In that sense, Michael Wickert presents his idea in a poem form, text named “The border Is a Fight”, that describes the dramas of a Mexican family that has to cross the border every day in a hope to get a better future. Whereas, Juanita Lopez demonstrates it through an essay that uses personal narratives of the author’s relatives to illustrate her point of view. Therefore, the both authors exploit their point of views using different text forms, and figurative images, like metaphors and personification, for delivering their ideas in the way they do.