Sunday, February 6, 2011

Migracorridos

Last week I gave a news report on Migracorridos, a CD created by the US Border Control. The article that I presented stated that the Border Patrol's involvement in creating and distributing the CD was not publicized, but they did not say anything regarding peoples feelings about their involvement. The article showed a positive view on the CD.
I have found myself thinking about that article more and more over the past week, and decided that I would search to see if there were any other articles written about the CD. I found an article written in the NY Daily News, which was titled " 'Migracorridos' Aim to Keep Immigrants Home". There was a quote towards the end of the article that caught my eye. It reads, " But Gasca, who didn't know Elevacion works for the Border Patrol, said his listeners would have wanted nothing to do with the songs if they knew of the agency's involvement- they'd feel as if la migra was after them in their own country".
In the discussion section of my presentation, I asked the class whether or not they felt that the US Government was changing the meaning of the corrido. Most people felt that it wasn't mainly because these corridos were fighting social injustices, just as others typically did. This article makes me once again return to this question. If the people of Mexico would alienate these corridos and make sure they were not part of their lives, then it makes you wonder whether or not the migracorridos can even be considered corridos. If outsiders write corridos, even if they discuss social injustices, are they still corridos?

Here is a link to the article, if anyone is interested: http://www.nydailynews.com/latino/2009/01/23/2009-01-23_migra_corridos_aim_to_keep_immigrants_ho.html?page=1

1 comment:

  1. I looked a bit more into Migracorridos and learned quite a bit. The ploy for these would be that they frequently ended in either death or broken families. Another interesting bit of info I learned as that the government spent 1.5 million dollars advertising this album. I found this info at https://nacla.org/node/5625

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