focusing out west, a mean town below the Yuma border called San Luis Río Colorado.
Orale,
it sucked, all right? The dying salty remnant of the Colorado River oozed by, picking up green chemicals and sewage as it went down to the Sea of Cortez. But you could hop a fence right into orange groves in one part of town, and there was Yuma, which was ten thousand times more interesting than Nogales. Los Angeles was in striking distance. It was all happening in San Luis.
Maradona was hooked up with a major operation there. He was heading out soon on a Tres Estrellas bus. All Jesús had to do was say the word, and he could be a Yuma gangster too.
Jesús basically said: What are we waiting for?
Jesús was of regular size, neither tall, nor overly heavy. He had a rabbit tattooed on his right arm. And then there was that haircut.
His haircut was a classic “rockero” or “banda” style. He probably hadn’t seen much MTV, but he had seen the Mexican TV shows that featured pop bands like Maná. Shows like
Control
and
Caliente
. Maybe the gangsters had weenie roasts at the big man’s house, and maybe they fired up the satellite dish and watched
TRL
and
Oz
and
Wrestlemania
together.
Most of the stuff on Sonoran radio was crap —Norteño accordion music and lame cumbias filtered up from the tropics. Jesús didn’t look like those groups, with their polyester two-tone or even three-tone cowboy suits. He certainly didn’t dress like those guys. Jesús looked like El Tri, or Molotov. Jesús looked cool.
And he liked his music, music that was getting bolder and bolder. Even the ranchero stuff was turning outlaw—polkas and ballads sang of the virtues of narcos and Coyotes. The culture had common enemies: oppression, poverty, cops, “the government,” the Border Patrol, “La Migra.” (Oddly, much border slang made law enforcement feminine: la chota, la placa, la Migra.) Rock songs regularly took the governments of both the United States and Mexico to task, demanding human rights, indigenous rights, political parity, revolution, even ecological responsibility. Like all rock, some songs also enthusiastically advocated smoking pot, getting drunk, and getting laid.
And Jesús and his friends were listening. The banda kids, a terror to the staid fathers of Mexico, were becoming self-educated through a kind of samizdat musical network. Mexican bands, Latin American bands, and even Chicano bands from Los Angeles were throwing down challenges in every genre—pop, rap, techno, metal, el punk. What didn’t get on the radio rattled from block-party boom boxes and pirated tapes. Deejays in chichi bars played the rude stuff to the delight of partiers and the indifference of the strippers.
Some of the songs were unbelievably bold.
The sly cultural warriors of Tijuana No!, for example, released a rousing rap, “Stolen at Gunpoint”:
Fuck La Migra,
And the policía!
Fuck John Wayne,
I look up to Pancho Villa!
The chorus cried:
California
Stolen at gunpoint!
Arizona
Stolen at gunpoint!
Texas
Stolen at gunpoint!
Nuevo México
Stolen at gunpoint!
El Alamo
Stolen at gunpoint!
Aztlán
Stolen at gunpoint!
Puerto Rico
Stolen at gunpoint!
América
Stolen at gunpoint!
We gonna get it back …
Aztlán (“The Place of the Reeds”) was the traditional home of the Aztecs, a possibly mythical motherland from which the tribe ventured forth on a one-hundred-year walk. It was a land to the north of Mexico City. Chicanos recognize Aztlán as being in the American southwest, and it came to represent the stomping ground of “La Chicanada,” or the entirety of the Hispanic west. The Aztecs (Mexica, pronounced “Meshica,” hence, “Chicano”) walked south, out of the deserts, on their way to what would become Mexico City. They apparently walked across the Devil’s Highway on their way home.
We gonna get it back …
In this milieu, it was quite attractive to be a Coyote. You could tell yourself you were a kind of civil
Orale,
it sucked, all right? The dying salty remnant of the Colorado River oozed by, picking up green chemicals and sewage as it went down to the Sea of Cortez. But you could hop a fence right into orange groves in one part of town, and there was Yuma, which was ten thousand times more interesting than Nogales. Los Angeles was in striking distance. It was all happening in San Luis.
Maradona was hooked up with a major operation there. He was heading out soon on a Tres Estrellas bus. All Jesús had to do was say the word, and he could be a Yuma gangster too.
Jesús basically said: What are we waiting for?
Jesús was of regular size, neither tall, nor overly heavy. He had a rabbit tattooed on his right arm. And then there was that haircut.
His haircut was a classic “rockero” or “banda” style. He probably hadn’t seen much MTV, but he had seen the Mexican TV shows that featured pop bands like Maná. Shows like
Control
and
Caliente
. Maybe the gangsters had weenie roasts at the big man’s house, and maybe they fired up the satellite dish and watched
TRL
and
Oz
and
Wrestlemania
together.
Most of the stuff on Sonoran radio was crap —Norteño accordion music and lame cumbias filtered up from the tropics. Jesús didn’t look like those groups, with their polyester two-tone or even three-tone cowboy suits. He certainly didn’t dress like those guys. Jesús looked like El Tri, or Molotov. Jesús looked cool.
And he liked his music, music that was getting bolder and bolder. Even the ranchero stuff was turning outlaw—polkas and ballads sang of the virtues of narcos and Coyotes. The culture had common enemies: oppression, poverty, cops, “the government,” the Border Patrol, “La Migra.” (Oddly, much border slang made law enforcement feminine: la chota, la placa, la Migra.) Rock songs regularly took the governments of both the United States and Mexico to task, demanding human rights, indigenous rights, political parity, revolution, even ecological responsibility. Like all rock, some songs also enthusiastically advocated smoking pot, getting drunk, and getting laid.
And Jesús and his friends were listening. The banda kids, a terror to the staid fathers of Mexico, were becoming self-educated through a kind of samizdat musical network. Mexican bands, Latin American bands, and even Chicano bands from Los Angeles were throwing down challenges in every genre—pop, rap, techno, metal, el punk. What didn’t get on the radio rattled from block-party boom boxes and pirated tapes. Deejays in chichi bars played the rude stuff to the delight of partiers and the indifference of the strippers.
Some of the songs were unbelievably bold.
The sly cultural warriors of Tijuana No!, for example, released a rousing rap, “Stolen at Gunpoint”:
Fuck La Migra,
And the policía!
Fuck John Wayne,
I look up to Pancho Villa!
The chorus cried:
California
Stolen at gunpoint!
Arizona
Stolen at gunpoint!
Texas
Stolen at gunpoint!
Nuevo México
Stolen at gunpoint!
El Alamo
Stolen at gunpoint!
Aztlán
Stolen at gunpoint!
Puerto Rico
Stolen at gunpoint!
América
Stolen at gunpoint!
We gonna get it back …
Aztlán (“The Place of the Reeds”) was the traditional home of the Aztecs, a possibly mythical motherland from which the tribe ventured forth on a one-hundred-year walk. It was a land to the north of Mexico City. Chicanos recognize Aztlán as being in the American southwest, and it came to represent the stomping ground of “La Chicanada,” or the entirety of the Hispanic west. The Aztecs (Mexica, pronounced “Meshica,” hence, “Chicano”) walked south, out of the deserts, on their way to what would become Mexico City. They apparently walked across the Devil’s Highway on their way home.
We gonna get it back …
In this milieu, it was quite attractive to be a Coyote. You could tell yourself you were a kind of civil
Similar Books
