MÉXICO: EL BOTÍN

MEXICO: Bolero or  Narco-Corrido?

(First published in 2,005)

He never imagined Lucho, the bolero, the dispute punched this weekend with Thomas, leader of a group of mariachis in the portals of the port, due to the fierce competition to win customers, serve to reopen the national debate, which today remains divided Mexicans north and south, to the center of the province, with Tabasco Chihuahua and Coahuila, Lopez Obrador and Madrazo against Martinez, Yarrington and Barrio.

You read and say on the one hand we have the literary work called "100 corridos" released by the Ministry of Public Education (SEP), which has caused unrest and scandal because some of them, exalts the cult of personality of some drug barons.

On the other, there is the issue of the impeachment of the head of government of the Federal District Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has held the main spaces of the media during the last ten months and, like it or not, it is a core part of this national rancor.

In the last 200 years we have had many politicians in power, but few have been true statesmen. Some other Northern and Southern. Madero, Carranza, Obregón, Calles, Lazaro Cardenas, Benito Juarez, Porfirio Diaz, but that part of the country men have dominated state Can the North or South.

It is the lack of vision in our government, which has often led to the division of the country. Historically, it is the Southeast, which has continually had an air of independence. Yucatán is declared outside the federation. Meanwhile the state of Oaxaca made ​​threats of separation in 1915, not to support the style of government of Álvaro Obregón.

The country begins to have consistency as a federation following the discovery of large oil deposits in the southeast. Those were the times we had to prepare to manage wealth, according to Lopez Portillo. And for those things in life, is precisely the black gold, the leitmotiv of the Puebla-Panama Plan and the alleged lawlessness of Lopez Obrador that can divide us into two.

Politicians like Tomas Garrido is the synthesis of temperament and vision of southern politicians. In 15 years of government deployed a political force unprecedented in Mexico by claiming the institutions of the constitution to maintain full autonomy from the federation.

In this scenario, the parents become very concerned, because the Ministry of Education, through its owner, said the media do not think that text out of circulation, since the same, they say, is part and Mexico's culture, its idiosyncrasies and customs.

In recent years, the dissemination and promotion of the work of Jose Alfredo Jimenez in Spain, called vernacular music and have run all the rage, insomuch that the Spaniards are addicted to it.

"La Reina del Sur"

It is from listening to "Camelia La Texana" recording Spanish journalist and writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte inspired his novel "La Reina del Sur" (translated into 20 languages) that catches on the narco-corrido in Spain.

Pérez-Reverte spent several years thinking about Teresa Mendoza, the protagonist of his novel. For this, I had to get involved in the world of drug trafficking in Sinaloa where the drug trade has created a social fabric and even a new language. 

The work of Pérez-Reverte unwittingly became fashionable Mexican narco-corrido in Spain, and throughout the Spanish-speaking world where disc anthology of Los Tigres del Norte are sold; Los Tucanes de Tijuana and The Terminator.

"La Reina del Sur" has first contact with the author in a bar in Mexico City, where he discovers thanks to a jukebox, how in three minutes of music and words the story of the woman who lives at the border had love and death, cruelty and tenderness, extreme violence and gentleness, with regulations of men, in the world of drugs. 

"THE QUEEN OF BOLERO".

As a sign of the times, the Bolero in Mexico and certainly in Veracruz has been losing all the battles. Nobody cares to rescue the master's work Fentanes Enrique, Francisco Arrieta, Agustín Martínez, Emilio Cantarell, and Mario Ruiz Armengol.

After the fall of the meteorite in the Yucatan, not only the dinosaurs disappeared, the pachyderms bolero were also carried in Veracruz. Of Giovanni, Francisco Gonzales and Pochencho (Trio Veracruz) and their bones are not in a museum. The boleristas of Zamora Park, are "endangered specimen ..."

Instead of Tomas Garrido, exceptional phenomenon is an era. He got in the early twenties, the woman had a very active social participation. In three decades, Tomas Garrido Tabasco made ​​a political experiment that was worth studying for characters of world literature as Graham Green, a character from which he writes his work. "The Power and the Glory."

How to enjoy bolero bolero Cha Mambo or if there are no workshops Bolero Orchestra with reference to Villa del Mar in White Cancino, the Danzonera of the Ramirez Brothers Set Tropical Veracruz, Four or The Black Pilgrim Pilgrims (Trio) Belisario López, and Beny Moré.

No Olga Guillot, the Rios and Tona La Negra, gender languishing a long time ago, the new generations do not promote education and disseminate new boleristas only do "shows and festivals" no consequence.

Today it is not yet known, because interest worldwide Tabasco Tomas Garrido and no other Mexican politicians. Even Luis Buñuel was interested in filming the book "The Razor" work of a French Algerian writer and Manuel Robles on Garrido.

So if interested and sounds in Mexico today, according to Pérez-Reverte, is the classic run of the Revolution to contain the epic, but adapted to the new social reality: "So that Mexico can not focus on the bolero and forget narcocorrido because boleros Mexico Luis Miguel is a lie, and narcocorrido is there ... Until now inevitable ... "

The issue is important, because a European writer like Perez Reverte, in Mexico discover the origins of world literature, when the verse started dominating in all three genres.

All this led to a scenario of poverty and marginalization, ideal for cooking a breeding ground where the stories were not read in books, but were transmitted orally, the verse would strengthen the memory and perpetuate. That is to say, without much pretension, the narco-corrido, stored in distances, is a kind of Iliad. It is a tale in verse, something like the Nibelungenlied.

That was until she got the invention of printing, the verse then the story broke away and was limited to the theater and poetry, as stories began to be written in prose. Finally it was, but what is unusual is that the media and the media are giving everything and there's narco-corrido, living with them and even promoted by the SEP. Tons, my Lucho ¿Bolero or Narco-Corrido?