Musicians' Migratory Patterns: American-Mexican Border Lands

Mauricio Rodríguez

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429833717
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Musicians' Migratory Patterns: American-Mexican Border Lands considers the works and ideologies of an array of American-based, immigrant Mexican musicians. It asserts their immigrant status as a central force in nourishing, informing, and propelling musical and artistic concerns, uncovering pure and fresh forms of expression that broaden the multicultural map of Mexico. The text guides readers in appreciation of the aesthetic and technical achievements of original works and innovative performances, with artistic and pedagogical implications that frame a vivid picture of the contemporary Mexican as immigrant creator in the United States.

The ongoing displacement of Mexicans into the United States impacts not only American economic conditions but the country's social, cultural, and intellectual configurations as well. Artistic and academic voices shape and enrich the multicultural diversity of both countries, as immigrant Mexican artists and their musics prove instrumental to the forming of a self-critical society compelled to value and embrace its diversity. Despite conflicting political reactions on this complex subject of legal and illegal immigration, undeniable is the influence of Mexican musical expressions in the United States and Mexico, at the border and beyond.

1 Sound Through the Looking Glass

An Approach to the Dimensional Sonology on the Tijuana–San Diego Border

Álvaro G. Díaz Rodríguez

First, there’s the room you can see through the glass—that’s just the same as our drawing room, only the things go the other way.

Through the Looking Glass
(Carroll, 1896: 15)

One Sunday last summer, I accompanied my girlfriend and a group of musician friends from the University of California San Diego (UCSD) to perform on the beach in San Diego, improvising with a group of Mexican musicians on the other side of the beach in Tijuana. These two beaches are divided only by the border wall (Figure 1.1). There were four musicians from UCSD and five musicians in the Bachelor of Music program at the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California (UABC). I was in charge of recording the “dialogue” between the two groups of musicians. There were a lot of people on the Mexican side of the beach. I was struck by the sounds captured from the other side of the wall of families having fun, of the bells of the paleteros and children yelling. On my side, the American side, the only sounds captured were of birds, waves, and wind. There weren’t any people except the musicians and an immigration officer who was guarding the border from his big green and white truck. The difference in the sounds from the two sides was radical. A single barrier managed to divide the soundscape even though visually and geographically, it was the same sand, the same ocean, and the same sunset. From this arose my idea to investigate the different soundscapes emanating from one of the world’s most studied borders in recent decades. Some questions arose: What sounds characterize and shape a city? Do sound borders exist? How can we identify a society from its soundscape?

In the specific case of the Tijuana–San Diego border, sociological and economic studies are not enough to understand the intricate panorama. A profound listening is required, a new way to recognize through listening and analyzing the soundscape from distinct dimensions. In his book Sonic Agency, Brandon LaBelle says:

Figure 1.1Border Wall, Tijuana–San Diego Beach

Sound is political by extending or restricting the limits of the body, in the desires and needs announced in the cry, through the care and compassion listening may yield, and in acts of rupture and fragmentation, improvisation—the rapturous and violating noises that return us to the base materialism of bare life.

(LaBelle, 2018: 6)

Here we will take some soundscapes as a guide to uncover the tangled border phenomenon between Tijuana and San Diego through the dimensionality that listening provokes.

Border and Location in Tijuana and San Diego

Wandering up and down, and trying turn after turn,

but always coming back to the house, do what she would.

Through the Looking Glass
(Carroll, 1896: 27)

We begin by looking for a definition that can help us to understand the new concept of border. The general idea is that a border is a division between two territories or two cultures. It is a real or imaginary boundary between two objects, the separation of two cultures often dissimilar, sometimes the same. The word border comes from the Latin frons or frontis which translates as “frontage” or “façade”; however, the connotation that the word has will vary in each situation. Silvia Ruzzi mentions that the border areas represent a space for interaction between cultures and, although they are identified as transnational places, this does not imply the loss of hegemony on the part of the subordinate indigenous culture nor the weakness of the nation state (Ruzzi, 2014: 110). And fittingly this interaction is what takes place at the Tijuana–San Diego border. While there is a physical wall, the cities complement each other at the same time that they intermingle and, on some occasions, repel and assault each other.

Defining Tijuana is a complex task as there is no single Tijuana. Geographically, socially, and chronologically, there are many different Tijuanas. Over the last few decades, we can find above all, in the words of Heriberto Yépez (Yépez, 2006: 13), a historical division. Before 2013, drug trafficking was actively positioned within Tijuana society and mired in a high rate of violence. After the narcos, another Tijuana took over when the multiple, almost countless homicides began to decline and a rebound started in the maquiladora industry. Depending on the study being carried out, Tijuana has a different definition. It’s as if it tries to hide its face and show it only to those who have something to offer. Yépez likewise defined Tijuana in 2006 “as a woman who goes crazy, a woman who can’t forget, uttering lies or insults, an exciting and terrible woman, a city that consumes and destroys itself” (Yépez, 2006: 13). Is it really such a mysterious city? Although Tijuana is created from a myth from which it still survives, this city reinvents itself from its inhabitants, some that arrive and others that leave although the majority never actually get out of Tijuana.

I believe that one needs to analyze the location of the border and the characteristics of each of the cities in order to understand the looking glass through which one can look at both sides of the border. Tijuana is located in the northwest of the Mexican Republic, joining in the north the county of San Diego, United States of America; in the west the Pacific Ocean; in the east the municipality of Tecate; and in the south the municipality of Rosarito. It comprises nine districts: El Centro—known as the historic zone, Otay Centenario, Playas de Tijuana, La Mesa, San Antonio de las Minas, Sánchez Taboada, Cerro Colorado, La Presa, and La Presa Rural. According to the 2015 census from the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI, 2015), the population of Tijuana in 2015 was 1,641,570 of a total population of 3,348,898 in the state of Baja California.

Tijuana has also grown in recent years because many paisanos¹ have been deported and, due to insufficient funds to allow them to return to their own cities, have looked for a second chance in Tijuana. Some others coming from the center of the country have simply decided to migrate to the north without hope of crossing. They looked for a type of “Mexican dream”, a place to work and send money to their families without the need to risk their lives crossing the border. The myths and realities of the illegal crossing as well as the hope for a better life have arrived in many corners of Mexico. So, some elect to work in a factory or be a merchant in a swap meet or other type of changarro.² As well in recent years, Tijuana has been inundated with caravans of migrants from Haiti and South America who, having been denied political asylum in the United States, have stayed in the city.

In 2016, some Haitians arrived in Tijuana with the aim of crossing the border. However, the changes in American politics regarding political asylum caused this group to stay in Tijuana, or in many other cases to be deported. Data provided by the Instituto Nacional de Migración (INM) and cited in the report from the Colegio de la Frontera Norte (COLEF) show that from April of 2017, close to 3,400 foreigners originating in Haiti stayed in Baja California: 75% in Tijuana and 25% in Mexicali (Albicker et al., 2017: 16). In November of 2016, the shelters were at maximum capacity, and there was no immediate solution for such a large number of migrants. Fortunately, they were accepted by the Baja Californian community, and spontaneously began to work. The community built them houses and quickly gave them work permits. Many of them started to create a family with the residents of Tijuana, exchanging their longing to cross the border with the aim of getting work and creating a life in Tijuana.

This interracial mixture has also had a musical influence on Tijuana: the Haitijuana movement arose. This is a mix of Haitian sounds with border language, created in this city that gave them new citizenship (Antiguo cine Libertad, 2018). The first concert Haitijuana was given in the Cine Libertad on the 14th of April, 2018, and there was a sequel on the 22nd of September, 2018, encompassing rap rhythms with Haitian rhythms, mixing local words like “chingón”, “raza”, “jefita” and “guey” with other words in kreyòl (Espacio migrante, 2018).

Two years later, the story of massive migration to Tijuana continued. In July of 2019, the Instituto Nacional de Migración published a statement indicating that around 7,000 Central Americans were in Tijuana. Many were of Honduran origin, although there were also Guatemalans along with migrants from El Salvador and Belize (INM, 2019) who joined the Central American caravan formed on the 13th of October, 2018, by some Hondurans whose goal was to cross the border into the United States.

Among the main reasons these migrants left their countries were poverty and extreme violence as well as some natural disasters that they had lived through (COLEF, 2018). The truth is that, as Alberto Pradilla says in his book Caravana: cómo el éxodo centroamericano salió de la clandestinidad, the plan of this caravan on its arrival in Tijuana was clear up to this point, but now they faced a metal wall and many other invisible walls with the metal one being the smallest of them all (Pradilla, 2019: pos. 3430). When they arrived in Tijuana, these Central Americans could hear exclamations of support, but differently from the Haitians, they also heard many cries of indignation from the people of Tijuana at their arrival. The Central American voices mingled with the strong, rude accent of the northern locals. These were joined by the laughter and weeping of the Central Americans from the feeling of having arrived at the wall and seeing the other side through the bars in spite of the many risks and hardships.

On some occasions, they were silenced and frightened by the xenophobic cries of the many protestors who settled themselves at the border waiting for the return of these migrants, calling them criminals...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Sound Through the Looking Glass: An Approach to the Dimensional Sonology on the Tijuana–San Diego Border
• 2 Network Platforms, Electronic Scenes, and Cultural Activism at the Tijuana–San Diego Border: The Performance of Border Critical Thinking in Young Artistic Movements in the Early 21st Century
• 3 Sonic Borders of Self: A Trajectory
• 4 P/T: Ensenada and Experimentalist Musical Practice: Narrations in Place and Time
• 5 Sound Migration: Repatriation of Mexican Piano Music: A Case Study on Three Short Piano Pieces by Samuel Zyman
• 6 Borderline Crossings: The New Mexican Orchestra
• List of Contributors
• Index