Texas State Historical Association - My Texas

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My Mother Sings

What I recall best about my mother is that she loved to sing.

She had enjoyed a little success over amateur radio in the Rio Grande Valley, but she was always too shy seriously to consider a singing career. I had not heard her singing in twenty-five years--not since I left my birthplace in the Rio Grande Valley and moved to Australia. I unwrapped the small package addressed by my mother. She had informed me that some cassettes were on the way. That's all I knew. No message was included. Just two inexpensive tapes, labelled in her familiar scrawl.

Aha! I thought. She must have taped some of her favourite music from a local radio program. I inserted a tape into the player. Abruptly, a voice began to sing to me as it had so many years ago.

Mother greeted me with a corrido, unfurling scrolls of evocative scenes. As the killers sit watching their victim's death throes, a gun is offered to the dying man so he may avenge his approaching death. He replies that such an act is futile and will not alter his destiny.

As a child I always questioned my mother, "Mary, is this story true?" As a grown-up I learned that corridos were the means by which the poorly educated migrant workers among the Mexican-Texan population kept track of the political events which affected their lives. In the early 1970s a corrido told of the watermelon pickers in Texas who were shot as they protested for better wages and living conditions. The farmer who opened fire on them was quoted as saying, "I'll get my watermelons to market, with or without Mexican blood on them." He did. And he was never charged with the shootings.

This style of music changed in the 1950s. Replaced by the big band sound of Beto Villa and Leo Salazar's bands in the Valley. But this did not satisfy the needs of the Mexican communities along the border or wherever the workers followed the crops, and the corrido was reinstated in its rightful place in our culture.

When I was a child, Mother spoke to me of her childhood. I think she was very lonely, and as I was just a little girl I was no threat to her.

"Once, my brother and I were playing in the fields among the corn and pumpkins, making corn dolls. We had blonds, redheads, and brunettes dolls, by pulling out the silk from the corn shucks. A commotion nearby startled us, and we abandoned our dolls to climb a tree. From there we had an unobstructed view. A man lay dying on the ground, his entrails exposed. Laughing men were breaking bottles on his face. In the old days, every man carried a gun. Even my father, Ramon--"

A series of love songs followed. Where I remembered the words I joined in. She sang "Celosa," the ballad of a jealous woman who sees her man pass by with another woman on his arm. She is determined not to show her jealousy, so she laughs and looks the other way. Mother never failed to act out this scene, shrugging her shoulder and averting her face. No one else could sing this song with as much passion and disdain. This projection of sensuality disturbed me when I was young. Only as a grown woman could I take pride in her sensuality and femininity. You see, we never discussed emotional needs; in our culture, a song says it all.

She sang songs of the Mexican Revolution, tributes to women who inspired with their bravery as well as their beauty. Adelita, the revolutionary. Valentina, the ideal of the Federales. These songs identified the loyalties of the troops as they marched. These women personified their struggles. Opposing sides marched under the banners of either the light-skinned Mary Immaculate or the indigenous Tonantzin/Guadalupe.

I recalled running home from school during lunch break when I was in fifth grade at David Crockett Elementary to listen to the serial broadcast from Mexico on the life of Jesusita, another heroine of the Mexican Revolution. These events, the names of the Mexican generals, were as familiar to me as the names of the "Heroes of the Alamo" we were memorizing in school.

The mournful "Cuatro Milpas" followed. This is the cry of the disinherited. Without a homeland, even the joy of listening to a bird song is missing.

I had forgotten that my mother's family were among the disinherited. My female line descends from Uruapan, Michoacan, Mexico. My great-grandmother was an indigenous Mexican, the first to marry into the Ramon Castellanos clan. When they lost their lands, they scattered. Three sons and one daughter made it to Texas. Of these, my uncle Refujio Castellanos became a successful and respected businessman in McAllen. The others joined the cheap labour force.

Mother sang "Desterrado." The homeless Mexican living on foreign soil feels alienated. Nights seem endless without a companion, family, or friend in whom to confide one's fears.

A satire on a familiar theme followed. A Mexican immigrant living in the U.S.A. falls in love, and although she is from Jalisco, she refuses to speak Spanish and pretends she can't understand him. In his frustration, he can only repeat, "Oh lady! Oh lady! Oh lady!"

I played the tapes over and over until heart and mind made contact. The impact hurt. It was a reminder; I too am an immigrant.

Mother's voice and songs carried me to a reunion with my family and our history. My mother won't discuss family matters with outsiders.

It is not dignified, she says proudly. It's nobody else's business. It is too sad, she adds softly.

My mother sings!

Alma Iris Ramirez
Adelaide, South Australia
Published: November 14, 2005