“Undocumented Mexican workers board buses for deportation, Los Angeles, 1954” from the Los Angeles Daily News Negatives Collection, UCLA Library Special Collections.ĭetail of an inscription on the negative of the above news photograph. A search for the word mojado in the Frontera Collection database returns a startling number of results, suggesting an attempt to reclaim, in song, the pejorative epithet. Seeking to restrict legal immigration to the bracero program, it dramatically increased border patrols, and over a million people were deported in the first year alone. The lives of undocumented workers, and the relentless persecution of them, became the subject of many songs. In 1954, The US government instituted a program called, with astonishingly candid racism, Operation Wetback. Listen on the Frontera website: “Chon Chon Chon” by Los Panchos Mifune’s cinematic border crossing provides an interesting counterpoint to the odd Orientalism that occasionally pops up in these songs. In the 1962 film Animas Trujano, Silvestre starred opposite Japanese icon Toshiro Mifune, who was playing an eccentric indigenous Mexican. Listen on the Frontera website: “Cielo Rojo” by Flor Silvestre She is featured in almost 300 recordings in the Frontera Collection. That same year, she starred in Primero Soy Mexicano, playing the lover of a U.S.-educated doctor trying to suppress his Mexican identity. Specializing in the ranchera genre, she gained fame touring and performing for the radio before beginning her recording career in 1950. Many of its stars also became recording artists and, conversely, many prominent musicians were able to find additional fame on the screen.Īt a young age, Guillermina Jiménez Chabolla adopted the stage name Flor Silvestre, borrowing the title of a seminal 1943 film starring Dolores del Rio. The 1940s and 1950s constitute the core of the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema. From the Dan Guerrero Research Collection, UCLA CSRC Archives. Lalo Guerrero (third from left) with his band Los Carlistas in the 1930s. “Braceros loading their belongings onto a bus for trip home to Mexico, El Centro, January 1, 1965” from the Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive, UCLA Library Special Collections. “Mexican migrant workers disembark in Los Angeles, 1942” from the Los Angeles Daily News Negatives Collection, UCLA Library Special Collections. Listen on the Frontera website: “Que Vuelvan Los Braceros” by Lalo Guerrero
While Lalo Guerrero, often called the “father of Chicano music,” wrote the jaunty, wry “Que Vuelvan Los Braceros” near the program’s end. Film idol Pedro Infante recorded the mournful “Canto del Bracero” close to the start of the program The braceros’ lives became the subject of many songs expressing homesickness, hardship, and humor. During the 22 years of the program’s existence, some 5 million people were employed. In 1942, the United States and Mexico devised the Bracero Program, under which migrant farm workers were promised good living conditions and fair labor practices. Yuri Shimoda developed the digital exhibit and design, Nick Carlozzi contributed to the exhibit case installation and digital editing, Doug Daniels managed the exhibit materials printing, and Jonathan Wilson configured the listening station. Utilizing materials from over a dozen of the CSRC’s archival collections, the exhibition offers a gateway to the Strachwitz Frontera Collection’s vast and invaluable holdings.Įxhibition curated by Doug Johnson, organized by Xaviera Flores and Matthew Vest, and supported by the UCLA Music Library and the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive. This exhibition highlights the breadth of the collection, discussing the history of music and the ways history is represented in music. This collection is the largest repository of its kind in existence. With funding from Los Tigres del Norte Fund and hosted on the UCLA Digital Library, the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center and UCLA Library partnered with Arhoolie to bring their digitization project online and make it more widely available for research and preservation. It pierces the stupid walls of idiot men.Īrhoolie Foundation's Strachwitz Frontera Collection of Mexican and Mexican American Recordings comprises over 125,000 commercially produced recordings of music spanning from the early 1900s to the 1990s. It crosses boundaries, brings people together. It mixes and recombines styles and genres, replicating through similarity and difference, location and kinship. It rides on air and infiltrates our bodies and minds.
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