Putta Mularski - Mexican Ranchera and Nationalism in Chile

Mexican or Chilean: Mexican RancheraMusic and Nationalism in Chile

Jedrek Putta MularskiSaddleback Gollege

Abstract

Despite its focus on Mexican themes, imagery, and traditions, Mexican ran-chera music has been among the most popular musical styles in central andsouthern Ghile since the first half of the twentieth century. Utilizing evidencefrom Gbilean periodicals and oral histories, this essay presents an analysis ofthe relationship between tbe popularity of ranchera music and Ghilean iden-tity. It asserts that a combination of political and commercial ties betweenMexico and Ghile, similarities between rural life in the two countries, andmusical compatibility among Mexican rancheras and rural Ghilean folk musicfacilitated the spread of ranchera music tbroughout the Ghilean countryside.Despite the Ghilean public's widespread embrace of ranchera, this foreignmusic did not lead to a transnational identity, but, instead, rancheras becameincorporated into Ghilean nationalist sentiments.

Introduction

In 2001, twelve-year-old Santiago native, Maria José Quintanilla, appearedon Rojo Fama Contrafama, a Ghilean television program in which young

singers competed for a chance at a career in popular music. Viewers electedQuintanilla, who demonstrated an impressively strong voice and stage pres-ence, as the program's most popular participant, and her success on RojoFama Contrafama quickly translated into a recording contract with SonyMtjsic. By 2003, Quintanilla bad recorded and released her first album, wbichimmediately jumped to the top of the Ghilean popular music charts and wenton to become the best selling LP in Ghilean history. While the rapid rate ofQuintanilla's rise to stardom seemed unlikely, what seemed even more un-likely was that Quintanilla performed Mexican ranchera (country) music andwas often garbed in Mexican charro (cowboy) suits. México Undo y querido,Quintanilla's first album, was a series of classic rancheras, and the Ghilean'ssubsequent ranchera-themed works also achieved tremendous commercialsuccess in Gliile (Leiva n. pag., pars. 5-12).

Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, Vol. 30,2012©2012 by the University of Texas Press, PO Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819

Jedrek Putta Mularski 55

Far from having introduced Chileans to ranchera music, Maria JoséQuintanilla had tapped into a deeply rooted affection among many Chileansfor ranchera music. The origins of this affection stretch back into the firsthalf of the twentieth century, and deep, emotional ties to ranchera musicbecame particularly strong among rural, working-class populations in centraland southern Chile, where ranchera music was (and still is) extremely popu-lar. Many of Quintanilla's songs drew upon classic rancheras that expressMexican themes, imagery, and traditions; at the same time, however, manyChileans paradoxically view Quintanilla and her music not as "Mexican," butas "very Chilean" (Eva B., personal interview).

This essay presents an analysis of the relationship between the popular-ity of ranchera music and Chilean identity. Evidence drawn from Chileanperiodicals and oral histories conducted among rural Chilean residents andmusicians indicates that, through a combination of political and commercialties between Mexico and Chile, similarities in rural life, and the musical com-patibility among Mexican ranchera and rural Chilean folk music, rancheramusic spread throughout the Chilean countryside. Despite the Chilean pub-lic's widespread embrace of ranchera music, this foreign music did not leadto a transnational identity but, instead, rancheras became incorporated intoChilean nationalist sentiments.

A Brief Survey of Scholarship on Musicand National Identity in Latin America

Historians since the late nineteenth century have privileged the nation-state as a unit of historical analysis, and scholars, such as Anthony Smithand Benedict Anderson, paid particular attention during the 1980s to theconstruction of national identities and their relationship to nation-states. Re-flecting upon the way in which bonds develop among individuals who havenever come into direct contact with one another. Smith contended in TheEthnic Origins of Nations {1986) that even contemporary nations have rootsin a premodern, ancestral "ethnie" that fuels the formation of nation-states.Anderson, in contrast, argued in Imagined Communities {1983) that nationsare not simply products of race and ethnicity, but are socially constructed,imagined communities in which members develop a sense of affinity based onshared experiences or beliefs. He explored a wide range of factors, includinglanguage, print, and religion, to assert that mass communication has playeda fundamental role in fostering such shared experiences and comradeshipamong individuals.

Anderson's argument that "communities are to be distinguished, notby their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined"(6), spawned a vast body of postcolonial and cultural studies scholarship onnational identity in Latin America. For example, Florencia Mallon's Peasant

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and Nation (1995) drew upon Anderson's nodon ofthe nation as a cultural,political, and intellectual construction by exploring nationalism in Mexicoand Peru as a form of discourse; Mallon argued that "people give mean-ing to their experiences through the .social and historical construction ofmultiple, crosscutting identities and power reladons" (10), and that ruralcommunities were "historically dynamic entities whose identities and lines ofunity or division were constantly being negotiated" (11). William Rowe andVivian Schelling's Memory and Modernity: Popular Culture in Latin America(1991), as well as Eva Bueno and Terry Caesar's Imagination Beyond Nation:Latin American Poptilar Ctdture (1998) similarly built upon Anderson'swork by examining the relationship between popular culture and national-ism, a trajectory that Doris Summer's Eoundational Fictions (1991) echoedin its analysis of the role that novels played in the development of postin-dependence, national identities in Latin America. In a similar vein, scholar-ship on Latin American cinema, such as John King's Ma¿[icaí Reels (1990),and television, such as Elizabeth Fox's Latin American Broadcasting: FromTan¿[o to Telenovela (1997), also began to consider the links between popularculture industries and nationalism, stoking the emergence of a vast array ofpublicadons in recent years dealing with the reladonship between the nadon-state, daily life, and cultural pioducdon. Those publicadons that focused onmusical producdon often drew upon the discipline of ethnomusicology andits notion that the ritual of cieadng, disseminating, and receiving music notonly reflects societies and the social reladonships that structure them, butthat the pioducdon and reception of music may also act as a fundamentalcomponent in the fbrmadon of those societies, their social structures, and theidentities shared by their members.'

Benedict Anderson believed that the nation-state was a particularlystrong entity, and that it would continue to provide individuals with theirprimary source of polidcal and cultural identity. Following Anderson's em-phasis on the nation-state, a handful of works, most prominently HermanoVianna's The Mystery of Samba (1999), Bryan McCann's Hello, Hello Brazil(2004), Simon Collier's Tanô! (1995), and Robin Moore's NationalizingBlackness (1997) and Music and Revohmon (2006), explored music's rolein the construction of nadonal idenddes ded to the state. Vianna traced thetransformadon of samba from a lower-class music popular only among mar-ginalized Afro-Brazilian populadons in the north of Brazil to a nadonal musicthat all Brazilians embraced, and which has served as a cornerstone of Brazil-ian idendty from the 1930s. McCann's study of Brazilian strongman GetulioVargas's cultural populism and the polidcal and economic infrastructure thatfacilitated the propagation of samba and other "Brazilian" music further il-luminated the construction of Brazilian national idendty and nadonalist sen-timent. Similarly, Moore explored how Cuban intellectuals and the Cubangovernment promoted Afro-Cuban music as a central component of nationalpride and culture. For Argentina, Collier's work on tango traced the history


ofthat music from its working-class origins to its embrace by the Argentinestate and populace as a quintessential symbol of national identity. In addi-tion, Peter Wade's Music, Race, and Nation (2000) explored the role thatAfro-Colombian costeño music has played in the development of Colombianidentities, and concluded that Anderson overemphasized the importanceof homogeneity in the establishment of "imagined" national communities.Wade argued instead that the strength of Colombia's nation-state stemslargely from a national, cultural ethos based on the concept of Colombia as a"country of regions," united by an embrace of its multiculturalism. Despitehis disagreement with Anderson over the precise manner in which culturalidentities form. Wade, like the aforementioned scholars, focused largely onprojects luidertaken by national governments to legitimize themselves in theeyes of their citizenry in order to foster a sense of allegiance to the state byestablishing a domestic-based form of popular or folk music as central to ashared national identity. In other words, this line of research explored musicas a mechanism to explain and support established ideas regarding the devel-opment and persistence of the nation-state.

In contrast to musical studies that have considered music's role as re-inforcing the nation-state, a second stream of research on music emergedout of the work of scholars such as Arjun Appadurai and Mike Featherstone,who asserted in Modernity at Larße (1996) and Undoinß Culture: Globaliza-tion, Postmodernism and Identity (1995), respectively, that advancements incommunication and media technologies have fostered the development oftransnational identities that undermine the cohesiveness of the nation-state.Research that followed this theoretical orientation built upon theories of cul-tural hybridity that Nestor Garcia-Canclini introduced in Culturas híbridas(1990), as well as George Lipsitz's assertion in Danßerous Crossroads {1994)that transnational cultural forms often serve as powerful, popular tools forcultural resistance against the nation-state. Such scholarship often placedstrong emphasis on society's role in the construction of idendty, and newresearch that explored the role that music has played in the development oftransnational identities emerged from it. For example. Lise Waxer's The Cityoj'Musical Memory {2002) and Situatinß Salsa {2002) traced the movementof salsa music throughout Latin America and asserted that this music becamea fundamental component of cultural identities that tied together geographi-cally distant communities across the region. Edc Zolov's Refried Elvis{1999)explored rock music as fundamental to a Mexican counterculture movementthat felt camaraderie with countercultural youth in other countries, such asthe United States. Similarly, Helena Simonett's Banda: Mexican Musical Lifeacross Border's {2001) contended that by consolidating mariachi music, a styleoriginating in the central Mexican state of Jalisco, as Mexico's emblematic,musical identity and ignodng the banda traditions of the north, the Mexicangovernment contributed to a cultural divide among its regions and socialclasses. Today, banda has become a central means by which Mexicans living

58 Studies in Latin Atnerican Popular Culture

in the United States and working-class Mexicans in northern Mexico asserta shared sense of cultural pride and autonomous identity that transcends thenation-state.

Although this second body of scholarship differs from that which Vianna,McCann, and Moore conducted in their exploration of music's relationshipto the nation-state, both currents of musical research emerged as logical ex-tensions of a historiography that in the 1980s began to reconceptualize theformation and the nature of nation-states. Following these lines of investiga-tion, this article considers how and why ranchera mtisic emerged as a strongcultural force in Chile during the second and third quarters ofthe twentiethcentury, as well as the effect that this process has had on conceptions of iden-tity among Chileans who embraced ranchera music. In doing so, it arguesthat although, as Appadurai and Featherstone theorized, communicationtechnologies do contribute to the development of identities that transcendnational boundaries, such identities may be part of an ongoing negotiation ofnational identity within societies; this negotiation can coexist with, and evenreinforce, nationalism and the type of "imagined community" that Andersonviewed as the basis ofthe nation-state.

A Short History of Ranchera Music in Chile

Shipping routes and migratory flows have linked Chile to Mexico since thecolonial period, with the coastal cities of Valparaiso and Acapuico in particu-lar serving as principal ports through which vessels passed as they travelednorth and south along the Pacific coast of South America. Several interre-lated developments triggered a significant increase in this traffic during thenineteenth and the early twentieth centuries: gold rushes and widespreadpopulation growth in the western United States; increased production andexportation of Chilean foodstuffs, metals, and nitrates; advances in maritimeshipping technology; and Porfirio Diaz's promotion of Mexican industrialdevelopment. Commercial interactions between Chile and Mexico stimulatednot only the exchange of goods and services, but also the exchange of cus-toms and artistic expressions. Mexican songs, such as Juventino Rosas's valses"Amelia" and "Sobre las olas," Miguel Lerdo de Tejada's habanera "La per-jura," and Melesio Morales's habanera "El murciélago," became popular inChilean salons during the late nineteenth century (González and Rolle 426).Similarly, Vicente T. Mendoza's 1948 study of Mexican folklore revealed thatnot only had Chilean and Mexican folk music both incorporated certain lin-guistic and musical expressions stich as "Ay, ay, ay," "Cielitos," "Carambas,"and "Tiranas," but a form of Chilean-influenced folk song known in Mexicoas "La Chilena" had long been popular along Mexico's Pacific coast (7-21).

The exchange of both goods and artistic expressions between Chile andMexico increased during the first quarter ofthe twentieth century, especiallyas expansion of industrial production and advancement in media technologies


broughr Ghileans into greater contact with Mexican cultural products. By1920, the influence of Mexican music in Ghile had extended even into poli-tics, as Ghilean President Arturo Alessandri Palma chose an adaptation of theMexican tune "Gielito lindo" as his official campaign song during the 1920elections (Rolle 4-5). However, this early spread of Mexican music withinGhile paled in comparison to the explosion of Mexican music that occurredwhen the products of the emerging, Mexican film industry circulated widelyduring the second quarter of the twentieth century along Ghile's Pacificcoast, from Arica in the extreme north to Punta Arenas in the extreme south.

In the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution, Mexico experienced a "cul-tural boom" in the 1930s and 1940s. Young writers such as Octavio Paz,Rodolfo Usigli, and Xavier Villaurrutia emerged, while artists such as DiegoRivera, José Orozco, and David Siqueiros led a renowned muralist move-ment. Mexico became a cultural Mecca for Latin America, attracting a widearray of artists and intellectuals, including Ghilean writers Vicente Huidobro,Gabriela Mistral, and Pablo Neruda, all of whom resided in Mexico for ex-tended periods of time. Gombined with the development of new communi-cation technologies and a rising tide of artistic nationalism in Mexico, thisenvironment nurtured the rapid expansion of a fledgling, Mexican cinemaindustry. In 1930 and 1931, early Mexican filmmakers produced only twofeature films, yet by 1945 the Mexican film industry produced eighty-two feature films (Mora 146-60).

Mexican movies gained an audience in Latin America outside of Mexico,and especially in Ghile. In addition to the long-standing trade routes alongwhich film reels easily flowed between Mexico and Ghile, several political andeconomic developments conspired to create a cinematic vacuum in Ghile thatMexican films filled. The Mexican government, in the 1930s, initiated an ex-tensive and ongoing campaign to support and subsidize filmmaking as part of anational cultural revolution. Then, films from major competitors in tbe UnitedStates and Europe became preoccupied with promoting national propagandaduring World War II, which reduced the popularity and availability of theirmovies in Latin America. The United States also channeled technical, financial,and material a.ssistance toward Mexican filmmakers afrer Argentina, Brazil, andSpain, the other countries with a strong cinematic presence in Latin America,refused to join the Allied Powers. These actions contributed to the decline ofArgentine, Brazilian, and Spanish film production during the 1940s and to theprecipitous expansion of Mexican film production throughout Latin America.Efforts by the Ghilean government to develop a stronger filmmaking industrywere short-lived, largely ineffective, and undertaken almost exclusively by thePopular Front government (1938-1942), and Mexican films thereby emergedas the primary, available viewing choice for Ghileans.

The most frequently produced Mexican films in the late 1930s and early1940s was the comedia ranchera, which depicted idyllic, rural settings andstories of bucolic and stereotypical characters of the Mexican countryside,such as charros and young, innocent maidens. Another basic component of

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comedia ranchera films was ranchera music, which provided a backgroundsound track in some scenes and featured centrally in other, musically orientedscenes. As Mexican films circulated across Chile, so too did the Mexicanranchera music that played a fundamental role in the structure of these mov-ies. Mexican film stars such as Pedro Infante, Antonio Aguilar, Miguel AcevesMejia, Lupe Velez, Lucha Reyes, and Jorge Negrete became popular in Chilefor their music as well as their acting. Negrete, in particular, had gained awidespread following in Chile by the 1940s, and this popularity became es-pecially evident during his 1946 visit to Santiago.

i Negrete's 1946 visit began a new era in Chilean popular culture: the firstperformance by a pop "idol." Chileans received him with great exuberanceand fanfare, and although newspapers noted that Chileans had previouslyknown Negrete more for his films than his music, his concerts generatedconsiderable fervor. Jaime Bustos Mandiola recalled Negrete's arrival in San-tiago in his memoirs: "[Negrete] made his triumphal entrance by train intoour capital, where a delirious multitude waited for him. . . . It was madness.The crowd of journalists, admirers, and curious spectators lined, like neverbefore, the streets of Santiago all the way to his hotel" (Bustos Mandiola 14).The newspaper El Mercurio noted that in a series of musical performanceswith the Mexican Trio Calavaras at the Waldorf and Baquebano theaters, theChilean public "offered their best applause to the renowned Mexican cinema-graphic star" ("Últimos días" n. pag.). In response to the widespread excite-ment among Chilean teenagers that Negrete's visit generated, the Ministryof Education organized a special event with Negrete for Chilean students.An estimated ten thotisand students attended, and the press took note of theaffection and applause they showered on the singer ("Últimos días" n. pag.).

Although boleros remained the most popular musical style among urbanpopulations, ranchera music over the coming decades became arguably themost popular musical style among rural Chileans and among Chileans whohad recently migrated into the cities. This popularity extended far beyondcinema alone, as demand for ranchera music fueled its circulation on recordsand on radio shows in Chile. Chileans with lower socioeconomic status andresidents of isolated areas found it harder to see films, but they had increasedaccess to radios and phonographs in the 1940s and so also connected toranchera music. Maria T., who grew up in a family of small farmers and ag-ricultural laborers in rural central Chile, recalled the impact of listening toranchera music on her family's first victrola:

J still remember when my father brought home our first victrola; it wasa very exciting day. He would crank it by hand and out came rancheramusic. Thar music and listening to it was a central part of my child-hood—and at all the weddings and parties in the campo too: it was pureranchera. One went to the weddings and parties and one danced anddanced to all the ranchera. (Maria T., personal interview)

ledrek Putta Mularski 61

As Chilean folklorist Patricia Chavarria recalled, in an era when many ruralChileans had access to radios but not telephones, individuals would oftencommunicate through disc jockeys on ranchera radio shows, because every-body in rural Chile listened to the ranchera shows and, accordingly, "theyknew that the intended recipient would hear the message" ("La vida conritmo" n. pag.).

As access to and popularity of ranchera music increased, Chileans beganto create and perform their own ranchera songs. On the local level, folk, ama-teur, and semiprofessional musicians adopted ranchera, as Chilean folkloristManuel Dannemann noted while conducdng research for his Atlas folklóricomusical de Chile (Adas of Chilean fblkloric music) during the 1960s. InDannemann's mind, the prevalence and popularity of the corrido, a bal-lad variadon of ranchera music that originated among northern Mexico'spopular classes and often maintained a faster pulse than the more sentimen-tal, tradidonal ranchera, rivaled or had already surpassed throughout Chilethat of the cueca and tonada, traditionally the two most prominent stylesof Chilean folk music ("Estudio preliminar" 9-10).^ Chilean ardsts such asFernando Trujillo and Los Huastecos del Sur, Los Halcones, and Guadelupedel Carmen also achieved widespread commercial success by the late 1940sand early 1950s, with repertoires that blended Mexican ranchera with Chile'sctiecas and tonadas. Guadelupe del Carmen, for example, sold 175,000 cop-ies of her single "Ofrenda," an integration of ranchera dynamics into thestructure of a Chilean tonada (Llanca n. pag., para. 7).

The success of these early ranchera-influenced musicians paved the wayfor subsequent Chilean musicians to push their focus on ranchera music fur-ther. Most notably, the Mexican and Chilean ranchera-influenced sounds thatcirculated widely across central and southern Chile inspired Fernando andIsmael Bustos, two brothers from a family of inquilinos (tenant f irmers) inthe small, central Chilean town of Curicavi. Although Los Hermanos Bustosbegan their music career in the mid-1960s by performing cuecas, tonadas,and valses, they soon found that rural Chileans were most interested in hear-ing ranchera music and, in particular, corridos norteños in the style of Mexi-can groups such as Los Rieleros, Los Dorados, Los Alegres del Terán, andLos Bravos de Matamoros:

We played cuecas, tonadas, [and] and Peruvian valses. But the publicclamor was for something else. . . . We played a Mexican corrido andthe people went crazy. The public blocked the aisles and the wings andwould not let us leave the stage. At first, we competed by making Chil-ean music . . . and nothing happened. But when we played a corrido,that same crowd asked for another. (Ponce n. pag., pars. 7-8)

Specializing in the creation and performance of corrido norteño stylesongs, Los Hermanos Bustos led a wave of corrido norteño popularity in

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the 1960s and 1970s that further increased the prevalence of ranchera inrural Chile. Los Hermanos Bustos became the most successful of the newChilean ranchera groups, as they produced over forty albums; however, anextensive array of ranchera-based musical groups also emerged, ranging fromamateur and semiprofessional musicians to national stars such as RobertoAguilar, Los Tigres de Sonora, Los Luceros del Valle, and Los Reales delValle. Today, ranchera music remains arguably the most popular style of mu-sic in rural Chile. Many of the groups that began in the 1960s and 1970scontinue to produce popular albums, and new, younger ranchera and corridoinspired Chilean musicians continue to emerge. In addition to the music'sprevalence on rural radio stations and in rural restaurants, bars, and homes,ranchera festivals have become popular throughout Chile, attracting thou-sands of Chileans every year to celebrate their affection for national and inter-national ranchera musicians. Attempting to describe the extreme popularityof ranchera in Chile, writer Hermán Rivera Letelier compared Chilean ranch-era singer Guadalupe del Carmen to Chilean folkloric icon Violeta Parra: "IfVioleta Parra is popular, Guadalupe del Carmen is ultra-popular" (BenevidesTala n. pag., par. 4).

Why Chileans Embraced Rancheras and Corridos

Although favorable economic and political conditions combined with in-creased access to media technologies to create an environment conducive tothe spread of Mexican film, Mexican film and music did not attain widespreadcirculation and popularity in Chile by default. As a result of the commercialand cultural exchanges that had occurred between Chile and Mexico prior tothe second quarter of the twentieth century, many Chileans possessed a senseof familiarity with and affection toward Mexico and its cultural products. Amassive 8.3 magnitude earthquake that killed thousands and destroyed theinfrastructure of central-southern Chile in January 1939 both displayed andreinforced this affection.

In response to the earthquake's devastation, Mexican President LázaroCárdenas actively contdbuted to relief efforts, donating a variety of recon-struction supplies and commissioning the construction of the Escuela Mexicoin the central-southern Chilean town of Chilian. As Chile's Minister of PublicEducation, Ulises Vergara, explained in 1942, Cárdenas's efforts won himpraise and generated pro-Mexican sentiment among the people of central-southern Chile:

The Government of the Republic of Mexico had the opportunity tomeasure the depth of its pueblo's heart when it asked [for funds] forChile. If there is a civic emotion that has the right to draw tears, this


would top the list: the overwhelming tide among the Mexican peopleto offer the currency of generosity, the currency that becomes worthmore with the act of giving. The generous action undertaken by thePresident who in 1939 was in charge ofthe United States of Mexico,General Lázaro Cárdenas, was graciously completed under the presi-dency ofthe current governor. General Manuel Ávila Camacho; theseare two names we will never forget, and tomorrow's generations willremember them with affection and recognition. ("Los Chilenos agra-decerán" 20)

Mexican President Manuel Ávila Camacho, for his part, furthered thissense of solidarity with Chile. Camacho extended the Escuela Mexico con-struction project and commissioned Xavier Guerrero and David AlfaroSiqueiros, with the help of local Chilean artists, to adorn the walls ofthe Es-cuela Mexico with murals that emphasized solidarity and similarities betweenMexico and Chile. Guerrero's mural "México a Chile" blended landscapesand prototypical, rural figures from Mexico and Chile with various allusionsto the importance of education. Siquieros's mural "Death to the Invader"similarly emphasized camaraderie between Mexico and Chile, but did so bydepicting the parallel struggles of both countries' popular heroes. Representa-tions of Mexican figures, such as Cuauhtemoc, Caupolicán, Miguel Hidalgo,Benito Juárez, Emiliano Zapata, and José María Morelos, share the school'swalls with Chilean figures, such as Lautaro, Galvarino, Bernardo O'Higgins,José Manuel Balmaceda, Luis Emilio Recabarren, and Pedro Aguirre Cerda.As Siqueiros explained:

Their [Chileans and Mexicans] uprising against Spanish colonialismstarted at exactly the same time, and finished at exactly the same mo-ment. Their later struggles, which we called "The Reform" [of the1850s], had exactly the same characteristics . . . our Juárez is theirGalvarino, and for us, Galvarino is Juárez. (Rochfort 186)

This was a pivotal moment in terms of national identities: the popu-lism of Lázaro Cárdenas inspired that of Chilean Popular Front leader PedroAguirre Cerda, and both countries were affected economically by the onsetof World War 11. It was a time of social upheaval and international insecurity.The "good story" of Mexico's assistance hit a nerve in an anxious Chile, andthe conservative El Mercurio proclaimed:

Señor Reyes Spindola, Ambassador of Mexico, conceived of an Ameri-can vision, above the tragedy ofthe rubble of Chilian, to raise a schoolof love in Chile under the invocation ofthe name of his country, filled

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with heroic and fraternal resonances for the children of our democracy.Mexico always has been for Ghile a symbol of the most generous andprofound aspirations of human perfectionism and of the elevation ofthe laboring masses in its material well-being and in its spiritual life.And the Ambassador ofthat great country, with a worthy comprehen-sion of Ghilean sentiment, thought from the first moment . . . [that]the school will mold the soul of our generations and would give themas a supreme orientation, that of fruitful, productive work and creatorof wealth and an example of tenacity and of perseverance to conquerthe highest peaks of life. . . . Tbe idea alone of the Escuela Mexico signi-fied a development for our culture. And the fine form of proposing andenacting its realization constituted a triumph of continental brotber-hood. ("Escuela Méjico" 20)

Such feelings of camaraderie and brotherhood were by no means in-evitable, as these sentiments contrasted sharply with Ghileans' opinions ofother Latin American countries, such as Peru and Bolivia. Ghile had a longand tenuous relationship with its neighboring countries tbat included mul-tiple armed conflicts, ongoing boarder disputes, xenophobic perspectives,and deep-seated tensions. As a result, through the first half of the twentiethcentury, Ghileans had little desire to share or adopt any cultural practices thatthey associated witb Peru or Bolivia. In the early 1900s, the Ghilean govern-ment went so far as to blame Peruvians and Bolivians for the emergence ofworking-class radicalism in northern Ghile, and to repress any expressionsit believed to be of Peruvian or Bolivian origin through a "Ghileanization"campaign. During the same period, many Ghileans formed Ligas Patrióticas(Patriot Leagues) in order to undertake what they viewed as a "heroic cam-paign against this pernicious element, the conspirator that still lives in ourmidst: the Peruvians" ("Nuestro propósito" 1). Ghileans, accordingly, didnot embrace rural-themed music from Peru and Bolivia, such as marinera,tondero, and huayno, even though this music was of a more local originthan music from Mexico and, in many cases, shared a common lineage withthe Ghilean cueca.^ ln contrast to Peru and Bolivia, Mexico and its inhabit-ants remained geographically far enough away to have avoided a history ofboarder conflicts with Ghtle, while still having a great deal in common witbGbilean experiences and sensibilities.

In addition to their affinity toward Mexico and its cultural expressions,many Ghileans easily identified with Mexican films and music, because thefilms in themselves were well-suited to Ghile in the 1930s and 1940s. Insteadof the subtitles of American films, Mexican films were in Spanish, makingthem more accessible to illiterate and semiliterate Ghileans. Mexican filmsdealt with Mexican or Latin American-derived themes, characters, and set-tings, to which Ghileans found it easier to relate than topics that obsessedHollywood. Films from Mexico were also sentimental about country life and


values, both of which seemed to be slipping away as Mexico and Chile un-derwent rapid urbanization. As Ana M. Lopez has explained, the comediaranchera vision of Mexico resonated with individuals in many parts of LatinAmerica:

[It] combined an appealing exoticism with a comforting familiarity thateasily won over Latin American audiences looking for points of cin-ematographic identification. Furthermore, the nostalgia for an imagi-nary bucolic past where macho pride and true love always prevailed . . .also echoed throughout other Latin American countries where, despitedifferent political histories, the present was burdened by the legacies ofcolonization and the frustrations of independence. (Lopez 9)

Chileans remained tied to an idealization of rural life, forgetting theharsh impositions of landowners and ranchers and emphasizing the close-ness of extended families. This impression made the comedia ranchera morethan just an embrace of cinema as a new technology and as a "modern" lei-sure activity. Most urban capitalists remained linked to rural society throughkinship networks or through rural landholdings, and by the second quarterof the twentieth century, Chileans of all social classes had adopted a styl-ized, pastoral representation of the huaso, or central Chilean cowboy, as theirnational prototype. Moreover, the urban working class possessed especiallystrong links to rural society, as many urban laborers had immigrated intocities from the countryside only since the turn of the century. As AlbertoCardemil has noted:

How can one compare the nightlife of Buenos Aires or Sao Paulo withthe rural silence of Santiago after midnight? . . . The hacienda gaveto Chile its poetry, its history, its art, its music, its political architec-ture, and its implacable imprint prevails in Chilean culture until today.(Cardemil 65-66)

A similar phenomenon occurred with ranchera music. In a series of inter-views conducted as part of this study, rural and formerly rural Chileans citedthree primary reasons for the music's popularity: first, a strong, personal con-nection to the music's major themes; second, an appreciation for the "fun"and "danceable" ranchera rhythms tliat they viewed as representative oftheirown values; and third, intense feelings of nostalgia that they derived fromranchera music. The most common explanation that Chileans offered forthe strong connection that they developed to ranchera music was their be-lief that the lyrics of ranchera songs dealt with themes to which they relatedpersonally. Songs by early ranchera artists often focused on an emotional na-tionalism or regionalism, intense romantic struggles or conquests, ennoblingvignettes of farm or ranch life, and descriptions of ranchera music itself In

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some instances, such as Jorge Negrete's "Allá en el rancho grande," songsdepicted these themes in a frivolous or even comical manner:

Over there in the big ranchOver there where I used to liveThere was a womanWho happily said to meWho happily said to meI am going to make you your underwearLike those that the ranchero usesShe started them with woolAnd she finished them with leather.* (stanzas 1-2)

In other instances, such as Negrete's "Ay Jalisco, no te rajes," rancherasongs more seriously expressed intense, emodonal pride:

It comes from my soul to shout with joyTo open my whole chest to shout:How beautiful Jalisco is.Word of honor!For women, Jalisco is firstThe same in Los Altos asOver there in La CañadaVery beautiful women, with cute facesThat's how the women of Guadalajara are.^ (stanzas 3-4)

In sdll other instances, such as José Alfredo Jimenez's "Paloma querida,"rancheras sang in a deeply expressive manner about life's joys and pains, es-pecially those linked to love:

I don't know how much my life may be worthBut I want to give it to youI don't know whether your love will receive itBut 1 have come to leave it to you.* (stanza 3)

Most of these early ranchera songs sang specifically about Mexico, asopposed to Chile, and they often glossed over the more trying aspects of lifefor rural laborers. Nonetheless, rural Chileans sdll saw in ranchera music areflection of their own joys, difficulties, and pains. As Chilean singer RoxanaMaldonado explained, rural Chileans embraced ranchera because it "is a mu-sic that reaches everyone. If you listen to the words, they talk of life experi-ences, things that happen to all of us, and that is why the people ofthe campolike it so much: they feel it in their bones" ("La vida con ritmo" n. pag.).

Jedrek Putta Mularski di

Juan C , a middle-aged Chilean from the southem province of Magallanes,echoed these assertions:

We identified with ranchera because it was music about life in theranching or farming world, and as farmers and ranchers, we had thesame basic problems as the Mexicans in the ranchera songs. We wouldcome home from a long day of labor and go to the cantina to drink andlisten to ranchera, because that music talked about the same type ofstories and emotions we had in our lives. (Juan C , personal interview)

Such personal associations between life in rural Chile and ranchera musicfurther solidified when Chilean musicians started to place rural Chile at thecenter of their own rancheras and corddos. Rather than sing only about rurallife in Jalisco or Guanajuato, Chilean musicians gradually began to composetheir own ranchera lyrics that specifically referenced locations, events, andpeople in their countryside. From the 1940s onward, examples of such Chil-ean ranchera songs include the previously mentioned Guadelupe del Carmenhit "Ofrenda," which sang about the Andes, condors, and a country that was"so beautiful and sovereign, just like Mexico," and Los Hermanos Bustos'"Curacaví," a corrido ode to the group's central Chilean hometown. Accord-ing to Chilean mariachi Javier L., one of the most popular songs that Chileanmariachis played became a ranchera version of the classic Chilean tune "Sivas para Chile," a song with lyrics that express a nostalgic longing for lifein Chile from the perspective of a Chilean living abroad (Javier L., personalinterview). As Juan C. reflected:

We started making our own versions of ranchera—they were imitationsof Mexican rancheras, but they sounded the same and they had thesame themes, even if the locations sometimes changed. And, it didn'tmatter that they were imitations of the Mexican songs, because bothMexican and Chilean versions expressed our lives and our experiencesin Chile . . . we knew Mexicans and they knew us because our lives andexperiences were the same. (Juan C , personal interview)

In addition to asserting their easy identification with ranchera lyrics,those interviewed for this study also stated that they embraced ranchera mu-sic because it \yas "fun," "danceable," and "happy," and because it "mixedwell with Chilean traditions." While ranchera music vades in its form andstructure, it generally utilizes a 3 /4 waltz-derived time or a quick 2 / 4 polka-style time, and blends vocals with some combination of guitars, trumpets,and in the case of corridos in particular, an accordion (Lewis 56-59). Thetraditional folkloric cuecas of rural Chile adhere to stdcter compositionalrules; they follow a formal unitary scheme, a quick tempo, a 6 /8 time signa-ture, and a lyrical structure that includes two stanzas and one closing section

68 Studies in Latin American Poptdar Culture

(Olsen 368-69).^ Hand-clapping and a distinctive, strtictured cueca dancethat simulates a courtship between a man and a woman often accompanyone or more guitars, which provide the primary instrumentation for cuecas.

The second predominant form of folkloric music in rural Chile is thetonada, which unlike the cueca, is a style of music to which Chileans donot generally dance. Although tonadas most often combine a similarly richrhythm with the alternation and super-positioning of 6 /8 and 3 /4 metersand vocals with guitars and/or a harp, their compositional structure remainsless rigid than that ofthe cueca (Olsen 368-69). Those interviewed for thisstudy did not quantify the specific, structural differences between the threemusical styles, but they did make strong distinctions regarding the overalleffects ofthe structural differences. Most significantly, interviewees assertedthat rancheras contained rhythms that were "more danceable" and "morefun" than those in cuecas and tonadas. Additionally, they explained thatranchera music was particularly appealing to them because it lacked the for-malized, structured dance steps ofthe cueca, and therefore everyone coulddance to ranchera.

On the other hand, those interviewed also recalled that it was easy forthem to embrace ranchera music because rancheras had much in commonwith cuecas and tonadas. Although interviewees claimed simply that the mu-sic of Chile and Mexico had a "similar sound" or a "similar rural flavor," abrief examination ofthe musical relationship and interactions between ran-cheras and Chilean folk music provides support for the notion that Chileansembraced ranchera in part because it contained elements from their own mu-sical vocabulary. Despite the aforementioned differences bet\veen rancheraand Chilean cuecas and tonadas, Chilean musicians blended ranchera withChilean folk music, a practice that indicates a musical compatibility betweenthe two styles. For example, as Juan Pablo González and Claudio Rolle haveexplained, the urban música típica group El Dúo Bascuñán-Riquelme, whichoften performed cuecas and tonadas, "chileanized" rancheras and corridosin the 1940s in songs such as "Adiós huasita linda." Not only did the groupsing about Chilean-specific locations and huasos, but they blended tonadaguitar-plucking technique into ranchera, utilized rural Chilean pronuncia-tion, and refrained from making the characteristic ranchera shouts during theinstrumental interludes between each verse (González and Rolle 433). In asimilar example, González and Rolle also noted that Guadelupe del Carmen's"Ofrenda" integrated tonada style plucking and mixed a Chilean tonada mu-sical theme with a binary corrido rhythm (435). In short, despite differencesin the two national traditions, ranchera could be replicated or fused within aChilean sensibility. As Juan C.'s comments that Chilean ranchera and Mexi-can ranchera "sounded the same and they had the same themes" reveal (JuanC , personal interview), some ranchera listeners made little distinction amongranchera music, whatever its origins.


Ultimately, listeners identified with the music for personal reasons. Asthe interviewees noted, ranchera music is what they grew up hearing, and itwas the sound track of their dances, their romances, and their everyday life.For example, as Maria T. explained, she identified with the general themes ofranchera music, but it also filled her with nostalgia:

I love the music because the lyrics talk about vivencias and daily lifein the campo—it is easy to identify with music that talks about hardwork, ranching life, and working on a farm or in the fields. . . . WhenI hear ranchera music, I think of my family, my life in the campo, andhaving fun dancing with my family and neighbors at parties in my vil-lage. It also makes me remember my sisters because we always listenedand danced to ranchera at our house and in town. (Maria T., personalinterview)

In this sense, ranchera music, which rural Ghileans often played at socialgatherings, community celebrations, and family events, had profound fa-milial and localized significance. For those who had moved to the cities,like Maria T., it helped them maintain a personal identity in a more anony-mous world.

Mexican or Chilean: Ranchera Music and Identity

The popularit)' of ranchera music in Ghile has spawned not only commer-cially successful Ghilean groups such as Los Hermanos Bustos, but also abody of professional and semiprofessional mariachi bands that play at privateevents and smaller public fesrivals. Among the events where these groupscommonly perform are rural celebrations of Ghile's Fiestas Patrias, the annualSeptember 18 independence day festivities. Javier L., who began his career asa Ghilean mariachi in the late 1980s, has played at Fiesta Patria celebrationsthroughout his country. Often, Javier L. explained, a local group begins thecelebration with one or two Ghilean cuecas, and then charro-suited, Ghileanmariachi groups headline the event with a variety of ranchera or norteño in-spired songs performed on a stage adorned with Mexican and Ghilean flags."Mexico is very well loved here in Ghile because of the richness of its cultureand music . . . Ghilean people receive the [ranchera] music very well—it isquite popular and they continue to identify with it more and more" (JavierL., personal interview).

On the surface, the practices Javier L. described appear to undercutGhilean nationalism and national identity, as an aflfinity for Mexican symbolsand practices intrudes into some of the most sacred of Ghilean nationalisttraditions. Ghilean folk-based musicians, such as David R., have expressed


particular concern over the decline of Chile's cultural patrimony at the handsof ranchera and other forms of foreign-influenced popular music:

Chileans were lured away from any interest there was in Chilean musicby these sorts of different and foreign music. . . . Chileans have verylittle interest in their own traditions and expressions of them. Today, wedon't have much of a Chilean identity—not in art, music, architecture,or anything else. (David R., personal interview)

What David R. has refused to accept is that, like the Peruvian adaptationof orquesta típica ensembles in the Andes or the British adaptation of rockand roll, ranchera has become part of national tradition, and even urban Chil-eans view ranchera as a component of Chilean rural life. For David R., huasoculture alone represents true chilenidad, and the only authentically Chileanmusical forms are cuecas and tonadas. This conception of chilenidad (Chil-eanness) fails to recognize that, as Eric Hobsbawm has asserted, traditionsare often "invented," nor does it recognize that huaso imagery and music didnot become a celebrated national tradition in Chile until the urban elite andpoliticians began to promote it as a central component of Chilean national-ism during the twentieth century. Hobsbawm noted in The Invention of Tra-dition (1983) that many of England's traditions stretch back only to the latenineteenth century and were developed to mix local customs with imperialglories and thereby fix a new identity in people's minds that fostered socialcohesion and legitimized social hierarchies or institutions; scholars such asRobin Moore and Hermano Vianna have revealed how a similar formationtook place with music in Cuba, Brazil, and other Latin American countriesduring the 1920s and 1930s. In the case of ranchera music in Chile, newforms of technology disseminated a Mexican musical form, and the Chileanpopulous, not the elite or the state, made it their own. For example, Santiagoresident and former railroad worker Hugo S. explained that he associatesranchera music with the Chilean campesino:

The campesinos lived a life of work and drinking, and the music waspart of both their work and their drinking—I saw it all the time whenour trains stopped in the small towns . . . and all of the new workerswho came to Santiago from the country listened to ranchera. If youheard somebody listening to ranchera, you knew they were from thecampo. (Hugo S., personal interview)

Similarly, as Samuel B., an upper-class resident of Santiago, recalled:

I do not listen to ranchera music—that is the music of our countrysideand the campesinos—but I am familiar with it and I enjoy hearing itsometimes because it reminds me of my childhood. All the nanas in my


house came from the countryside and they always listened to rancherawhen they worked, so I became accustomed to hearing ranchera whenI was a child. (Samuel B., personal interview)

The personal associadons of those Chileans who embrace ranchera musicrefute the notion that an affinity among Chileans for the "Mexican" symbolsand pracdces embedded in ranchera music is part ofthe nadon's "inventedtradition" and a break from the past. Javier L., for example, expressed analternative interpretation of Chileans' affection for ranchera music:

There are two countries that have made me who I am. I learned mymusic from Mexico and that allowed me to become a professional. Andnow, in Chile, I have had the opportunity to develop my music skills.As a musician and a person, I am a mix of two countries—I have themodismos -And the lifestyle of Chile, but my style of singing and relatingto people is Mexican. When I play my music, I am not acting against mycountry, Chile. It is a way of celebrating all sides of who I am, includingmy love for Chile. (Javier L., personal interview)

Other Chilean fans of ranchera music shared Javier L.'s interpreta-tion, asserdng that "ranchera is Chilean, not Mexican," and that hearingranchera music and seeing mariachis dressed in charro suits "makes us feel alove for our country."** Of course, few of them were huasos either; like theideal huaso, the Mexican ideal was an abstraction, and Chileans had derivedand appropriated this abstraction from Mexican film and song. As Maria T.explained:

Ranchera is part of our experience as Chileans—I listen to it and thinkof my life in the campo as a Chilean, I don't listen to it and think ofMexico. I have never been to Mexico, so how could it remind me ofMexico? Ranchera is more Chilean than Mexican because we listen to itand because we have listened to it for several generations. (Maria T.,personal interview)

Conclusions

Many musicologists have adhered to the concept of "absolute music," or theidea that music is autonomous and self-contained, functioning independentlyof social context. This orientation privileges composer and disseminator, andit largely neglects the significant role that context and interpretadon have onthe manner in which an audience interprets a song. Social scientists such asHoward Becker have developed an alternadve analytical framework for mu-sic, based on all facets of production and reception. As Becker has argued.

72 Studies in Latin American Popular Cultttre

A more sociological approach to the arts produces "an understanding of thecomplexity of the cooperative networks through which art happens" and ofthe way that, for example, an author's acdvities mesh with those of pdnters,publishers, cdtics, libradans, and audience (Becker 1-2). Buded within suchcomplexity is the Fact that listeners' individual experiences shape the signifi-cance of a song as much or more than the composer or performer ofthatsong. In other words, as opposed to being a static, unchanging artifact, themeaning of a song is vadable, and each individual derives meaning ftom asong through constant interpretation and reinterpretation of it.

While favorable economic and political conditions paved the way forranchera music to make inroads into Chilean society, ranchera music alsoacquired widespread popularity in Chile because it represented experiencesthat many Chileans shared with their Mexican counterparts. Not only dida preexisting sense of camaraderie and cultural familiarity bind Chileans toMexicans, but ranchera music spoke to the common, lived experiences of ru-ral life in both countries: the geography and landscape, the joys and sorrowsof rural life, the nostalgia tied to a pastoral vision of the old countryside, loveand pdde for one's home, and the desire to sing and dance to a "fun" and"easily danceable" music. While many Chileans initially may have associatedranchera music with Mexico, the local context in which they experienced themusic increasingly shaped its meaning; the more that Chileans listened toranchera music in a local context, the more they associated it with Chilean-specific memories and experiences, as opposed to their abstract conceptionsof Mexico and comedias rancheras.

In this manner, even a song that sang about passionate sentiments ofMexican nationalism became more strongly associated with Chileans' localexperiences and thereby interpreted as an expression of Chileanness. Accord-ingly, whereas Chileans' embrace of ranchera music might appear superficiallyas the development of a transnational idendty rooted in Mexican traditionsand symbols, the manner in which many Chileans have received, contex-tualized, and interpreted ranchera refutes this assumption. In reality, ruralChileans' embrace of ranchera developed through the appropriation of for-eign symbols that individuals connected to their local Chilean expedences, aprocess which thereby often reinforced Chilean nationalist identity.

Notes

1. Ethnomusicologist Anthony Seeger's Why Sttyá Sin£: A Musical Anthropologyof an Amazonian People {\987) played a particularly influential role in advancing theidea that music and its performance can establish underlying social orders in a society.Seeger's study of the Suya argued that music and its performance played a fundamen-tal role in the construction and interpretation ofsoeial and conceptual relationshipsamong the Suya.


2. See also Manuel Dannemann, "Situaci6n actual de la música folklórica chilena.Según el 'Atlas del folklore de Chile'," Revista Musical Chilena 29.131 (Jul.-Sept.1975): 38-86. Note that although scholars and musicians often distinguish betweenranchera music and corridos, the Chileans interviewed as part of this study gener-ally either did not distinguish in their comments between ranchera and corridos orreferred to corridos as a subset of ranchera music. This essay, accordingly, also usesranchera as an umbrella term that includes corridos, unless otherwise noted.

3. Zamacueca is a form of music and dance that developed in colonial Peru andblended African, Spanish, and Andean musical components. The marinera is a formof song and dance that is popular along die Peruvian coast; similar to the Chileancueca., it developed from the zamacueca and is often danced by couples who integratehandkerchiefs into their simulated courtship. The tondero, which is particularly prev-alent along Peru's northern coast, similarly possesses strong zamacueca influences,although its blend of Spanish and Andean traditions with strong African influencesdistinguishes it from the marinera. Huayno music, in contrast, is a blend of Spanishand indigenous Andean music with a distinct instrumentation that includes cjuenasand panpipes.

4. Original Spanish text: "Allá en el rancho grande / Allá donde vivía / Había unarancherita / Que alegre me decía / Que alegre me decía / Te voy a hacer tus calzones/ Como los que usa el ranchero / Los comenzó de lana / Y los acabó de cuero."

5. Original Spanish text: "Ay! Jalisco, Jalisco, Jalisco / Tus hombres son machosy muy cumplidores / Valientes y ariscos y sostenedores / No admiten rivales en cosasde amores."

6. Original Spanish text: "Yo no se lo que valga mi vida / Pero yo te la quieroentregar / Yo no se si tu amor la reciba / Pero yo te la vengo a dejar."

7. For additional descriptions of cueca and tonada characteristics, see Gonzálezand Rolle (2003) or Claro Valdés, Peña Fuenzalida, and Quevedo Cifuentes (1994).

8. Multiple interviewees made these comments during personal interviews con-ducted between April 2009 and June 2010.

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Putta Mularski - Mexican Ranchera and Nationalism in Chile