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May 2003 El Puente: How Ricardo Arjona’s Music Helped Bridge My Cultural Divide By Lawrence Carter-Long

 

At first it was the images I found most striking: A young child urinating in a bucket; elderly women singing along in Latin American Spanish—words, at the time, I barely understood; a masked luchadore in glittery wrestling garb standing defiantly, hands on hips; American soldiers firing into the frightened masses across a symbolic barbed wire fence.

What the hell was this? A Nine Inch Nails video had played just moments before, but the angst I found myself witnessing now was both personal and political. Maybe it was something uniquely Latin American, I mused. After all, the people of Costa Rica—the country I was in at the time—had abolished their military nearly a half-century before, and everyday life in Latin America seemed politicized due to near constant upheaval in the region. Whatever the case, this was clearly not the same music video channel I was inclined to turn on and tune out back in the good ol’ USA.

As the video ended, I hurriedly wrote down the performer’s name, Ricardo Arjona, and the title of the song, “Si El Norte Fuera El Sur.” If the North Were the South. The combination of the song’s provocative title and the images used in its video sealed the deal—I needed to investigate this further.

My introduction to Ricardo Arjona’s music occurred at a crossroads in my political awareness. It was 1997 and I was finally on my first trip abroad as part of a citizen diplomacy adventure called “The Ship for World Youth” with over 300 similarly wide-eyed travelers from around the Pacific Rim. The project was in its ninth year and had been made possible by the sponsorship of the Japanese government.

Much had opened my eyes to the reality of life beyond the U.S. over the course of the program thus far, but—coming from an activist background—Arjona’s song stood apart as the primary catalyst into a closer examination of Latin America. I had little, if any, interest in Latino culture before, but as I returned from the record store the next day and embarked on the daunting task of translating Arjona’s lyrics into English, a world—a perspective—previously unknown to me began to emerge.

“The North, it is McDonald’s, basketball, and rock and roll,” began the song which catapulted my command of Spanish beyond el baño, por favor and una cervesa. “It is topless, it is Madonna, and the abdomen of Stallone/Suntanned intellectuals, scholars of the supermarket/They have everything but have paid nothing for it...”

As the song continues, Arjona envisions what the Americas might be like if the map were turned upside down: Che Guevara flips burgers, Fidel Castro runs errands on Wall Street, Nobel Prize winning Rigoberta Menchú of Arjona’s native Guatemala is as well-known as supermodel Cindy Crawford, and rafts embark from Miami en route to Havana.

Arjona’s lyrics captivated me not only because of the linguistic workout of translating them. More importantly, the viewpoint expressed in them was poetic and so unabashedly opinionated. The blatant thought behind Arjona’s music set it worlds apart from the innocuous pop groove of the maddeningly infectious “Macarena” or Ricky Martin’s ubiquitous soccer manifesto “Cup of Life” (and its relentless “Here we go! Ale, Ale Ale!” refrain), the only popular Latin tunes I could previously identify.

Dangerous Songs
While being blacklisted by Clear Channel or lambasted by Fox News is about the worst a politically outspoken singer may face Stateside, in Central and South America socially conscious music can get you killed.

Having left Chile a week earlier, the dangerous relationship between political revolution and popular music was fresh in my mind. Arguably the best known singer-songwriter of the Nueva Cancion, or New Song movement of the 60s and 70s, was Chile’s Victor Jara. Jara, a beloved and outspoken populist, was brutally murdered during the overthrow of Chile’s duly elected Socialist government during Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 U.S.-backed takeover.

During the coup, Jara and other political prisoners were imprisoned in Chile’s national stadium. According to Jara’s widow in the book, An Unfinished Song, Jara’s hands were broken—some reports say they were cut off along with his tongue—and he was taunted to perform his songs while his captors laughed. Jara gallantly managed to sing a portion of the Popular Unity party song before being beaten again and finally killed with a machine gun before being dumped in a mass grave.

“In Spanish, there’s a special term for singer-songwriters, who are known as cantautores, a contraction of the words cantante (singer) and autor (composer),” wrote Agustin Gurza, music correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, on March 9, 2003. “The tradition of the guitar-carrying troubadour who philosophizes, politicizes and waxes poetic in song is deeply rooted in many Spanish-speaking countries.”

Arjona epitomizes the modern face of this tradition. While the political turmoil of the 1960s inspired an influx of folk-based performers in the United States, political repression stalled the momentum of the modern cantautore in Latin America, wrote Gurza. Political and media monopolies have long been linked in countries like Mexico. As a result, many politically provocative artists have found it difficult to find outlets for their music.

Arjona may be the exception to the rule. Raised in Guatemala amid revolving military dictatorships, Arjona graduated with a degree in education. His first brush with controversy flared in 1993 when he questioned hypocrisy and religious dogma in “Jesus Verbo, No Sustantivo,” a song that drew ire from some Latin American Catholics.

Already well-known across Latin America for both earnest love ballads, which placed Arjona’s heart squarely on his sleeve, and his outspoken political views, it was another song, the allegorical “Mesías” that brought Arjona unexpected notoriety in the U.S. amid the mass uncertainty immediately following September 11.

Chronicling the cautionary tale of a modern messiah “preparing a blow and no one knows the date,” the song mused how the Pentagon would accuse the messiah of being a terrorist who would have “a partner in…Afghanistan” and finished by imagining “a cloud of doubts casting a shadow over the sun,” much like the smoke-filled skies of that morning.

Overeager journalists pounced on the similarities between the song and the day’s events. Some even dubbed Arjona a “prophet” who must have been talking about Osama bin Laden and the World Trade Center attacks. While it was unlikely that Bin Laden would be drinking “with Bill Gates” or have “armed bodyguards with guys from Israel,” as detailed in other parts of the song, the sudden interest skyrocketed Arjona’s Galería Caribe to No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Latin Albums chart, and “Mesías” into the Hot Latin Tracks top 20 in late 2001. In response, Arjona expressed frustration that no one paid much attention to “Mesías” until after the tragedy occurred.

Along with earnest, well-crafted love songs, Arjona continues his examination of social issues on his current disc Santo Pecado (“Saint Sin”). On the track “La Nena” (The Girl) Arjona examines the ransom kidnapping of young women in Latin America, and reveals a gritty, unwavering exploration into one girl’s ordeal: “The hand that killed her chauffeur now muffles her screams/The girl is a one followed by zeroes starting today.”

“It might never be played on the radio,” Arjona admits. “Surely, many people will say, ‘Hey, I bought this record to be entertained, not to hear you paint life with dark colors.’ But that’s the area where I develop myself, and I feel the obligation to write about what occurs to me. It’s in the news every day. Writing it put me into a deep depression, but that’s how the song came about, and I have to share it.”

Sony Discos, Arjona’s record label, concurs, “A poetic lyricist for whom authenticity is everything, it is doubtful that Arjona will ever feel compelled to translate his lyrics into English.” Why should he? Arjona’s perspective is Latin American and his music reflects that. Arjona’s themes, however, clearly transcend language barriers. Any insights gained from toiling over a Spanish dictionary to reflect on the perspective of Latin America’s modern cantautore stand likely to reveal more than an improved Spanish vocabulary. Properly examined, they might also help remove the arbitrary boundaries we place between cultures and, more importantly, the people living in them.

Lawrence Carter-Long is a regular contributor to Satya. Since first listening to Ricardo Arjona, his command of Latin American Spanish has grown beyond requests for beer and asking where the nearest restroom is located. His education continues… Background material for this article was obtained from www.arjona.com where additional information about Ricardo Arjona and his music can be found.