The Evolution of Corridos

       From the buffalo hunters of the mid-19^th century to modern day drug smuggling, corridos span across nearly two centuries capturing musical history, usually with a guitar, of Mexico and the Southwest United States.  The main subject of corridos tends to deal with events of social justice and cultural importance, like Emiliano Zapata, a famous figure who fought and died during the Mexican Revolution in 1910 (To learn more about Emiliano Zapata, click on this link: http://www.corridos.org/main2.asp?language=E).  Other corridos focus on subjects of heroism, particularly those who committed heinous acts against America and European American authority figures.  Take for instance Gregorio Cortez who, in 1901, shot two American sheriffs and escaped capture by the Texas Rangers (To learn more about Gregorio Cortez, click on this link: http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/learning_history/mexican_songs/cortez.cfm).  People like Cortez were seen as villains and murderers in America, but in Mexico and parts of the Southwest, Cortez was a hero who defended Mexicans from privileged and abusive Americans.  It is evident that corridos span and capture a shared history between Mexico and America and is as important to a historian as a revolutionary war.  Corridos are always changing and adapting to cultural influences and social injustices.  To write a history of corridos is to write a history of Mexico.  However, to attempt a fair overview on the history of corridos this section of our blog will focus on the origin of corridos, and a couple social and cultural forces that shaped the history of corridos and that give a vague outline of how they adapted from the mid-19^th century to modern day.
       Corridos, like most forms of music, adapted from earlier styles of songs.  One scholar, Merle E. Simmons, argues that the peculiar style and format of Mexican corridos are not as unique as they may seem:

“Most important is the fundamental fact that the use in fairly long narrative ballads of isosyllabic quatrains, usually rhymed abcb with consonantal rhyme, was not an innovation of Mexico’s corridistas, nor was it even an original adaptation for narrative purposes of a meter formerly reserved for satirical coplas. The copla form employed in Mexico’s definitive corrido was already serving singers of historical ballads in otherareas of Spanish America, and probably in Mexico too, early in the nineteenth century” (Simmons 11). 

Whether Simmons is right or not is contingent on the truth of his material.  What can be taken from this however, is that there is a history of music and songs similar to that of the corrido.  Corridos may or may not have originated from a particular musical tradition, but they were not the only form, nor the most popular style of music, during the 19^th century.  Another scholar, Terrence L. Hansen, argues that:  

 “Having its origin in the Spanish romance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the corrido is found in the southern provinces of Spain, in Chile, Colombia, Venezuela, the Philippine Islands, and Mexico, as well as in the Hispanic areas of the United States” (Hansen 204).

 Hansen shows that not only does the corrido share its unique form with traditional types of music, they are also found around the world and not just in Mexico.  This tells us that the corrido as a term itself is nothing new and extravagant to history.  It is how the corrido is used which makes it so popular and unique to Mexico and the Southern United States.    

       The Texas Rangers no longer clash in the same way they used to with the Mexican people.  Corridos used to emulate Mexican heroes that defied the Texas Rangers in some way during the 19^th century.  More recently, however, corridos have taken up the increasing problem of social identity for Mexicans living in Texas: “…the narrative form of the corrido gave way, if only momentarily, to the emergent consciousness of Texas-Mexican social identity, a consciousness different from that expressed by the poetics of the Mexican hero” (Flores 166).  The same problem faced by many immigrants into the United States is finding their sense of identity.  The task is not easy when there are various terms to describes people of Mexican descent living in Texas, or vice-versa. There are puro Mexicanos, true-born Mexicans; and mexicotejanos, Texas-Mexicans (Flores 166).  This shows that the narrative form and tradition of the corrido is changing and adapting to new issues of social and cultural importance, and it is not only limited to a Mexican audience.  The unique style and popular interest of corridos is due to the history of Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and mexicotejanos.
        The Mexican Student Movement of 1968 influenced the political and social lives of citizens, and corridos helped to record the event (Hazel). Judith Reyes, who is often referred to as “the chronicler of 1968 Student Movement,” created twelve corridos containing eye witness accounts of the movement while most of the mass media was silenced by political authorities (Garcia). Reyes used corridos as more of an “…oral form of reporting and commenting on current affairs and issues with a predominantly illiterate population” (Frazer). The modern corrido was influenced by Reyes, the Student Movement, and an oppressive, elitist political authority by reverting back to its function as a “…form of history ‘by and for the people’ in an atmosphere where political dissent was difficult or impossible to articulate via the media and electoral politics” (Hazel).