Annotations for Places: Mexico--mexico City

A revival of traditional Mexican mariachi music is taking place across this country and many Latino youth are participating. Marcos Martinez of Radio Station, KUNM prepared this report on the Mariachi celebration held recently in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Now in its fourth year.

[Mariachi Music]

Albuquerque's Mariachi Spectacular brings together groups from throughout the southwest who bring their instruments and their devotion to the music for four days of workshops and concerts. On a Saturday afternoon, some eight mariachi groups alternate between six different stages along Main street of the New Mexico State fairgrounds. This is called Plaza Garibaldi modeled after the original Plaza Garibaldi in Mexico City where Mariachis gathered to play and find work. This year, about half the groups at Plaza Garibaldi are high school students. 17 year old Nick Watson plays with Mariachi Oro Del Sol from El Paso, Texas. He says Mariachi music is complex and fun to play

Well because it's challenging. It has more than three chords. It's basically what I think rock and roll is. And not that I'm knocking, I like rock and roll, but it's challenging. It's more challenging to play, you know, learn a lot more from it.

[Mariachi Music]

With this music, you can express your feelings more.

How?

Um, with the songs, the words and stuff, they're very powerful words.

Jennifer Luna is the leader of Mariachi Oro del Sol and shares Watson's enthusiasm. She says in her part of Texas, young people are very drawn to this style of music.

A lot of young people play in El Paso. That's mostly what there is there. The groups are younger kids. Cause over there it's in the schools they teach it to you, so it's pretty common over there.

The word mariachi comes from the French word for marriage. According to history, French people who came to Mexico in the 1800s became interested in the Mexican string bands of the time and invited them to play at French weddings. Today, mariachis typically include guitar, violin, trumpet, and the vihuela, which is a small guitar, and the guitarrón, which is a very large guitar. While they carry on traditions, youth mariachi groups like Oro Del Sol are also different from the older generation of mariachis in that they tend to be more gender balanced. Nick Watson says his mariachi group is all the better for including young women musicians.

They're good. We just picked who’s good and they're good. So we take them, it doesn't matter. Sex has nothing to do with it. If you're good, you're good, you play.

[Mariachi Music]

There's no doubt that among the young people attending this year's Mariachi Spectacular is some great future talent. Alex De Leon is a vocalist for the Mariachi Azul y Blanco from Adamson High School in Dallas. This 17 year old has already received high praise for his vocal talents.

[Mariachi Music]

People keep giving me comments, I'm good and stuff. So now I want to get better.

Young Mariachis, like De Leon have a chance to learn from more experienced mentors like Al Sandoval, who teaches music in the Albuquerque public schools and is director of Mariachi Romántico. Sandoval says, attendance at the Mariachi Spectacular workshops has tripled since last year. Sandoval says because of its expressiveness, mariachi music is a big part of Southwest Hispanic culture.

It's the most addicting music of all. I mean Southwest, it's the most addicting music. It grows on you and once it's in your blood, you'll never get it out. It's worse than the worst habit you can ever have because I mean, you grow to love it and you can never get away from it.

[Mariachi Music]

Everything about Mariachis hearkens back to Old Mexico from the ornate charro outfits and broad brimmed hats to the instruments and the old songs. But on the final night of the Mariachi Spectacular, as the teenage musicians joined the world's most famous mariachi groups on stage for a grand finale, the tradition seemed certain to continue for a long time to come. For Latino USA, I'm Marcos Martinez in Albuquerque.

Visitors to Mexico City are familiar with the ruins of Teotihuacan, and its pyramids to the sun and the moon. Now, a rare collection of art from that ancient Mexican site is on display at San Francisco's M. H. de Young Museum. The masks, sculptures and mural fragments assembled from collections around the world give the most comprehensive view ever of the city of Teotihuacan, and a civilization which lasted some 800 years. Isabel Alegria prepared this report.

[Footsteps] Kathleen Barron, the show's curator leads the way into a small gallery hung with portions of murals from Teotihuacan, that date back some 1300 years. Their surfaces seem flecked with thousands of tiny stars.

Isn't it wonderful the way they just sparkle and gleam? The shiny specs of Micah were an intended effect of the ancient Teotihuacan artists. They're not something that just occurred over time. You have to imagine the beautiful patios within the apartment compounds would've been painted with repeating scenes of elaborate ritual figures in profile at one after another.

These mural pieces and dozens more were bequeathed to the museum in 1976 by a San Francisco architect, Harold Wagner. He bought them legally though originally they were stolen from the Teotihuacan by looters. Kathy Barron says, Wagner's home was laid out with the priceless fragments like so many puzzle pieces on tables and floors. To help preserve and restore the fragments, museum staff decided to call on Mexican specialists. And in a move that surprised many, Barron says the museum also decided to return most of the treasures to Mexico. Although, US law did not require it.

We felt that because there were such great numbers of Teotihuacan murals in the collection and many, many duplications, that it would be an important gesture and important ethical stand for our museum to take a statement against looting against this kind of destruction.

Barron says experts from the US and Mexico worked closely for nearly a decade on the murals. Their work inspired the exhibit and also prompted a special outreach effort by the de Young to the Hispanic community. Today, a colorful mural painted by Latino artists beckons museum goers in to see the exhibit. There are Spanish signs throughout and Mexican-American singer Linda Ronstadt hosts a show's audio tour.

[chimes] On the wall to the right and the center case is a fabulous incensario that is a true one of a kind. [chimes and shell rattles]

Besides the murals, the exhibit features elaborately crafted incense burners and ritual figurines used by the people of Teotihuacan, which at its height was the world's sixth-largest city and a major Mesoamerican ceremonial site. The exhibit shows Teotihuacan's influence on the Aztecs who came some 600 years later. One gallery shows an extraordinary collection of greenstone, alabaster, and onyx masks used in the hundreds of temples that once lined Teotihuacan street of the dead. 18-year old museum goer, Judith Torres found the masks unsettling.

It's kind of a scary feeling. They're mean looking and they have very strong features and it feels like somebody's actually looking at you or somebody's going to come out and say something.

Teotihuacan was dedicated primarily to two principle deities, a storm god, an early inspiration for the Aztec rain god Tlaloc. And an earth goddess, who some scholars think may distinguish Teotihuacan as the only Mesoamerican civilization with a goddess as supreme deity. Curator Kathy Barron.

She can be very peaceful and very calm, a giver of gifts associated with treasures, associated with nature. She can also be a destructive power as we see in the mural in the corner where she's rendered virtually faceless, but she's got claws and barred teeth.

Barron says some experts believe Mexico's Virgen de Guadalupe is a continuation of this ancient earth goddess in her beneficent form. These Latino visitors to the exhibit found their own examples of how the art of Teotihuacan resounds in their lives today.

I have a brother named Tlaloc, so I saw his actual feature in what his name really represented. And I knew what it represented, but I didn't see exactly what it represented. There was a different name for it.

Some of the statues, some of the little ornaments they had, some of them my grandmother had objects that are similar to that, pots and such.

To us, that's like our culture and we look at it and we're amazed, but then it makes us proud of who we are. And if somebody else sees it, they'll just be amazed but I mean, it means nothing to them. It's just a work of art to them that it's nice, but to us it means a lot.

When Teotihuacan, city of the Gods, ends its run at the M. H. de Young Museum, the collection of Teotihuacan's murals will remain on display as part of the museum's permanent collection. For Latino USA, I'm Isabel Alegria in San Francisco.

This morning it was my great honor to welcome seven outstanding Central American leaders to the White House, President Cristiani of El Salvador, President Endara of Panama, President…

In a historic gathering, president Clinton met recently with the heads of all of the Central American countries. President Clinton released $40 million in aid to Nicaragua and said he was committed to expanding free trade throughout Latin America. He's calling for a study to see how the North American Free Trade Agreement could be expanded to include other countries in the hemisphere. Along the US Mexico border, many businesses are already gearing up to take advantage of NAFTA. As Ancel Martinez reports from the border communities of Mexicali and Calexico.

Dozens of maquiladora workers solder at workstations and weld electrical transformers at the Emerson Electric Company in Mexicali, the capital Baja California. Owned by a worldwide corporation based in St. Louis, Emerson Electric employs Mexican workers and exports the finished products back to the United States. Simon Diaz, president of Emerson Mexico says NAFTA will mean less tariffs on Emerson products and finally put its inventory within reach of Mexican consumers.

Certainly for us, it's going to open up lot markets that are really right now prohibitive in terms of the tariff. Most of our products as they sell in Mexico now incur a 20% duty. If we can get rid of that duty, that's just going to allow us to sell a hell of a lot more of our products in Mexico that right now are not able to compete as well as we'd like them to compete.

Already there's been a rush of industry. A new steel plant owned by Guadalajara investors is opening up on the outskirts of the city. A huge new bottling plant has been built. Business operations here can prosper with inexpensive labor close enough and competitive enough to the United States. These companies are expected to flourish under NAFTA. Across the border is the small town of Calexico, baked by the sun. Little changes here day to day. The Calexico Chronicle on second Street is where the local mayor tells the Chronicle editor, Hildy Carillo, of his next political fundraiser.

Primary is going to be a dinner dance at the National Guard, $25 a couple and we're going to have a fantastic dinner and at the same time, I will be making my presentation, goals and objective for the board of supervisor.

Oh, Pretty good.

Calexico Mayor, Tony Tirado, has seen progress sometimes bypass his city, but now with cross-border trade, a hot topic, he hopes the predominantly agricultural county can capitalize on a developing Mexicali.

In all the years that I lived here in Calexico and the border that the borders have never been given their rightful, how shall I say, in the perspective of funding from the gift federal government to upgrade our borders. Okay. Until now, because this is where the action's going to be. So we have to improve and one of the factors is we were able to convince the federal government, "Hey, your port port of entry here in Calexico is inadequate."

Indeed, the government is spending millions on a new border crossing to handle more commerce. Lower tariffs and open investment laws under NAFTA will now allow border businessmen to plan years in advance. [Backgound--natural sounds--office work] Secretaries type out waybills and answer calls from warehouses at Bill Polkinhorn's custom brokerage house. The company was founded by Bill's grandfather at the turn of the century, originally shipping cotton from Mexico to Los Angeles for markets in the Orient. Now his grandson mostly handles electronics with a made in Mexico label. Polkinhorn explains NAFTA will increase trade.

NAFTA is kind of going to be the icing on the cake to a trade program with Mexico that we kind of started in 1985 or 86. We've seen exports from the United States to Mexico increase from eight to 10 billion a year, clear up to 40 billion since 1985. NAFTA's going to make it possible for, mostly for the United States to sell our products down there. Plus there's a lot of products, Mexican manufactured products coming up from Mexico City, Guadalajara, and the west coast of Mexico that are coming into the LA area either for consumption in LA or for shipment to the Orient.

Custom brokers like Polkinhorn on the US side of the border are excited about NAFTA, but one only has to wander a few blocks to the Mexican border to see how poverty still separates these two countries. In Calexico and Mexicali, the different standards of living still cause disputes over immigration and border pollution. [Background--natural sounds--harmonica] Yards away from US. Customs checkpoints, one man panhandles with his harmonica on a Mexicali street. Boys and Girls Hawk, chicklets and newspapers, thousands come to this city searching for a better life and delivering jobs, housing, schools and health clinics are problems that'll take more than a paper treaty like NAFTA to solve. For Latino USA, I'm Ancel Martinez in Mexicali, Mexico.