Midterm Essay: Mexican Folk Songs
Mexican folk songs or corridos are more than songs. They are beautiful stories passed down from generation to generation in the form of music and singing. These stories share events in Mexican lives and these songs almost always retell events in a specific place and time, but the majority of these songs were found to be written in the 19th century. During the Mexican Revolution and the Mexican immigration, corridos became an effective means of communicating Mexican culture and the struggles that the Mexican people had to endure.This music can reflect the experiences had by thousands of migrants. Many of the corridos used in this essay can accurately describe these experiences.
In “An Emigrant’s Farewell”, the speaker discusses the emotional hardship that he or she has endured while traveling to the United States in search of work. During 1900 and 1930, songs that express that excitement and anxiety of travel were very popular. Leaving their home country was a rough time and they would sing : “I go to the United States to seek to earn a living. Good-bye, my beloved land; I bear you in my heart.” Extreme poverty forced many
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Many believed that Mexican immigrants that now lived in the United States were getting better treatment then the Mexicans who remained in Mexico. There are many corridos written like this singing: “we’re anxious to return again to our adored county; but what can we do about it if our country is ruined? If they’ve talked about us it is because of all the braggarts who go jingling their dollars as if they’ve brought back millions,” They often believed that the immigrants who went to America in search of work were incredibly rich because of how they boasted and bragged about their earnings, so many grew jealous of those immigrants. It caused lots of