Book Examines Meaning Of Mexican Ballads To Migrants

Newswise — "Corridos in Migrant Memory," a new book by St. Lawrence University Assistant Professor of Global Studies Martha I. Chew Sánchez, examines the role of traditional Mexican ballads in shaping the cultural memories and identities of transnational Mexican groups.

Corridos are ballads particular to Mexican traditions that are used to analyze or recall a particular political, cultural and natural event important to the communities where they are performed. As part of the cultural memory, many of the most popular corridos express the immigrant experience: exploitation, surveillance and dehumanization stemming from racism and classism of the host country. The corrido helps Mexican immigrants in the United States to humanize, dignify and make sense of their transnational experiences as racial minorities.

These narrative songs, dating from the earliest colonial times, recount the historical circumstances surrounding a model protagonist whose history embodies the everyday experiences and values of the community.

The book was published in May by the University of New Mexico Press, which states, "The everyday experiences and cultural expressions of Mexican-Americans and Mexican immigrants have not found their way into textbooks in Mexico or in the United States. Martha Chew Sánchez's study provides a foundation upon which to build an understanding of the corrido."

A St. Lawrence faculty member since 2002, Chew Sánchez earned her bachelor's degree from La Escuela Nacional de Maestros in Mexico City and from the University of Texas at El Paso. She was a visiting scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxemburg, Austria, where she worked on her master's thesis, on community development. She earned the Ph.D. at the University of New Mexico, in intercultural communication, and carried out her post-doctoral studies in UCLA in the Chicano Studies Research Center. Her areas of interest are cultural studies; popular culture in Latin America; border studies; and migration, transnationalism and nationalism.