{"id":4838,"date":"2024-02-24T09:35:21","date_gmt":"2024-02-24T14:35:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=4838"},"modified":"2024-03-10T11:19:50","modified_gmt":"2024-03-10T15:19:50","slug":"la-tumba-del-mojado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/la-tumba-del-mojado\/","title":{"rendered":"La Tumba del Mojado (Paulino Vargas\/Migration)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"La Tumba del Mojado (Paulino Vargas\/migrant experience)\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/I8xYVhgbUIU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Paulino Vargas was\u00a0 the defining master of the modern Mexican corrido and &#8220;La tumba del mojado&#8221; is one of his masterpieces. <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-4842\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/young-paulino.jpg?resize=201%2C220&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"201\" height=\"220\" \/>Though most famous for his outlaw corridos, he was a brilliantly versatile chronicler of Mexican life, and composed insightful and poetic songs about cross-border migration, government corruption, and other social issues. This song is the testament of a\u00a0 Mexican\u00a0 who has crossed to the United States without official documents, describing the difficulties of his situation, and is as relevant today as when he wrote it in the 1980s:<\/p>\n<p><em>I couldn&#8217;t cross the line, the Rio Bravo was in my way.<br \/>\nThey taught me harshly when I lived on the other side,<br \/>\n<\/em><em>Dollars are pretty, but I am Mexican.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>I didn&#8217;t have green card when I worked in Louisiana.<\/em><br \/>\n<em>I lived in a basement, because I was <\/em>espalda mojada<em> [wet back].<br \/>\nI had to bow my head to collect my weekly pay.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Then the beautiful, tragic chorus:<\/p>\n<p><em>The Mexicali Rose and the blood in the Rio Bravo<br \/>\nAre two different things, but in color they are siblings,<br \/>\nAnd the borderline is the wetback&#8217;s grave.<\/p>\n<p><\/em>(Note: the R\u00edo Bravo &#8220;the fierce river,&#8221; is the Mexican name for what Anglos call the Rio Grande, and <em>espalda mojada<\/em> translates literally as &#8220;wetback,&#8221; but does not have the same pejorative connotation in Mexican Spanish that it has in English.)<em><br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I spent a year traveling around Mexico in the late 1990s, doing research for\u00a0 <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-4843 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/narcocov.jpg?resize=142%2C215&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"142\" height=\"215\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/narcocov.jpg?w=200&amp;ssl=1 200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/narcocov.jpg?resize=198%2C300&amp;ssl=1 198w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 142px) 100vw, 142px\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/corrido.html\"><em>Narcocorrido: A Journey into the Music of Drugs, Guns, and Guerrillas<\/em><\/a>, and met a lot of fascinating people, but Paulino was far and away the most intriguing and impressive. He had several careers, first with his partner Javier N\u00fa\u00f1ez in Los Broncos de Reynosa, the most popular norte\u00f1o duo of the 1960s, then as the most\u00a0 influential composer in the reinvention of the corrido. He was deeply versed in older traditions, both the folkloric corridos of the countryside and the movie corridos that became popular radio hits in the 1940s, and he combined the classic form with a cinematic sense of action, new layers of poetic language, and a keen sense of social justice. He is probably best known for his journalistic songs of drug smugglers, especially &#8220;La banda del carro rojo,&#8221; a huge hit for los Tigres del Norte, and &#8220;El corrido de Lamberto Quintero,&#8221; a hit for the movie star Antonio Aguilar. Both were adapted into popular films, spawned numerous sequels, and along with &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/contrabando-y-traicion\/\">Contrabando y traici\u00f3n<\/a>&#8221; (discussed in a previous post), started the wave of modern drug-smuggling ballads.<\/p>\n<p>I was fascinated by Paulino&#8217;s sense of history. He had grown up in a mountain rancho between Durango and Mazatlan, and was deeply versed in the folklore of Mexico and the songs and legends of the revolution He had a photograph of Pancho Villa on <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-4999\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Pancho-Villa-with-boy-Paulino-said-was-his-grandfather-e1708394457858.jpg?resize=232%2C245&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"232\" height=\"245\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Pancho-Villa-with-boy-Paulino-said-was-his-grandfather-e1708394457858.jpg?w=297&amp;ssl=1 297w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Pancho-Villa-with-boy-Paulino-said-was-his-grandfather-e1708394457858.jpg?resize=284%2C300&amp;ssl=1 284w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 232px) 100vw, 232px\" \/>his wall, and explained that Villa had bought some horses from his great-grandfather and the boy leaning against a tree in the background was his grandfather, who had gone along to mind them. (I have no idea how much of that is true; Paulino was creative in many ways.)<\/p>\n<p>He linked the outlaws of the present with that history, and at times with broader issues of national and international politics, ranging from thrilling urban shoot-outs to songs like &#8220;Los super capos,&#8221; which took the narcocorrido theme to a higher level, accusing George Bush&#8217;s presidential administration of hypocritically profiting from the drug trade while claiming the right to decertify and punish Latin American countries for supplying US consumers&#8217; insatiable demands. He wrote a powerful song about the unsolved killings of dozens of women in Ciudad Juarez, and in &#8220;La cronica de un cambio&#8221; questioned the new administration of Vicente Fox with witty and intricate wordplay. (I discuss &#8220;Los super capos&#8221; in my book and translate and discuss the latter songs on my <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/corridowatch.html\">Corrido Watch<\/a> webpage.)<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;La tumba del mojado&#8221; moves from the personal to the political, first giving the undocumented immigrant&#8217;s experience, then contrasting it with the way foreigners are treated on the Mexican side:<\/p>\n<p><em>The tortilla curtain is an offense to the people.<br \/>\nThrough Mexico travel French, Chinese, and Greeks,<br \/>\nAnd some Americans are bosses in the towns.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-4844\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Paulino-Vargas.jpg?resize=274%2C284&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"274\" height=\"284\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Paulino-Vargas.jpg?w=350&amp;ssl=1 350w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Paulino-Vargas.jpg?resize=289%2C300&amp;ssl=1 289w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 274px) 100vw, 274px\" \/>Along with admiring his writing, I loved spending time with Paulino. I visited him multiple times and was amazed at the range of his interests and the poetry and humor of his conversation. Rereading my chapter about him, I still chuckle over favorite comments: for example, when I asked if he was ever annoyed by other songwriters copying his style, he adopted the tone of a priest, saying: &#8220;Blessed be my imitators, for they shall inherit my faults.&#8221; He could go on like that for hours.<\/p>\n<p>I worked up a guitar part for this song based on the accordion licks Jorge Hern\u00e1ndez played on the Tigres&#8217; recording, though I&#8217;ve only performed it in the context of a talk\/concert that goes along with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/borderblog\/\">my blog on borders, migration, and nationalism<\/a>. In some ways it feels strange to sing such a specifically Mexican story in my voice, but as the son of immigrants and refugees I feel a connection to its message&#8230; and what gorgeous songwriting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Paulino Vargas was\u00a0 the defining master of the modern Mexican corrido and &#8220;La tumba del mojado&#8221; is one of his masterpieces. Though most famous for his outlaw corridos, he was a brilliantly versatile chronicler of Mexican life, and composed insightful and poetic songs about cross-border migration, government corruption, and other social issues. This song is &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/la-tumba-del-mojado\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">La Tumba del Mojado (Paulino Vargas\/Migration)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>La Tumba del 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Boondocks\" (last week's post) and \"Mansion on the Hill,\" a song in the voice of a poor boy speaking to the rich girl he loves and cannot win. Because I am as I am, without reason you\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Jose-Alfredo-Jimenez-scaled-e1746839835449.webp?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5856,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/besos-y-copas\/","url_meta":{"origin":4838,"position":1},"title":"Besos y Copas (Victor Cordero)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"July 26, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"I learned \"Besos y copas\" from the soundtrack album to Chulas Fronteras, Les Blank's documentary about norte\u00f1o music, which I'm pretty sure I owned before seeing the film. It was performed by Chavela Ortiz, a fine singer and accordion player, who fronted the San Jose, California, group\u00a0Brown Express and was\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Chavela-Ortiz-e1752187362926.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4736,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/contrabando-y-traicion\/","url_meta":{"origin":4838,"position":2},"title":"Contrabando y traicion (Los Tigres del Norte)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"October 9, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"https:\/\/youtu.be\/t-RGZEh1RsE I first heard Los Tigres del Norte while hitchhiking around Mexico in 1986. I was sitting in a park in Oaxaca one evening, playing guitar and waiting for something to happen, and some young guys came over and requested \"Rock de la c\u00e1rcel\" (Jailhouse Rock), so I played that,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Emilio-Varela-vs-Camelia-La-Texana.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3170,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/lone-star-bob-wills\/","url_meta":{"origin":4838,"position":3},"title":"Lone Star Beer And Bob Wills Music (Red Steagall)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"October 13, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"I forget who loaned me the Red Steagall album with this as its title song, but I know it was in Vancouver, BC, and I taped all the songs I liked--which was most of them--and learned this one and \"Someday (You'll Want Me to Want You),\" which remains a staple\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Red-Steagall-LP.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3279,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/gritenme-piedras\/","url_meta":{"origin":4838,"position":4},"title":"Gritenme Piedras del Campo","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"December 23, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Hitching along the Gulf Coast from Louisiana, I planned to spend a couple of weeks in Texas, but I got hassled by the cops in Galveston and it was freezing in Corpus Christi, so I scampered down to Mexico. They wouldn't let me across the border without a bus ticket\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/Flaco-Jimenez-LP.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5977,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wishing-for-you\/","url_meta":{"origin":4838,"position":5},"title":"Wishing For You (Joe Ely)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"October 11, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"This is neither the first nor the last Butch Hancock song I learned off Joe Ely's terrific string of records in the 1970s. (Actually, I just checked, and this is off his 1981 album,\u00a0Down on the Drag, which was not quite up to that standard, but still had some killer\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Joe-Ely-Ponty-Bone.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4838"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5063,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4838\/revisions\/5063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}