Gabino Palomares: A History of Canto Nuevo in Mexico

Abstract

The civil wars, military coups, dictatorships, and revolutions that marked the histories of Cuba, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and Uruguay during the second half of the twentieth century propelled the socially-engaged singers of the Nueva Canción to stardom, granting them a privileged place in the emotional tales of the nation. 1 In Mexico, the story was different.Without a clearly articulated narrative of oppression and violence, the voices of resistance did not find a place in the national affective imagination.While figures such as Silvio Rodríguez and Mercedes Sosa managed to convince a sector of the Mexican public to stand in solidarity with the oppressed peoples of Latin America, figures such as Amparo Ochoa, Óscar Chávez, and Gabino Palomares did not succeed-apparently-in convincing the Mexican public that there were also reasons to protest in Mexico. 2 The story of modern Mexican troubadours is absent from the annals of history.It exists as scattered references in newspapers, as anecdotes, and as a collection of songs sung in a disorganized manner by a group relegated to the margins of the cultural landscape.It is, nevertheless, a story of resistance whose heroes-singers, songwriters, and performers-spent the decades between 1960 and 1990 denouncing poverty and corruption, condemning governmental violence, marching side by side with students, activists, women, workers, and peasants, and supporting civil rights and grassroots movements both nationally and internationally.The story of these musicians has remained unknown for too long.This article attempts to reignite academic interest in this story with the goal of encouraging future critical and theoretical studies regarding socially-engaged Mexican singers and songwriters from the 1960s through the 1990s.It focuses on the life and work of one of the main exponents of the Mexican protest song, singer-songwriter Gabino Palomares (b.1950), whose work is essential to our understanding of the contemporary cultural history of Mexico. The Latin American Nueva CanciónThe direct antecedent of the Latin American protest song is the folklorist movement that gained strength in the continent as a response to the international commercial offerings imposed by American and Latin American mainstream media since the end of the 1950s.3 This movement was initially nourished by interest in the music and culture of the indigenous peoples of the American continent, which emerged during the same period in Europe, especially in Paris, and which led to the dissemination of works by 1 Note on translation: The translator has retained the original terms Nueva Canción and Canto Nuevo in Spanish for the sake of clarity.Both terms can be translated into English as "New Song." 2 On the social and musical characteristics of the New Song, which contributed to its growth and acceptance all over Latin America, see Fernando Reyes Matta, "The New Song and Its Confrontation in Latin America," in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed.

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