El Paso: Las Cafeteras!

Las Cafeteras, Trickey Falls, El Paso, Texas. October 2016.

October 2016

El Paso did not know what it was missing when it decided to do something other than enjoy Las Cafeteras at Trickey Falls on October 14, 2016.

Las Cafeteras, Trickey Falls, El Paso, Texas. October 2016.

Heck, I wouldn't have known what I was missing if I hadn't tripped over an NPR broadcast about "son jarocho" a couple of years earlier, before I had any inkling that I'd live in El Paso. That broadcast featured Las Cafeteras' cover of La Bamba, which they remixed and retitled La Bamba Rebelde, to proclaim pride in community, family, neighbors, being chicano, in being from East LA, in being no less American than anyone else here, and to signify solidarity with undocumented Americans.

Las Cafeteras, Trickey Falls, El Paso, Texas. October 2016.

I am loca in love with the group's song, Luna Lovers, and I link you to their official video rather than the one I took (and posted on my youtube channel). Feeling distraught? Watch this video and feel tension fall away. You can't help but smile. Really. Try it.

I'm also crazy for the zapateo on the tamira.

Las Cafeteras, Trickey Falls, El Paso, Texas. October 2016.

Las Cafeteras, Trickey Falls, El Paso, Texas. October 2016.

Watch this example below:

One of the Las Cafeteras members said something that startled and enlightened me. I don't remember her exact words, but the gist was that humans move, we migrate, just as our fellow animals do. Our human movements, like those of our fellow animals, do not care about arbitrary, administrative border walls, tangible or intangible. Our movement as humans is a natural process we have practiced through millennia. Sometimes we are pulled to new homes; sometimes we are pushed out of our old homes. Some of our migrations are temporary; some are permanent.

The natural forces of migration are what will - already are - pulling/pushing us out to the stars.

For us to criminalize fellow humans who migrate is unhelpful. Indeed, one might say it violates a law of nature.

Las Cafeteras, Trickey Falls, El Paso, Texas. October 2016.