Music and visibility among Mixtec in San Quintín.
In the 80s indigenous migration from Oaxaca to Baja California peaked. The labourers’ flow satisfied the need for manual work in a growing horticulture industry for exportation flowrishing in San Quintin. Most of these agricultural migrant workers were mixtects, zapotecs and triquis peoples. Despite their strong musical tradition in their places of origin, in San Quintín none was reproduced then. Among possible explanations for this lack of indigenous music in San Quintin were the difficulties of surviving as migrant workers in the new context, their continuous circular migration from field to field all year round, a systematic repression of their efforts to get organized to fight for their rights and generalized social rejection for their cultural traits in the new contexts of arrival. Nevertheless, the first chilenas were composed in Baja California. There, people told the stories of those dead in the long journeys from Oaxaca to San Quintín, or those of a murdered mixtec leader. Nowadays, the mixtec music scene in San Quintin is completely different. It is now expanding and young mixtec are exploring new musical genres mixing them and exploring for new meanings for their lyrics. This article gives account of the transformation of the mixtec music scene in San Quintin, and their possible links to processes of social integration, organization and visibilization of mixtec people in San Quintin.