A large flatbed truck pulled up outside a remote immigrant detention center north of Los Angeles last month. On the truck bed, converted into a mobile stage, a band played protest songs. Huge speakers projected them loud across the desert landscape. But were they loud enough, the musicians wondered, to penetrate the detention center's tall, thick, concrete walls?
Loyda Alvarado looked toward the barbed wire fence and began to sing to the immigrants jailed inside:
Asómate a la ventana, te traje una serenata
Look out the window. I've brought you a serenade.
Aunque estés encarcelado, mira, te canta quien te ama…
Though you're locked up, someone you love is here to sing to you.
In a crowd of protesters looking on, a young woman's phone rang. It was her dad calling. He was detained inside, fighting deportation. She climbed onto the truck and took a microphone.
"He can hear us!" she yelled. "They all can hear us!" The crowd erupted.
The concert was staged by Los Jornaleros del Norte. Since federal agents began aggressive immigration raids in LA last June, the band's 11 members have been crisscrossing southern California on their mobile stage determined to lift the spirits of people affected by the crackdowns. The band also hopes to provide a jolt of musical energy at otherwise somber protests.
"Since day one, we as musicians started organizing to protest wherever there were raids," said Omar León, the band's director, accordionist and songwriter. The band has often rolled up to street corners days or even hours after immigration agents have whisked someone away there. Many of their songs are about undocumented workers trying to make a living while evading immigration agents. Most are protest songs played as upbeat Mexican cumbias or as corridos, a style of ballad that often narrates the experiences of working class people.
León said the band's goal at demonstrations is to redirect protesters' anger and sorrow.
"People are already ready to march and to chant," he said. "But when they hear the music, they get more excited. It also minimizes tension and confrontation between police, ICE agents and the people who are protesting."
Loyda Alvarado, a lead singer in the band, said that in the crackdown's early weeks and months, it was hard to bring lively cumbias to the very place where an immigrant worker had just been taken away from their family and community.
"It just felt so heavy," she said. But over time, watching people dance and sing to their music, "I was reminded that this is a way in which we resist as well. The joy, despite all the suffering, despite all the pain, is such an important part of what we do because it helps us to keep our culture and to connect with each other."
The concert and serenade outside the desert detention center was one way the band has tried to reach detained immigrants themselves.
"We are bringing music for the people we love," said Manuel Vicente, who plays congas. "And to show them that we're waiting for them outside. And that their community is doing everything we can to bring them back."
Though the band has turbocharged its performance schedule in the last year, it's been performing at immigrant and workers' rights protests for three decades. Pablo Alvarado and Lolo Cutumay were among a small group of workers who formed the band in the mid 1990s after one of them witnessed immigration agents raid a site where day laborers were lining up for free health services. Their first song told the story of that raid
Their name, Los Jornaleros del Norte means The Day Laborers of the North. To this day, most of its musicians are current or former day laborers, and work closely with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, using music to help mobilize immigrant workers.
On a recent evening, the band's mobile stage pulled up to a Home Depot east of LA. Weeks earlier, masked immigration agents had chased down day laborers gathered in the parking lot in search of a day's work. One of them, Carlos Roberto Montoya Valdéz, ran across the nearby freeway in a desperate attempt to escape. He was hit and killed by a car. The Jornaleros had come to honor his life.
For more than an hour, they played sentimental ballads as a tribute, and later, fast-paced cumbias to liven the mood.
"The songs that we do are stories about hardworking immigrants, hardworking women and hardworking men," Omar León said after the performance, as he put his accordion away. "Tonight we chose songs that talk about life, that talk about struggle. We chose love songs to remember Carlos Roberto Montoya."
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