Giants of Mexican music take on Trump

Attention, Donald Trump: Now you’ve got Los Tigres del Norte against you.

The giants of northern Mexico music have proposed a boycott of everything owned by the Republican presidential hopeful for his offensive remarks about Mexican immigrants.

“We are deeply offended for all that he has said against Mexicans who live in the US,” said Jorge Hernández in Bogotá. He added that Trump “invented this campaign against Mexicans to gain popularity among certain sectors of the American population,” and said that his comments have “hurt the hearts and feelings of Mexicans. We are shocked.”

Hernández, his brothers, and his cousins, all from Sinaloa, Mexico, and now based in San Jose, are known as the godfathers of Norteño music.

“Well, they’re saying that Trump’s remarks about Mexicans and about immigrants are intolerable,” says music writer Betto Arcos. “They are absolutely worried about the backlash that this means for immigrants. Basically they’re saying, look, we are immigrants, we came to this country, we are hard-working people just like everybody else and we send money to our families, we’re not criminals, we’re normal people just like any other immigrants. So why is he attacking us?”

It’s not clear how much of an impact a consumer boycott against Donald Trump’s companies would have, but Arcos says the band is hoping Trump will get the message that our voices, and all that we stand for, will really mean something.”

Los Tigres like to mix music and politics. In 2013, the group performed songs about the everyday struggle of immigrants at an immigration reform rally on the National Mall in Washington.

“If there is a group that actually writes songs and tells the story of hard-working immigrants, it’s called Los Tigres del Norte,” says Arcos. “They been doing that from the very beginning, they’ve been writing songs about immigrants for years and years, songs about the pride of being a Mexican living in this country and the difficulties of having two identities, as a Mexican and as an American.”

One Tigres song, says Arcos, talks specifically about this issue of dual identity. “The song says people are calling us undocumented, and illegal, and guess what folks, we’re just as American, if not more American, than you. We’ve been here long before you came. The song is called “Somos Mas Americanos” or “We are more American.”