Lila Downs' "La Patria Madrina": Keeping Track of Massacres in Mexico

In this paper, I consider how Oaxacan folk singer-songwriter Lila Downs, in her 2015 album Balas y Chocolate (Bullets and Chocolate), mobilizes memory through music. Building on representations of popular protest and Mexican... [ view full abstract ]

In this paper, I consider how Oaxacan folk singer-songwriter Lila Downs, in her 2015 album Balas y Chocolate (Bullets and Chocolate), mobilizes memory through music. Building on representations of popular protest and Mexican mass violence specifically targeting students, from Elena Poniatowska’s La noche de Tlatelolco (1971) (The Night of Tlatelolco) to Francisco Goldman’s New Yorker series on Ayotzinapa (2014-15), I examine the relationship between aesthetics and politics at play in Lila Downs’ music video “La Patria Madrina” ("The Matron Country"). Beyond lyrics, Downs’ performance captures and catalyzes the recent crisis in Mexico over the forty-three student abductions visually through embedded news media and signage such as “They were taken alive, we want them back alive!” This paper ultimately advances an alternative, connective history of contemporary state terrorism with translocal implications in the Americas.