Borderland bolerista: the licentious lyricism of Chelo Silva.(Critical essay)

IN MEXICO AND THE U.S. -MEXICO borderlands in the mid-1950s, Chelo Silva was everywhere. Her boleros circulated in jukeboxes and along radio waves throughout greater Mexico, marking the emergence of a new and significant bolerista (bolero singer) generation. (1) In 1958, Americo Paredes appeared on XEO radio in Brownsville, Texas, to speak about his recently published book, With His Pistol in His Hand: A Border Ballad and Its Hero. (2) The culmination of years of research on the music and cultural politics of the corrido, a popular song form in South Texas, Paredes's book would come to epitomize the scholarly achievement and the gradual institutionalization of Chicano studies in the U.S. academy. As borderlands subjects, Silva and Paredes literally and discursively embody very different modes of cultural and knowledge production in the borderlands: the bolero and the corrido.

Heterosexual masculinity and heteronormative narratives of resistance mark the canon of Chicano music history and folklore. This essay analyzes Chicana subjectivity and music to propose that musical forms associated with nonnormative gender and sexual subjectivities disrupt the conventional borders of canonical Chicano music narratives, offering critical counter-histories that complicate accounts of gender and sexuality in the borderlands. One such musical form is the bolero, with its insistence on passion, erotics, and betrayal. Forms like the bolero serve as historical conduits for alternative knowledges and histories, particularly those that analyze the power of "inappropriate" gender and sexual subjectivities. Silva's literal performing body can be read as a narrative that challenges gender and sexual norms. Simultaneously, Silva's life draws attention to the ways in which Chicana bodies bear witness to the histories of racialized gendered subjects. Chicana bodies map displacement and migration, and they are also "inscribed by social structures" regulating sexual agency, desire, and self-representation. (3)

Throughout the twentieth century, scholars of Chicano music have theorized the ways in which music is a way of articulating resistant subjectivities, as well as claims to visibility and public space by Chicanas/os. In creating a canon of Chicano music, scholarly work has prioritized specific forms of "cultural resistance." In Chicana/o studies, corrido, conjunto/norteno, and mariachi have been theorized as the focal points for narratives of survival, self-representation, and the musical dramatization of race and class struggles. (4) Although corrido, conjunto/norteno, and mariachi are all examples of the music of "greater Mexico," each has distinctive features and therefore varied meanings for the cultural politics and identity formation of Mexican-origin peoples. In general, corridos are story-telling ballads in the folk-music tradition and focus on heroic figures or great deeds. For instance, corridos have been written in honor of John F. Kennedy and Cesar Chavez. Conjunto/norteno music--varying by name according to region--is a closely related form of dance music, involving a small group of musicians that generally includes a bajo sexto (twelve-string bass), drums, guitar, and button accordion; accordionist Flaco Jimenez is arguably the most recognizable iconic figure of regional Tex-Mex conjunto music. Manuel Pena has argued that Tex-Mex conjunto music is a product of the distinct workingclass cultural context of Texas-Mexican experience. (5) Although origins of mariachi go back hundreds of years, it is recognized today as the musical form initiated during the 1930s and closely linked to the postrevolutionary cultural products of Mexican nationalism. Thus, mariachi music is often a key symbol during Chicano social and familial celebrations invoking a sense of mexicanidad through themes of love, patriotism, and nostalgia for Mexico as home. Popular mariachi singers include Vicente Fernandez and Lucha Villa.

Corrido, conjunto/norteno, and albeit to a lesser extent, mariachi and even West Coast rock-n-roll have become synonyms for Chicano borderlands music. Comparatively, the genre of bolero has been underanalyzed in music scholarship. When bolero music has been the focus of attention, it has been mostly in the context of discussions of working-class music such as conjunto, where the bolero appears as the "high class" or "sophisticated" foil to conjunto. (6) Analytic attention to power and subjectivity in bolero music has occurred more often in Latin American, Boricua, and Latino studies fields. In this article, I argue that bolero--its form, lyrics, and performance--dramatizes nonnormative genders and sexualities, expanding the meaning of borderlands music beyond race and class resistance. Chelo Silva, La Reina Tejana del Bolero (the Texas queen of the bolero), whose music, like her life, was full of broken hearts, dramatic rumors, and sexual innuendo, embodied the aesthetic of boleros. Pablo Duenas writes of Silva:

 
De alguna manera los boleros de sufrimiento y desengano que ella 
cantaba era reflejo de su propia vida y de los lugares donde ella 
contaba; canciones como: Imploracion, Ponzona, Vete, Cheque en Blanco, 
Hipocrita y Como un perro, integraron el ambito de bares y cabarets 
fronterizos, donde ella era "la reina del bolero." 
 
[In many respects the boleros of suffering and disappointment that she 
sang were a reflection of her life and of the places she sang; songs, 
such as Imploracion Ponzona, Vete, Cheque en Blanco, Hipocrita and Como 
un perro, integrated the ambiance of bars and cabarets along the border 
where she was "the queen of the bolero."] (7) 

Silva used her interpretations of songs in recordings and public performances to generate alternative knowledges and subjectivities, enacting women's sexual agency and reminding us that passion, in all of its contradiction, complication, and rage, is as much a historical modality as an emotional one. Particularly for racialized women, enactments of sexual passion engage with historically situated systems of power as much as they reflect the power relations of their time. With particular attention to Silva, I consider the possibilities bolero music offers to understandigns of nonnormative Chicana gender and sexuality-often reduced to scandal, inauthenticity, and ridicule--for staging alternate schemes of power and representation.

Consuelo "Chelo" Silva was born the eldest daughter of seven children in Brownsville, Texas, in 1922. According to her sister Angelica, Silva was a gifted vocalist from the time she was a child, often demonstrating her talents in church, with her family, and at varied social events. (8) In her late teens she sang with the popular local orchestra of Tito Crixell and increasingly in more formal settings where she received accolades for her strong voice. (9) Even during her teens Silva began to garner attention for her powerful voice, often appearing at public festivals and church services. In the late 1930s, Silva crossed paths with someone who would come to symbolize--through his musical compositions and scholarship on the corrido--the antithesis of bolero song: Americo Paredes. The host of a local radio program in Brownsville, el musico y poeta (the musician and poet) Paredes offered a new public arena for the interpretation of Silva's boleros. Their musical fusion on radio resulted in a passionate personal union, one institutionalized through marriage in 1939.