Judith Reyes - Crónica Mexicana

The singer/songwriter Judith Reyes has been described as the "chronicler of the 1968 Student Movement" in Mexico. Redefining the late nineteenth century revolutionary corrido tradition, Reyes created songs that functioned as oral "eye-witness" accounts of grassroots mobilisation and as critiques of political repession about which official sources and media outlets frequently remained silent.

In Mexico on 2 October 1968, ten days before the Olympics were scheduled to take place in the country, more than 300 students, who were peacefully demonstrating in La Plazade las Tres Culturas in Mexico City, were mown down by a hail of military bullets. This act was immortalised in the following days by the folk singer Judith Reyes in he ballad "La tragedia de la Plaza de las Tres Culturas" ("The tragedyof the Plaza of the Three Culturas"). The tragedy of the students deaths was underlined in Reyes´ ballad by her use of the traditional corrido form, which was originally a nineteenth-century song form that was closely associated with the Mexican Revolution.

Tracklist:
1. La Salinidad (The Salt Invasion)
2. Corrido de Arturo Gamez (Corrido of Arturo Gamez)
3. Corrido de Santo Domingo (The peasants of Sanchez Lozoya)
4. Los Niños Trabajadores (Corrido of the Working Children)
5. Gorilita, Gorilon (Little "gorilla," big "gorilla")
6. La Ocupación Militar de la Universidad (Corrido of the Occupied University)
7. Canción del Politecnico (Song of Polytechnic Institute)
8. Tragedia de la Plaza de las Tres Culturas (Tragedy of Plaza of the Three Cultures)
9. Marcha de los Caidos (March of the Fallen Dead)

Judith Reyes - Cónica Mexicana
(192 kbps, cover art included)