[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOgbbR0lcCc&w=420&h=315]

Lila Downs is one of my favorite musical artists out there. Her music is totally distinct, full of culture, and it tells stories. Lila Downs as an individual also really interests me. From different interviews I’ve read and watched (read: I really like Lila), her mother comes from Oaxaca and her father is Scottish-American. She’s what Cherrie Moraga calls a half breed, but that’s just me calling her own. Anyways, I think that Lila Downs is fascinating because she is mixed. Again from interviews I’ve read/watched, she lives in New York part-time and in Oaxaca the other half of the time. She’s got the privilege to, as Moraga put it, “speak [in] two tongues.”

This song, La Niña, gives the listener a picture of what it is like to be a young girl working at a maquiladora. Chicana feminist writer Gloria Anzaldúa wrote about the maquiladoras in Borderlands/La Frontera. Anzaldúa writes “Currently, Mexico and her eighty million citizens are almost completely dependent on the U.S. market. The Mexican government and wealthy growers are in partnership with such American conglomerates as American Motors, IT&T and Du Pont which own factories called maquiladoras” (Anzaldúa, 32). Anzaldúa also points out that one-fourth of all Mexicans work at these factories. This book was written in the 80s so these numbers may have changed, but even so these percentages are huge. An important point that Anzaldúa also points out is that most of these workers are young women.

In the song Lila Downs gives a face to a young girl and the nightmarish reality that exists by working in one of these maquiladoras. The girl is longing for a way to get out of her situation,”buscando vives tus dias y noches una salida.” The song, it’s imagery, Lila Downs’ voice, all has this affective quality to them. Downs is really humanizing this situation which truly lacks humanity. I’ve heard this song hundreds of times before taking this class, but when I stopped to think of these young women that have to work in these factories and what their coming of age stories must be like, it sort of snaps me back into reality. This song actually showed up at the end of the movie Real Women Have Curves. It played during the scene when Ana leaves for NYC. I’m not sure how well it fit considering the story of the movie vs. the story of the song. But then again maybe it shows the privilege of women like Lila Downs, or Ana have to speak up for themselves.

Work Cited
Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1999.