MEXICO CITY (AP) — Two days earlier than her new album was launched, musical icon Vivir Quintana was behind barbed wire at a ladies’s jail in Mexico. The singer had spent the previous 10 years visiting ladies incarcerated after defending themselves and, in doing so, killing their abusers.
Their tales turned a part of “Cosas que Sorprenden a la Audiencia” (Issues that Shock the Viewers), Quintana’s newest album, launched Thursday.
It tells the story of 10 such ladies however in a primary, Quintana does it by way of “corridos,” a usually male-dominated and controversial Mexican music style that’s soared into the highlight lately.
The album, Quintana defined, was born out of her need to dive into the extra sophisticated elements of gender-based violence.
“This album has a different heart,” Quintana, 40, mentioned in an interview, donning shiny crimson boots, her signature streak of grey slicing by way of her black hair. “This album wasn’t made to sell, it’s to change minds.”
‘So many instances I didn’t defend myself’
The songs are supposed to elevate consciousness about hovering ranges of violence in opposition to ladies throughout Latin America — human rights teams estimate that a mean of 10 ladies are killed in Mexico each day — and a justice system that many imagine protects abusers and silences ladies’s voices.
In lots of circumstances, ladies like those in Quintana’s corridos are charged with “extreme official self-defense,” costs which have fueled outrage amongst many in Mexico.
“So many times I feared for my life. So many times I didn’t defend myself,” Quintana crooned, cradling her guitar as her booming voice echoed by way of the halls of her document label constructing on Wednesday. “Now I live locked up in a prison, and I feel more free than I did in my own home.”
Amplifying ladies’s voices has been a trademark of Quintana’s profession, and rocketed her to fame in Mexico and past.
In 2020, her “Canción Sin Miedo” (Tune With out Concern) turned an anthem for Mexico’s Girls’s Day march and the feminist motion in Latin America.
In 2022, she co-wrote a melancholy hymn about therapeutic and freedom for the album of the Black Panther sequel. And final yr, she was acknowledged on the Latin Grammys as certainly one of 4 Main Women of Leisure.
A cultural reckoning
Quintana’s new music goes additional. She makes use of “corridos,” a kind of northern Mexican ballads that has seen each a global renaissance and a backlash, with critics claiming that “narco corridos” — songs that glorify cartel violence and use misogynistic lyrics – have dominated the shape.
The subject has grown so heated that america even revoked the visas of members of 1 band who projected the face of a drug cartel boss onto a big display throughout a efficiency.
As a substitute of banning the corridos as a rising variety of Mexican states have carried out, the nation’s first lady president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has proposed that the federal government promote a brand new type of corridos that keep away from glorifying violence and discrimination in opposition to ladies.
“We’re not banning a musical genre; that would be absurd,” Sheinbaum said recently. “What we’re proposing is that the lyrics not glorify drugs, violence, violence against women or viewing women as a sexual object.”
‘I didn’t wish to die by his fingers’
Quintana’s corridos flip the style on its head, paying tribute to not violence or criminals, however to ladies who’ve been criminalized for defending themselves.
The primary music on her album, “Period Él o Period Yo (It Was Both Him or Me) tells the story of Roxana Ruiz, a Mexican lady sentenced to 6 years for killing a person who was raping her and threatened to kill her in 2021.
“This isn’t justice,” Ruiz mentioned after the court docket ruling. “Remember, I am the one who was sexually assaulted by that man, and after he died because I defended myself … because I didn’t want to die by his hands.”
Mexican prosecutors later withdrew the case in opposition to her after a national outcry.
One music tells of a 14-year-old lady within the southern state of Tabasco who killed her father when he was abusing her mom. One other tells of Yakiri Rubio, who was kidnapped by two males, taken to a resort and raped. After killing one of many males, she was taken to jail and charged with “homicide by excessive legitimate self-defense.”
With every music, Quintana would observe native information stories, interview the ladies in prisons and spend time with their households, hoping to seize their personalities — and never simply the violent act that remodeled their lives.
“It’s something painful that the state tells you that if you defend yourself, we’re going to punish you,” Quintana mentioned. “It’s like up until what point do we care about women’s life?”
Shifting the dialog
Quintana’s inspiration stemmed from a childhood reminiscence of a basic corrido she first heard on the age of 5, performed at events and on the radio in her native northern Mexican state of Coahuila.
The ballad is a couple of lady named Rosita Alvírez, violently killed when she tried to exit to bounce. Later, when she was 15, Quintana’s greatest buddy was murdered in a femicide, the slaying of girls due to their gender. It was then that the brutality of the lyrics sank in.
Quintana’s album seeks to shift the tone of the corridos to seize the tough realities Mexican ladies face, she mentioned, and discover ongoing violence in opposition to ladies and different kinds of “machismo” with nuance.
Her function, she added, is to carry up survivors of gender violence and to offer a degree of connection for incarcerated ladies like these in her ballads.
“They tell these women, you defended yourself, you killed someone and you’re in prison, you don’t have the right to feel joy, enjoy life, you don’t have the right to anything,” Quintana mentioned.
“But it’s important to dance to these things, no?” she added. “Because people have to understand that they have the right to music, the right to art, and more than anything, the right to beauty.”
