Parataxes Unbound

Abstract

As scholars concerned with the disjunctures of globalization and the conflicts of contemporary culture have observed, a movement in critical notions “away from linear narratives of immigration, assimilation, and nationhood”¹ toward shifting and hazardous experiences of migration and border identities has taken place. The complex meanings of globalization as “denationalization” and reterritorialization are constituted both inside the nation and across its borders.² The phenomenon of global ballads (the close relationship between migration corridos and narcocorridos) has in its own particular way shaken stable criteria of space with its assumptions of insides and outsides of national states. These corridos seem to suggest a notion of heterogeneity that is bound to eccentric movement and reiterative intensity. José David Saldívar gives the example of Los Tigres del Norte being “one of the first undocumented bands to receive a Grammy Award for best regional Mexican-American recording” in 1988.³ The crossover of the band from the traditional Sinaloan norteno (country) region into the mass-cultural geographies of the overdeveloped Silicon Valley region renders the spatial and conceptual paradox evident: border ballads of peripheral and rural provenance have established an aleatory yet strong presence, both in Mexico and in one of the most sophisticated territories of the postindustrial world. This passage became visible after 1975, starting with the long-lasting success of the corrido Contrabando y Traición.