Latest / National Immigration Law Center Freedom to Thrive Podcast / Ep. #101: Dance Floor Democracy | Hector Flores

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Ep. #101: Dance Floor Democracy | Hector Flores · National Immigration Law Center Freedom to Thrive Podcast

• 0:00
  This is the NILC Freedom to Thrive podcast, powering pro-immigrant narratives, one story at a time.
• 0:07
  I'm Victoria Ballesteros, Executive Vice President of Narrative at the National
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  Immigration Law Center.
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  When I was in high school in the 1980s, we didn't have cell phones,
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  we didn't have the internet, and we certainly didn't have social media.
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  What we did have, besides really big hair was MTV, music television.
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  I know it sounds really quaint today, but MTV was new and suddenly the world
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  opened up with music from around the globe.
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  And while they're musical time capsules today, I distinctly remember three songs
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  that awakened my consciousness to the travesty of apartheid in South Africa.
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  First was a song by Peter Gabriel called Biko. It's a powerful and and haunting
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  tribute to Stephen Biko, who was killed by South African police while in custody
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  for his work against apartheid.
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  That song moved and enraged me then, and it still does today.
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  Then there was Free Nelson Mandela by The Specials. At the time,
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  Mandela was in his 21st year of a 27-year imprisonment, also for opposing apartheid.
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  And while the subject matter was dead serious, it's a joyful song.
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  It makes you want to get up and dance.
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  The third and most electrifying for me was called Sun City by Artists United Against Apartheid.
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  That song was written and produced by Stephen Van Zandt, who our younger listeners
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  may know from his role on The Sopranos, but this was a defiant song by some
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  of the biggest musicians of the time calling for a boycott in solidarity with
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  the people of South Africa.
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  I can't name all the musicians because there are too many, but the music video
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  was stunning because it provided a glimpse into what people were are experiencing
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  at the hands of their government under the violence and brutal oppression of apartheid.
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  And that is the power of art and music specifically, to tap public consciousness
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  by not only holding up a mirror, but also saying, this isn't right. Pay attention.
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  And people did. I certainly did. And so did many in my generation.
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  Music provided an on-ramp to issues that otherwise weren't accessible.
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  It inspired us to speak up and take action. And we all know the rest of the
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  story with Nelson Mandela not only being freed, but later becoming the president of South Africa.
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  And this is why I'm so excited to be in conversation with our guest today,
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  Hector Flores, just a wonderful person and compañero in the struggle.
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  Hector has gone from social justice organizer to musician.
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  And as one of the founding members of Las Cafeteras, Hector is helping to change
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  the narrative on immigration one song at a time.
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  Victoria, that was a great intro.
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  That was a great intro. I love it. Welcome to the podcast. Cass.
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  It's so great to see you and thank you for being here. I know you're on tour
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  and you're going from one place to another.
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  I really appreciate it. It's wonderful to see you.
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  No, I mean, this is my natural habitat.
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  I've had to learn to kind of embrace the road.
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  A lot of folks always ask, how do you do it? How do you like it?
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  I mean, I remember when we used to travel and we'd have to sleep in bathtubs
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  in people's hallways and on the floor.
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  Now we get hotel hotel rooms and I'm okay.
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  I'm good. I remember the bad days. Moving on up.
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  I love it. I love it. I love it. So your music, Hector, is rooted in social
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  justice from songs like Caravana to Vivas Nos Queremos, La Bamba Rebelde,
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  This Land Is Your Land. There's so many.
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  What is the driving force behind your music and your work? You know, I think, wow.
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  Okay. I'm going to give, there's a long story and a short story.
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  Today, We're going to give the medium, but I feel like, where does it, where does it come from?
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  Well, before being a musician, I was an organizer, but for me, I come from organizing.
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  And so for 10 years, you know, from college to after college,
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  I worked in educational justice movement for environmental justice.
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  I did immigrant rights work, queer justice.
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  And that informed what I wanted to do in the world.
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  And so anything I do, whether I become a filmmaker, a chef, whatever I do,
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  I'm going to take those values.
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  So I just ended up becoming a musician by accident.
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  And really, at the end of the day, it's about, you know, I wanted to hear our stories on the radio.
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  Like, I grew up with cumbia. I grew up with hip hop. I grew up with rock music. all dope.
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  But at the end of the day, I wanted to hear my story also coming out of the speakers and I did it.
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  And so like a lot of folks, if you don't see it in the world,
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  then maybe you got to create it.
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  That's kind of the story of Las Cafeteras, you know? So let's talk about your
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  story. You're the son of immigrants.
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  How has that shown up in your work as a musician? Oh my goodness.
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  I mean, I mean, all over. I mean, if you hear our first album,
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  it's time. It's even the title of the album. It was in 2012.
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  It was titled It's Time. And it's because we were seeing all this anti-immigrant rhetoric, policies.
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  Jarpayo was running like havoc in Arizona.
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  We saw like anti-immigrant rhetoric and laws in Texas, in the South.
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  And so we wrote an album that was really dedicated to the plight of immigrants.
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  And being myself, Denise and Kano, who are the core members of Las Cafeteras,
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  we had parents who came to this country as undocumented immigrants, right?
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  Like that's, for us, it's part of who we are. It's part of our identity.
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  We don't even identify, like I wouldn't, you know, we never identified as a political band.
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  We just identified as a band, but our stories have been politicized.
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  And for us, it was like, yo, this is who we are.
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  And right now, like we need to talk about it.
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  So like La Bamba Rebelde, you know, which is a four, like a 400 year old Afro-Mexican song.
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  La Bamba, which a lot of folks don't know, made famous by a 17-year-old Chicano
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  boy named Richie Valance, right?
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  And for us, we took this traditional song, but we wrote the lyrics to talk about
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  what we're going through, you know?
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  So the chorus, you know, in La Bamba would be like, Yo no soy marinero,
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  por ti seré, por ti seré, por ti seré.
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  We said, yo no creo en fronteras, yo cruzaré, yo cruzaré, yo cruzaré.
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  I don't believe in borders and
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  I'll cross them and cross them and cross them. And it became an anthem.
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  It became an anthem across the country. And everywhere we went,
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  we would sing that song and everybody would like, when that part came on,
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  everybody would scream it out and shout it out.
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  And I realized what we were doing is that we were writing music.
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  Not only when you write music about you and reflecting your story,
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  and that's true to you, you're also writing for others because we're all human
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  and a lot of us are feeling the same thing.
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  So for immigrants, man, and immigrant families and communities,
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  we were touring the country and folks resonated because like,
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  yo, we need to come together.
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  And this was a song that was, that was, that became an anthem across the country.
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  And like, you know, we're very proud to do that.
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  And I feel like, you know, Victoria, like what's your favorite loves.
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  Do you have a favorite love song? Oh boy.
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  Anyway, well, now we're talking to Chabela Vargas, but those are songs about pain and loss.
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  So maybe not. But you know, it's funny when you're talking about La Bamba Rebelde.
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  I love that song too, because there's so much like feminism woven throughout that song too.
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  And that song, I will belt it out when I'm, you know, driving down the freeway listening to it.
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  So I can definitely see people coming to your shows and yeah, and singing along.
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  It's so fun. It's fun to hear those stories in your music.
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  What role do you believe your music plays in changing the narrative about immigrants and immigration.
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  You know, I'll take it a little step back, kind of what we were talking about before.
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  So let me take it a step back, is there's a lot of songs about love, right?
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  Love songs about heartache, about longing.
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  But a lot of these great love songs that we know, they're really about partners,
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  right? They're about partners and relationships, couples. Couples.
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  And I think for us as immigrant folks, there's a longing and a love and a loss
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  that happens when you when a family member leaves it to another country.
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  Yeah. When they have to leave a family behind.
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  And who's talking about that loss?
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  Who's talking about that love? Who's talking about that heartbreak?
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  Right. And I feel like that's something that's so real for us.
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  Right. I have friends who haven't been back to see their mom in 20 years,
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  you know, because they can't. and that is a loss and a love and a heartbreak
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  that we don't talk about, you know?
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  And I feel like that's so particular to immigrant families and communities.
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  And I feel like that's a story that is so important for us in order to tell.
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  And I think like as musicians, as poets, as artists, we have that opportunity,
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  that gift to be able to tell that story.
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  So it's digestible for people to know know, and understand our heartache. Yeah.
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  Right. The same way you, like you, you know, when someone broke up with you
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  and in college or in high school and how you felt, like we're trying to tell
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  a story about families who had to leave their brothers, their sisters, their mom behind.
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  And that's a story that's not always told, but it's, it's felt by us.
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  And I feel like our world to tell it.
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  Yeah. And, and I feel like even within families, within immigrant families,
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  it's not talked about enough. I know that my father, when he came to this country,
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  didn't want to learn English because he had it in his mind that he was always going to go back.
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  He always thought he was going to go back. And he never went back.
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  And it's not that he didn't want to. You know, he left his family behind to come here.
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  And he's 95 now and he's still here. He never went back. And that,
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  I feel, is a loss that we don't talk about.
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  But we carry it. And maybe that's why Chabela Vargas.
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  Maybe that's why the Chabela Vargas songs, you know, resonate with me so much
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  because there is so much loss in our community.
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  But there's also a lot of love and joy and vibrancy. And that comes through in your music as well.
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  And that's really beautiful because we need that too, right?
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  We need the joy and the love and the vibrancy and community that is in your music.
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  We played a festival yesterday in Ogden, Utah, right?
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  Out here. And it's like, it was a folk festival. It was affluent neighborhoods.
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  But it was a lot of white folks.
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  And after the show, man, it was a rocking show.
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  Yeah. And this couple came up to me and they said, you make the movement so...
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  Irresistible and delicious. And I was like, yes. I was like, yes.
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  She's like, you make me want to be active. I want to do something.
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  I don't know what, but I want to do something. And I feel like that's the goal.
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  That's it. That's the goal. And it's letting, I don't know who said it,
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  how do we make the movement for social justice undeniable, irresistible?
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  Irresistible right and like you got to
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  make it fun yeah you got to make it you know you got
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  to make it dance and you got to make it joyful nobody wants to
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  be part of a movement that's just sad all the time right right
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  because there is joy and it's our job to lift it out yeah it's our job to make
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  sure people understand right and like on on the dance floor ain't nobody asking
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  where you where you were born on the dance floor nobody asks you know where
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  your mama from or language you speak on the dance floor,
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  it's the ultimate equalizer. We come together.
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  And our job as artists is to create dance floors and spaces across the country, across the world.
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  We're in places where we can come together and it doesn't matter where you come from.
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  What matters is that we're here now and we're here to build a new world.
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  A world where joy, happiness, dance, love can exist in this place.
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  And if it can happen on the dance floor, it can happen in the community. I love that so much.
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  So then I know you're on tour, you're traveling the whole country right now, which is amazing.
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  Who do you hope to reach with your music? Oh my good.
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  Who do I hope to reach? I hope to reach people who love to eat tacos and don't know who to vote for.
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  You know, like those people who are still on the fence somehow,
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  you know, I want to reach people.
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  Well, one is obviously, I mean, I want to reach like everybody wants to reach the masses.
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  Yeah. But my, you know, my, my wife, who's a marketing guru,
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  she says, if you market to everyone, you market to no one. And I always think
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  about that when I think about like, who are we trying to reach?
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  Right. And I think for me, I want to reach people like me, like children of immigrant families,
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  children of immigrants who sometimes feel lost in this concrete jungle of,
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  you know, of Los Angeles, of the United States, who feel jaded, who feel lost.
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  Who feel like they don't have a voice or they feel like being an immigrant or mexican is less than.
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  Right and they don't understand how powerful they are how beautiful they are
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  you know how your brown skin glows in the sun in a way that reflects mother
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  earth right like i want to reach you and make sure that you know how beautiful
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  you are as a brown person right and never to feel less So that's one.
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  And then the second group is the folks who basically love, you know,
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  Latino, Mexican culture, who love our food, who love our dances,
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  who love our music, you know, but don't always love us at the ballot box. Yeah.
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  You know, so I want to let folks know, like, yo, if you love all this goodness.
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  Right. Remember that on the day you go voting, you know, because we can we can
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  not only, you know, live together, we can thrive together.
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  We can share together, you know, and I feel like playing in places like Ogden,
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  Utah and Omaha, Nebraska.
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  You know, and it it for we we come out as ambassadors and we remind folks that,
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  hey, we can we can create a new world.
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  A world where many worlds exist we don't have
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  to agree on everything you know and that's okay
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  but what can we can agree on is that tacos
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  are the best you know who doesn't love tacos come on i don't i don't want to
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  know the person that doesn't love tacos you know oh yeah well okay so you talked
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  about starting out as an organizer and then becoming a musician i imagine that
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  making it in the music industry has not been easy and you talked about sleeping
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  in bathtubs you know know, when you were first starting out,
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  who or what inspires you to keep going?
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  Gosh, you know, I feel like we came up in a music scene in Los Angeles where
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  like there was a lot of our peers were coming up at the same time. There's a lot of folks.
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  It was like a dope Chicano movement, you know, like in the early 2000s that was going on in L.A.
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  And there was a lot of bands that were up and coming. And we kind of,
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  there wasn't a, I feel, and for me, there wasn't a lot of mentorship, but we had each other.
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  And so like, you know, there were bands like Chicano Batman,
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  La Santa Cecilia, Buya Pongo, who were, you know, Quita Penas.
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  Us like you may or may not know these bands but we
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  were coming up together playing music in bars and clubs
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  trying to travel like and trying
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  to basically get you know make our mark and
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  bring our music in la but then we were trying to come out and i feel we we supported
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  each other we rallied for each other we went to each other's shows and i feel
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  like there was a great and a great movement of artists that were doing that
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  in the early 2000s and we're still doing it and I feel like.
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  Because I understand the lack of mentorship that happened when we were coming up.
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  I feel like now when we work with younger bands, I work with a lot of young artists now.
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  And some of them, we'll hire young. I'm on the road right now.
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  We hired, our bassist wasn't able to come.
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  So we hired this young man, JJ, who's with Los Tranquilos.
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  But he's 20, 23 years old. Wow. You know, I'm 41.
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  But on the road, I don't drink. You know, I don't do drugs. drugs,
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  you know, we eat well, we sleep well.
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  And I want to make sure that he understands that if you want to be a musician
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  and you want to be here for the long haul, there's another way of doing it, right?
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  You think about your health, your sustainability and not only for yourself, but for your community.
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  And I feel like, you know, when lots of people think about musicians and artists,
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  it's really about like, you know, sex, drugs, and rock and roll,
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  you know, and all those things have burned out,
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  you know, our heroes and sheroes, you
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  know in a lot of ways and i think there's another way
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  to do that there's another way to exist as an artist it's hard
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  it's difficult but you have to be stay focused and i feel like because i didn't
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  have that mentorship coming up as an artist we only kind of had each other and
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  like you know at some point you know when you work with it's all young people
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  well you don't you only know so much yeah you need that sort of that wisdom
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  and so i think working now with young people,
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  I feel like that's my responsibility, you know?
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  And so, yeah. You mentioned heroes and sheroes, and I'm curious.
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  You know, I think Residente just put a song out, you know, very social justice
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  oriented song that he put out.
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  And I'm wondering if you have artists, musicians that are doing similar work
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  in terms of infusing social justice narratives in their music that you look up to?
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  Who do you look up to if there are artists out there that are doing something similar?
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  Because like I said, the songs that I talked about earlier, those are time capsules now, right?
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  Those are from back in the day under South African apartheid.
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  But who's doing music like that today? Anyone that comes to mind for you?
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  You know, I feel like not as much as I would want.
• 18:16
  Yeah, yeah. Not as much as I would want, especially even now when we're talking
• 18:20
  about sort of like like Palestinian liberation, you know, that's something that's a taboo.
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  And I feel like people, you know, saying Black Lives Matter at the time was
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  a taboo. Not everybody wanted to come out until it was safe to say it.
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  Not everybody came out for South African apartheid, you know?
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  And there's not as many artists that I think are speaking up.
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  Now, as I wish there were, like I saw a song by Macklemore. I said, oh, dope.
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  Macklemore put out a track. Residente put out a track. Ana Tijoux put out a
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  track, which is like, these are amazing artists.
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  And I feel like, you know, I want to see more.
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  But, you know, I remember like when Santa Cecilia dropped a song called Yellow Ice.
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  That was amazing. That's right. You know, and it was really about,
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  it was really about talking about, you know, immigrant families in Attack on Ice.
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  You know, I remember Chicano Batman, they put out an album called Freedom,
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  you know, Freedom Ain't Free.
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  And they did their version of This Land Is Your Land, which is probably one of my favorites.
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  Oh, you know, Café Tacuba just dropped a pro-immigrant song.
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  They just dropped a pro-immigrant one, you know?
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  And so I feel like, here's the thing, Victoria, I can name them on one hand
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  right now. And that's a problem.
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  You know, and I feel like, and again, I'm not one to call folks out.
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  I'm one But like if there's an issue or something I don't see, what do I say?
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  Like I said, if you don't see something, then you got to do it.
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  And so for us, you know, we just dropped an album right now.
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  And for me, you know, it's a movement album, you know, because there's a saying,
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  you can't have a movement without movement, you know. And so it's an album.
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  We have a track on there talking about the femicide against women,
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  Native women, Mexican women, you know. It's called Vivas Nos Queremos.
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  We want them alive. life. And it's a direct call to action to protect women at this time.
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  We have Caravana, which is a pro-immigrant track.
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  We have a song about addiction on there because that's something we've seen
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  a lot of our peers and families go through.
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  A song called More of You. It sounds like a toxic love song,
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  but it's really a song about addiction that we wrote on the road. And so like.
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  We're doing that. I don't expect other people to do anything.
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  I would like to see more of it. But if you'd like to see more of something,
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  then you got to do it and you got to put it out. So what's the name of your album?
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  Oh, gosh. A Night in the Pantla. A Night in the Pantla. A Night in the Pantla.
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  And the Pantla is an Aztec word or Nahuatl word, meaning the world in between.
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  And that's where we live as mixed peoples, mestizos, Chicanos,
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  brown folks. Like we come from, we don't come from one place.
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  We come from a lot of stories, a lot of sounds, a lot of trauma, a lot of joy.
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  And like Gloria Anzaldua said, we live in the borderlands, the world in between.
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  And if you want to know who we are, where we live, you know, listen to the album.
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  Come stay the night with me in the panla, you know?
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  And that's why we called it A Night in the Panla because there is where we live.
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  If you want to know how we live and what we sound like and what we're dealing
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  with, come with me and stay the night in the butler. Nice.
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  So at NELC, as you may know, we have a vision for this country where all of
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  us can thrive, no matter how much money we have, what we look like, or where we were born.
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  I'm going to give you a magic wand now, Hector, and you get to wave your wand
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  over this country and create a country that's in any way that you want to design
• 21:59
  it. So what does your reimagined country look like?
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  You know, it's things that we, that are not, let me say this.
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  If I were to reimagine this country, one, there would be a lot of lineback to indigenous folks.
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  I would make sure that everyone had access to healthcare.
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  Like universal healthcare is not a radical thing. Right. And access to health,
• 22:25
  like I think the pandemic allowed us to see that we can create a system where
• 22:31
  everyone had access, right?
• 22:33
  Everyone needed access to this, to the COVID shot.
• 22:37
  And we created a system where everyone had access and it was free and it was
• 22:42
  for the protection of everybody.
• 22:43
  And I feel we can have a healthcare system that can do that, right?
• 22:47
  We saw it in action. It's happening in other countries. We're the only developed
• 22:50
  country that doesn't have universal healthcare.
• 22:52
  That is true. Right. We look to our neighbors to the North Canada.
• 22:55
  They're doing it. You know, Mexico is on its way.
• 22:58
  And so like, why, why don't we have it? Why is everything privatized?
• 23:02
  Why is everything about the dollar and about the profit?
• 23:04
  And so like if a reimagining would be a reimagining of values, right.
• 23:11
  Reimagining of what do we value and prioritize. And if we prioritize human safety,
• 23:16
  human health, then everything would have to reflect those things. Right.
• 23:20
  And would there have to be a lot of forgiveness?
• 23:23
  And a lot of moving forward. So I would say also just in terms of immigration.
• 23:27
  Like I'm not here to, as an artist, I'm not here to mandate immigrant policies.
• 23:31
  What I'm here to do is remind people that in the early 1900s,
• 23:37
  we were admitting immigrants from Europe at a higher rate than they were today.
• 23:42
  And folks were not only admitted into the U.S., but these folks,
• 23:47
  you know, had jobs and were able to work and thrive and raise their families here.
• 23:51
  And now we have immigrants from all over Europe and the United States, right?
• 23:55
  Like, we can create an economy, a country where many worlds fit,
• 23:59
  many communities fit, and there's enough land, food, money, resources in this
• 24:04
  country to be able to take care of one another. Now, exactly how to do it, that's not my job.
• 24:09
  My job is to write a good song, you know what I'm saying? But my job is also
• 24:13
  to push forward values that I believe in that I think we can live in.
• 24:17
  And I feel like in the US, we have a wonderful opportunity to make that happen. It's not over.
• 24:24
  It's not over by far. And we have an opportunity to create a world that we feel is just, right? Right.
• 24:31
  And my job is to make sure that world not only has that has good music,
• 24:36
  but has beautiful values.
• 24:37
  I know you're on tour right now. I don't know if you have your instruments with
• 24:41
  you, but can you play us a song or share a poem or something before before you go?
• 24:45
  You know, before I was a musician, I was a poet, you know, and all our songs come from our poetry.
• 24:50
  So let me drop a poem that I wrote many years ago about solidarity called Movement Time.
• 24:56
  Black, white, and brown bleeding together on a day I'll always remember,
• 25:01
  you see, because my folks, we never surrender.
• 25:04
  So just in case they got you guessing, I want to kick y'all down with a history lesson.
• 25:08
  You see, in the 60s in Oakland, California, Black Panthers were organizing for answers.
• 25:13
  In New York, the Young Lords, they fought against wars.
• 25:17
  The Stonewall Rebellion remained true for the rights of the LGBTQ.
• 25:21
  Aim down with Native rights. No shame in their game. In the campus of California,
• 25:27
  it was Filipinos who laid down the boycott, screaming in solidarity, Isang Baksak.
• 25:33
  One rise, one fall. You come for one, you come for all.
• 25:36
  But see, today, Arizona and Alabama, they don't play. They carving out racist
• 25:41
  lies like it's made out of clay.
• 25:43
  But I stand with Emmett, Trayvon, Oscar, and Bell, my homeboy Mumia,
• 25:48
  who's held in the cell, telling you I'd rather be be blind than to stay quiet
• 25:52
  on a day when my people are hunting like prey.
• 25:55
  So walk with me and let's rise with the sun. Pick up your heart,
• 25:59
  put down that gun, kiss your mama just for fun and realize that today,
• 26:04
  you know, Victoria, me and you, we'd be one.
• 26:08
  That gave me chills. Thank you. Thank you for closing us out with that.
• 26:12
  Victoria, thank you so much for your work. I love this podcast.
• 26:15
  I love what you're trying to do, you know, and thank you for inviting us to be part, to be a guest.
• 26:20
  Las Cafeteras, NILC, we got to do some more things together.
• 26:24
  We do. Definitely do. Thank you.
• 26:26
  I want to thank our listeners for spending time with us. For more immigration
• 26:30
  truths, visit us at nilc.org and freedomtothrive.com.
• 26:34
  And make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes.
• 26:38
  I look forward to continuing this conversation with all of you.