With just an acoustic guitar and slide deck presentation, Juan Dies shared tales of heroism, defiance and tragedy at the Chicago History Museum on Saturday.
Singing in Spanish and narrating in English, Dies engaged a small audience about a princess, a Mexican general, a turtle, a rat and four American figures: Muhammad Ali, Abraham Lincoln, Amelia Earhart and Puerto Rican Baseball Hall of Famer Roberto Clemente.
“I bid farewell full of sadness, this man’s worth measured in tons,” Dies said of Clemente during a song. “[He] is now up in Heaven, where he keeps scoring home runs.”
They were the subjects of corridos, or traditional Mexican ballads, performed by Dies as part of the museum’s annual Civic Season, which provides programming about activism, history and community engagement ahead of Independence Day.
In honor of the nation’s 250th anniversary, Dies penned corridos about notable Americans to be honored in President Donald Trump’s planned National Garden of American Heroes in Washington, D.C.’s West Potomac Park. He is co-founder of the Sones de Mexico Ensemble, a Mexican folk music group and educational organization, which received a $25,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant for the project. He said the venture is not political, but an opportunity to promote Mexican music and culture, while honoring a diverse group of people.
He will write four more tunes about Dorothy Day, Joseph H. De Castro, Mary Fields and Woody Guthrie, and continue to perform throughout the country. Those names are just a fraction of the 250 historic figures that Trump hopes to depict with life-sized statues in the garden.
“I wanted to have some Latino representation,” Dies said in a previous interview with the Chicago Sun-Times. “I wanted to have some men and women represented. I wanted to have African Americans represented. And I wanted to show the versatility of corridos. Why not have these songs accepted?”
Wearing a Mexican musicians union uniform, Dies drew museum visitors to his program by playing an old-fashioned street organ. As he cranked out Mexican and American tunes, his girlfriend handed out red-white-and-blue Tootsie Rolls and carried a stuffed monkey. (Real-life primates were often seen accompanying organ grinders in the 19th and 20th centuries.)
An educator who has composed hundreds of corridos, Dies enhanced his performance with illustrations, photos and a lecture. He traced the history of corridos, from the thousand-year-old epic poems that influenced them, to their evolution in Spain and Mexico. He even shared corridos written by his young students, including a tale about a pet turtle who died and a rat who ate $150 stashed away in a wall.
He explained that corridos feature heroes who often receive a warning, commit an act of rebellion and meet a tragic end.
“Muhammad Ali protested against the war in Vietnam and his license to box was rescinded,” he said. “But he plowed through. He kept speaking truth to power. In the end, he was a victim of Parkinson’s, but he chose to bring more awareness to the disease. He was honored all the way to his end.”
Hope Delgado, 25, of Detroit, said Dies’ corrido about Amelia Earhart was her favorite of the day. She has been a “huge fan” of the pilot since childhood, and said she appreciated the inclusion of women figures. And despite her Mexican American heritage, she said she didn’t know much about the origins of corridos.
“Most of my family probably doesn’t know this, either,” she said. “‘Having someone from the community that is so knowledgeable — it’s just so important to share that [history] with other people, especially at a museum,” she said.
Regarding the National Garden of American Heroes, Delgado said she thinks it’s a good idea, though she would need to see the full list.
“I think it’s very important to shed light on people in history,” she said. “It’s something that we should continue as we’re celebrating 250 years and looking forward to the next 250 years — to remember those who made America what it is today.”
The public will have to wait for the much-delayed garden, which Trump originally planned to complete by July 4. This month, preservation and cultural groups filed a federal lawsuit claiming the project violates laws about public land use near the National Mall.
In the meantime, those interested can research the American heroes on their own, or learn about them through Dies’ corridos; he is planning another Chicago performance at the National Museum of Mexican Art in September.
And for audience members like Odette Calderon, hearing the stories of everyday people in corridos is equally impactful.
“It’s important to remember the stories of not just political or civic leaders, but also average or regular people, so to speak, whose lives ended up being tragic, but who fought for their values,” said Calderon, who is in her late ‘50s and lives in Skokie. “It’s the 250th anniversary of our independence, but we still have to keep living according to what we believe in and fighting for those things.”