Carmen Padilla

WRIT 2

Fall 2015

Picture flurries of lint attacking your eyes and drowning your lungs while you sit at a
cramped table willing your hands to move faster than possible despite the buzzing of the sewing
machine. Now imagine earning less than minimum wage for your work. This is the reality for
undocumented Latin American immigrants living in the US. The US has attempted many solutions
to deal with the teems of undocumented immigrants arriving to major urban cities in search of low
wage jobs, yet nothing has worked so far. Stolls academic article, Comprehensive Immigration
Reform and U.S. Labor Markets: Dilemmas for Progressive Labor brings an innovative solution
to immigration reform, which is to focus on improving and enforcing labor laws instead of focusing
on deportation agencies. I will transform Stolls article into a Mexican corrido or narrative song,
in order to reach undocumented immigrants. (Stoll, 2015)
Upon reading Stolls academic article, I knew it needed to reach people who were directly
impacted by the article. My parents are undocumented immigrants that are directly affected by this
article but unaware that this information is available. This is why I have chosen to translate the
essence of Comprehensive Immigration Reform and U.S. Labor Markets: Dilemmas for
Progressive Labor into a corrido style song.
I began the translation by pinpointing the main idea of the text. I approached this step
with caution because the main point is not easy to decipher. Karen Rosenbergs Reading Games:
Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources aided me in pinpointing helpful information. Rosenberg
says that section headings (allow us) to get a sense of the trajectory of the text. (Rosenberg,
2011) With this in mind, I used the section headings as a map to guide me to the thesis. Stolls
article aims to redirect the thoughts on comprehensive immigration reform arguing that instead of
focusing on and border management, the nation should aid in the enforcement of stricter labor
laws. After identifying the essence of the article, I worked to identify the new audience.

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Kerry Dirks Navigating Genres suggests that in order to write within a genre, one must
first ask themselves, Who is the audience? The new audience is low wage Mexican and CentralAmerican undocumented immigrants. Usually, people who are directly affected by the politics and
reforms being discussed are excluded from the conversation. Navigating Genres also helped me
identify what genre to translate into. Dirk points out, knowledge of genres helps us to recognize
and to determine appropriate responses to different situations. (Kirk, 2011) A corrido was the
best option because its conventions are useful in communicating political ideas to largely
uneducated audience.
A corrido is a narrative song usually done in the style of Banda, Mariachi, or Cumbia.
Corridos were initially used as an informational because of Mexican illiteracy rates. Corridos have
become a voice for the voiceless in which the singer understands and tells the story of many people
through a song. Usually the artist will connect to the audience by acting as a narrator for the events
transpiring within the song, and finally leaving the audience with a lesson. I begin the song with a
connection from singer to audience where I state, I am going to begin my song/ I hope you dont
like it/ Its about the strong/ Undocumented immigrant misfit. This stanza allows the singer to
project what he expects from the audience.
Corridos also include simple rhyme and a story told directly or through a metaphor. I have
chosen to be direct about the immigration reform. For example, within the corrido I state, How
can I change the plight of my people? /Obama pushed for immigration reform/ Yet we are still
illegal/ And scared of the ICE uniform. The directness in which the issue is communicated creates
outrage, which contributes to the emotional appeal. The connection between the new audience and
the convention of the new genre is an important step in communicating the main idea of the article.

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The audience for my corrido will be low wage sector undocumented immigrants in the
United Stated from Mexico and Central America. In order to communicate with my audience, I
have chosen to create two protagonists for my song, Maricela and Heriberto. Maricela reflects the
immigrant life in New York and Heriberto in LA but both embody the average undocumented
worker and the harshly unfair conditions that most immigrants face. A call to action is placed at
the end of the song and it is here where I inject Stolls claim, Lets rise up my people/It is time to
seek new ways/To topple feeble/Enforcement of los labor leys.
The hardest part of translating the essence of one text into another is ensuring that the
new audience understands the main idea. The audience is mainly uneducated individuals who do
not know the laws of the US. The lack of communication from the Chicano/a academic circle to
undocumented immigrants is dismal, thus I have focused on providing the new audience
information that is easy to understand. An example of direct and simple information is, Maricela
lives in fear/Scared of El Hielo/While her jefa/Employing ilegales bajo su techo. The Hielo or
ICE reflects what is wrong with the current direction of immigration reform, and the second part
of the stanza focuses on Stolls solution to enforce labor laws. The constant presence of both
English and Spanish in cities like New York and Los Angeles influenced me to write the corrido
in Spanglish. A song that speaks in the language of its intended audience is an effective device of
connection to the new audience.
I chose to transform an academic article into a corrido because it creates an effective
way to communicate with the new audience. Keeping in mind that most of my audience is
undocumented and mainly uneducated; I strove to communicate the essence of the article through
song which allows my audience to easily understand and passionately connect to the ideas of both
the song and academic article.

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Works Cited
Dirk, Kerry. Navigating Genres. Genre in a Changing World. Composition Studies. 39.1 (2011).
Print.
Rosenberg, Karen. Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources. Writing Spaces:
readings on writing. (2011). Vol 1. Print.
Stoll, David. "Comprehensive Immigration Reform and U.S. Labor Markets: Dilemmas For
Progressive Labor." New Labor Forum (Sage Publications Inc.) 24.1 (2015): 76-85.
Print.