Undocumented anthems: Musical resistance in Back of the Yards, Chicago

Abstract

The Chicago-based cumbia band Quinto Imperio (QI) draws on their experiences as formerly undocumented individuals to share the injustices facing those who continue to be undocumented. This article analyzes two QI songs, “Nostalgia” and “Crónica inmigrante,” as counterstorytelling that resists dominant narratives that either demonize or erase undocumented individuals. Composite characters in both their lyrics and music videos reveal tension between the structures of power that limit mobility alongside the agency of undocumented communities. Using George Lipsitz’s conceptualization of a black spatial imaginary, this article examines how Quinto Imperio opens a "borderlands spatial imaginary" that counters the racial project of whiteness by offering alternative ways of knowing and being through musical and visual practices that direct audiences to imagine and embody new social realities that value marginalized Latinx neighborhoods as sites of solidarity and egalitarianism. QI uses music as a vehicle to contest both conservative “law and order” rhetoric that links undocumented immigrants with criminality and liberal rhetoric that privileges idealized undocumented youth at the expense of the rest of the undocumented population. Finally, this article reflects on the significance of cultural production within the migrant justice movement.

Resumen

Los miembros de la banda de cumbia Quinto Imperio (QI) parten de sus experiencias previas como personas indocumentadas para expresar las injusticias enfrentadas por las que siguen indocumentadas. Este artículo analiza dos canciones de QI como contracuentos que resisten las narrativas dominantes, las cuales demonizan o borran a las personas indocumentadas. Los personajes compuestos en las letras de sus canciones y videos musicales revelan las tensiones entre las estructuras de poder que limitan la movilidad y la acción en las comunidades indocumentadas. Utilizamos la conceptualización del imaginario espacial negro de George Lipsitz para examinar la forma en que Quinto Imperio abre un “imaginario espacial de la frontera” que se contrapone al proyecto racial de blancura ofreciendo formas alternativas de conocer y ser por medio de prácticas musicales y visuales, las cuales incitan al público a imaginar y personificar nuevas realidades sociales que valoran a los barrios latinos marginalizados como lugares de solidaridad e igualitarismo. Por último, este artículo reflexiona sobre la importancia de la producción cultural dentro del movimiento por la justica migratoria.

Quinto Imperio and La Santa Cecilia in concert

This article examines how the cumbia band Quinto Imperio (QI) from Chicago uses music as a vehicle for undocumented counterstorytelling, or storytelling to contest official “law and order” narratives that demonize or erase undocumented people and their experiences. The band’s lyrics confronting social injustice are informed by their own experiences as previously undocumented immigrants (Agencia Efe 2017). From these experiences, the artists act as surrogates to assert the importance of undocumented social participation in everyday life and amplify the voices of undocumented individuals who do not speak publicly for fear of deportation.¹ Here, I analyze the musical and visual practices that Quinto Imperio uses to direct audiences to imagine and embody new social realities. QI’s interventions are urgent because listeners are invited not only to sympathize but also consider their own positionality and ethical responsibility as social agents within systems that subjugate undocumented communities. By drawing on George Lipsitz’s conceptualization of a “black spatial imaginary,” I examine how QI’s songs and videos counter the racial project of whiteness through a "borderlands spatial imaginary" to propose alternative ways of knowing and being that value the dignity, rights, and agency of undocumented communities. By depicting undocumented Latinx communities as both proudly rooted in their Mexican heritage and working together to improve their social reality in Chicago, Quinto Imperio creates uplifting anthems to build undocumented solidarity and challenge racialization.

Various Latinx music scenes in the US focus on integrating traditions from around Latin America with social commentary about Latinx and immigrant experiences in the US. These music scenes are in communication with each other and build support for undocumented communities in tandem with and to facilitate other forms of protest. While the US immigrant justice movement has been examined from many disciplinary fields, cultural studies have a privileged position to recognize undocumented immigrants as social actors by investigating their narrative strategies to interrogate the arbitrariness and injustice of national borders. I focus on narrative work created in part by undocumented and formerly undocumented individuals because, while these kinds of works are not intrinsically better able to foreground agency, their inclusion provides a greater potential to remain anchored in undocumented experiences. There is no easy consensus about how to halt the violence of US immigration policy, but the potential for social transformation is strongest when informed by the perspectives of those who are most directly impacted by injustice.

On April 5th, 2019, I saw powerful undocumented storytelling in action at the Concord Music Hall in Logan Square, Chicago when the Chicago-based band Quinto Imperio headlined for La Santa Cecilia (LSC) for the first time. Like QI, LSC also has a formerly undocumented bandmate, requinto and accordion player José “Pepe” Carlos González, and a song about undocumented immigrant experiences (San Román 2013). LSC has a national following after seven albums and a Latin Grammy win while QI continues to gain traction among the Chicago Latinx music scene. As fellow concertgoers and I waited for QI to come on stage, the hum around me attested to the safety of the space for conversations to flow between Spanish and English. For at least one man, it was a space to confront the racialized discourse of the Trump administration; his t-shirt featured a Mexican flag in the shape of the US with the caption “Make America Mexico Again.” Some audience members told me they were long-time LSC fans and had traveled from other cities and states to see the show. However, as the show opened, it was clear that QI fans had also shown up en mass. They chanted QI band member’s names and enthusiastically participated to complete each declaration at the beginning of the song “Crónica Inmigrante”: “Vamos de frente de frente de frente. Vamos arriba arriba no te rindas. Vamos de frente de frente no te dejes” ‘Let’s go head-on, head-on, head-on. Let’s keep going, don’t give up. Let’s go head-on don’t just take it.’ By claiming these words, the audience joined to share affirming stories about undocumented community solidarity (see Fig. 1). Through congregation, devalued space and knowledge were transformed to rehumanize undocumented communities as social actors at the front of this resistance.

Fig. 1

Quinto Imperio at Concord Music Hall, April 5, 2019

LSC also marked and memorialized Latinx belonging. Lead singer Marisol Hernández shared that her father had recently died and urged the audience to teach music and Latinx ways of knowing to the next generation. A group of women wrapped their arms around one another and swayed in a circle as they belted out a LSC love song, “Como Dios Manda.” LSC family and friends sold t-shirts with this title along with images of same-sex couples embracing one another. Hernández told the audience, “There are many political things happening right now, but we want to remind you that the most political thing you all can do is to love” (Hernández 2019).² Hernández modeled this love and invited the audience to share it, “I’m really thirsty. Thirsty to drink and thirsty to love” (Hernández 2019). After taking a sip from her cup, she held it to her bandmates’ lips and threw the rest to the audience. By referring to current events, Hernández proposed love as sustenance for various subjugated groups under the attack of the Trump administration including LGBTQIA + communities and undocumented Mexican immigrants criminalized as “rapists” (Trump 2015).

Although not performed at this concert, the LSC song “ICE El Hielo” explicitly addresses the injustice of immigration policy.³ The song enjoyed wide distribution in large part due to the band’s collaboration with film director Alex Rivera to produce a music video for the song to promote the #Not1More campaign to halt deportations. The video was released on YouTube two days before La Santa Cecilia performed the song on Capitol Hill on April 10th, 2013, for an immigration reform rally of 100,000 people. For this reason, Levin (2013) dubbed the song an “anthem of the immigration-reform movement” in The Miami Herald.

A QI band member, Ríos (2019), said it was powerful for QI to meet LSC’s González and know that there are other musicians who faced the same anxieties and limited mobility (see Fig. 2). While LSC enjoys more commercial success than QI, QI also creates undocumented anthems by telling uplifting stories where the people who listen to their music deploy them as a sign of their beliefs and support for undocumented communities. Berríos-Miranda et al (2017, p. 277) find that, although Latinx artists have enjoyed new commercial opportunities in the twenty-first century, the success of Latinx celebrities has little impact on their communities’ challenges such as anti-immigrant policies. In contrast, they define “artivistas” as those who, through an alternative path and forms that “have kept their ancestors strong through difficult times, they promote art as a participatory activity that speaks to the style, the experience, and the needs of their communities” Berríos-Miranda et al (2017, p. 265). LSC and QI can be understood as “artivistas” as they wield creative expression to rehumanize undocumented communities and build solidarity at national and local levels.

Fig. 2

Quinto Imperio meets La Santa Cecilia's José "Pepe" Carlos González

After providing a brief history of Quinto Imperio and their participation in the immigrant rights movement, this article situates QI’s work as counterstorytelling within the racialized and historic context of the Midwest. Finally, it analyzes how two QI songs draw on a “borderlands spatial imaginary” to transform the segregated and devalued Latinx neighborhoods of Back of the Yards, Chicago into spaces of political possibility.

Intergenerational music and advocacy

Quinto Imperio offers an intergenerational perspective based in lived experiences as formerly undocumented immigrants. Marciano Domínguez, the founder of the band, shared with me that his social consciousness was first grounded by seeing his brother protest for university students’ rights and educational access in Michoacán, Mexico. Marciano moved with his family to the US in 1998 in search of stable work. Due to his concern with high crime rates in their Back of the Yards neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, Marciano began Quinto Imperio in 2003 to teach his three sons, Hugo, Fredy, and Edy to play music and perform for block parties. (Domíngez, M. 2019). Back of the Yards has a long history of immigration and marginalization due to its proximity to the former Union Stock Yards. Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle (1906), famously captures the inhumane working conditions of its meat-packing plants for European immigrants at the turn of the twentieth century. Today, the immigrant population in Back of the Yards is primarily Latin American, which is made apparent from Spanish-language signage across its storefronts.

Rather than a plaza which is central to many Mexican communities, The Holy Cross Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish is a crucial site for community activities in Back of the Yards (Ríos 2019). The Domínguez family’s involvement in church was particularly important to the boys’ mother, Angelita, who is devoutly Catholic (Ríos 2019). In 2004, Edy Domínguez invited two other young members of the church to join the band. Adriana Velázquez, now a QI vocalist, was part of the church choir. The other, keyboardist, rapper, and MC Quintiliano Ríos, was a member of the church’s mariachi program. Ríos (2019) says he was invited to join QI because of his love for hip-hop and rap with social commentary such as the Mexican-City band Molotov. Adriana, Quintiliano, and the Domínguez brothers arrived in the US as children, and can be considered part of the 1.5 generation, or those that identify strongly with their country of origin and identify with the US through coming-of-age experiences. Alongside Marciano’s first-generation immigrant perspective, their bilingualism, biculturalism, and eligibility for the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program place them in a unique position to create music that spans across generations.⁴

Marciano Domínguez soon realized the difficulties that he and his family would face without papers and began attending immigrant rights protests with his children as well as Quintiliano and Adriana. On March 10th, 2006, during the largest nationwide immigrant-rights protest to date, the band brought along a speaker, drums, and güiro. Fellow protestors in Chicago were quick to join in, dancing and singing to their chants such as a catchy re-writing of the merengue hit, “El Venao,” “Que no me digan ilegal, ilegal porque son puras mentiras, no es verdad, no es verdad, una reforma migratoria queremos ya, queremos ya porque ya llegó la hora, ya llegó, ya llegó.” ‘Don’t call me illegal, illegal, because those are pure lies, it’s not true, it’s not true, immigration reform we want it now, we want it now, because the hour is now, the hour is now.’ (M. Domínguez 2019). Leading the crowd in similar songs became a tradition as they continued to participate in annual immigrant rights marches.

Adriana, Quintiliano, and Edy were inspired to continue advocating for immigrant rights by joining the Reform Immigration for America Campaign. They coordinated with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights to organize the Back of the Yards community to travel to Washington, D.C. for a DREAMer rally in 2010. The church immigration committee, including Marciano, helped the younger members organize the wider Back of the Yards community to participate in the rally and fundraise for transportation (M. Domínguez 2019). Marciano described getting a phone call and learning that his son, Edy, had been arrested at a sit-in in D.C. with the Out of the Shadows movement. He waited for hours, not knowing if his son would be deported. He expressed his admiration and disbelief that Edy had decided to put himself at risk for the cause. Living through these difficult moments catalyzes QI to continue with their music:

It forces you to have more conscience and defend the movement more strongly, to work on it. Because to work on something, and without resources…these kinds of songs aren’t as appealing to be able to make money…but in the end we have continued this way because it’s what they now believe is necessary to keep doing and we have also found echo and we like that there is support and we want the support to continue much more, that it be a much greater strength, to feel like we form part of that something or that community when we each feel separate and must hide for fear of being arrested.⁵ (M. Domínguez 2019)

For Domínguez, even though QI members were able to regularize their statuses, he feels more freedom to talk with undocumented people about their situation because he knows what it was like to arrive and feel the isolation of not knowing who to trust. He feels he can mitigate undocumented individuals’ fear and they may confide in him because he too was undocumented and would not want them to face the same danger he experienced. He also described how fellow band-mates Adriana and Quintiliano accompanied Edy during sit-ins to offer their support. While they are not all related by blood, he says, “Quinto Imperio tries to be a family, a siblinghood because several of us share that undocumented feeling but at the same time we give each other strength” (M. Domínguez 2019). QI builds family and solidarity for both themselves and their community.

Edy Domínguez says that their focus on immigration developed through their struggles in school and figuring out how to attend college without documentation. He explains:

First, we focused on improving our neighborhood, we didn’t talk much about who had papers and who didn’t. It wasn’t our first go-to as far as conversations go. Even in the parish, it was barely mentioned inside church during services and stuff. It started growing little by little, we saw how difficult it was going to be growing up. I’m the oldest one, so with the difficulty of enrolling in college, eventually I had to share that with everyone. I’m 4 years older, that’s where I had to share some of my experiences. (E. Domínguez 2019)⁶

As a result of these experiences, QI is driven to build an educational pipeline for undocumented youth. They founded a scholarship program for undocumented students in Back of the Yards (Agencia Efe, 2017). Several members gave presentations at neighborhood schools to raise awareness about the struggles of undocumented communities and led discussion at universities after the showing of a documentary about the band (Hermans et al. 2017). In addition to their advocacy in education, they led door-to-door political canvassing for local elections. They also worked with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights to promote the 2020 census by creating a cumbia music video. While singing in front of public schools, libraries, and parks, they encouraged Latinxs to be counted to improve their community resources (Quinto Imperio 2020).

According to Ríos (2019), it was their involvement in the community that allowed them to play at a venue like the Concord, which is not typically accessible to independent bands. QI earned the chance to open for La Santa Cecilia by winning the 2018 Chicago-based Ruido Fest battle of the bands. They were selected as one of 5 semi-finalists through a public vote online and then won by applause during the contest. Ríos, explains that their group of fans at the competition was, “if not largest, it was the loudest” not because they idolized the band but because they worked with them on various service projects in the community. “We’re always open to help, so when we needed their support, they didn’t hesitate to come out and help out” (Ríos 2019). The community that QI created through the performance at the Concord was anchored in their contributions to Back of the Yards for over two decades.

Migrant storytelling through cumbia and corrido

While direct political action such as Edy Domínguez’s sit-in is crucial, I take up Cristina Beltrán’s (2010) call that we do not limit ourselves to recreating the momentum of 2006, but rather look to the diversity of creative expression that followed. So, I turn to how QI resists dominant narratives by sharing their lived experiences and perspectives through storytelling. And, because not every undocumented individual can be expected to take such great risks when protest can result in deportation, I propose assigning greater value to storytelling, even when mediated by surrogates like QI, who can enunciate their protest from a relatively safer position. The narrative strategies analyzed here work alongside and make possible other forms of protest by valuing undocumented communities and the spaces in which they live.

Interpreting undocumented communities’ cultural production as counterstorytelling allows for analysis of the ways these works produce alternative ways of thinking and being that privilege community well-being. They subvert dominant and controlling narratives that frame undocumented individuals as freeloading or violent. I frame Quinto Imperio’s work as counterstorytelling to draw on the ways Latinx scholars such as Solorzano and Bernal (2001) and Yosso (2005) use the term to validate experiential knowledge in the face of traditional academic methods that have historically excluded people of color from knowledge production. Like the way these scholars use composite characters to relay the experiences of Chicano students, QI creates a series of collective voices based on their own and their families’ lived experiences to contest the violence of immigration policy and sociopolitical exclusions.

George Lipsitz’s theorization of a “black spatial imaginary” facilitates an analysis of how QI’s counterstorytelling in their song lyrics and videos models community solidarity that transforms devalued space and knowledge through congregation. For Lipsitz (2011, pp. 13–19), discriminatory processes are fueled and made to seem natural by the “white spatial imaginary,” a moral geography that teaches, legitimates, and naturalizes the superiority of white identity as inevitable and justifies the surveillance and incarceration of demonized people of color. The foreclosure of undocumented communities from citizenship entails somewhat different exclusionary mechanisms than from the Black communities of Lipsitz’s focus. However, the “white spatial imaginary” also naturalizes the racialization and subjugation of undocumented communities.⁷ Moreover, Lipsitz’s theorization of Black resistance to racialized spaces lends powerful implications for other subjugated groups and informs my reading of oppositional consciousness and thought expressed by undocumented Latinx communities.

Lipsitz examines oppositional consciousness and thought in expressive culture that emerges through the democratic and egalitarian ethos of the “black spatial imaginary” or,

…how Blacks have consistently drawn a distinct spatial imaginary to oppose the land use philosophy that privileges profits over people and instead to create new “use values” in places that have little “exchange value.”…They proceed from a philosophy that sees art as a vital part of the life of a community, that finds value in devalued spaces, and that offers alternatives to possessive individualism and competitive consumer citizenship. (Lipsitz 2011, p. 19)

Quinto Imperio strategically realigns undocumented spaces commonly perceived simply in terms of economic contribution via cheap labor and instead frames these subaltern spaces as sites of egalitarian inclusion. I use the term “borderlands spatial imaginary” to analyze how Quinto Imperio draws on strategies to “turn segregation into congregation, to transform divisiveness into solidarity, to change dehumanization into rehumanization” (Lipsitz 2011, p. 19). “Borderlands” here refers to undocumented Latinx communities’ shared experiences with the violence of the US-Mexico border, immigration law, labor exploitation, and racism, while “borderlands spatial imaginary” refers to the ways undocumented communities confront these oppressions by engaging and building up devalued space.

“Borderlands” refers not only to the geographic boundary of the US-Mexico border but the way that the border is lived and felt across the US through complex Latinx identities and subjugations. Post-9/11 social and material realities heightened hostilities as immigration enforcement under the Bush and Obama administrations expanded tactics developed during the Clinton administration’s border enforcement strategy, Operation Gatekeeper. Catalyzed by economic conditions, fear of terrorist threats, and the continued political popularity of nativism, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (previously INS) ushered in new policies to further criminalize undocumented immigrants who, previously, had not been the focus of surveillance, detention, and deportation (Camayd-Freixas 2013).

Building on Michelle Alexander’s (2010) investigation of US color-blind racism, Marie Gottschalk (2015) examines how the neoliberally driven carceral state is reinforced by stressing personal responsibility over structural explanations. The detention of undocumented immigrants is supported by portrayals across mass media, popular culture, and political rhetoric that naturalize the suffering of undocumented migrants as the result of poor individual choices rather than centuries of US foreign policy that cripple Latin American democracies and economies and drive migration northward (Suro 2011, Puga 2011). It is in the face of this neoliberal individualizing erasure that Quinto Imperio works to humanize the lived experiences of undocumented populations with new vocabularies and ethical arguments founded in communal efforts. The narrative voices in their songs employ testimonio, a genre developed in Latin America in which a more privileged individual records and exposes a collective story to challenge human rights violations spurred by political and economic oppressions (Beverley 2004).⁸ QI’s work refuses individualizing narratives by uncovering the injustices facing undocumented communities as widely shared experiences.

The QI songs I examine here work against the isolation that undocumented individuals face by transporting them to an aural space in which their experiences are shared and validated. In “Aural Border,” Josh Kun writes that music permits the remapping of inter-American cartographies and citizenships, particularly in the context of limited political possibilities (4–9). In dialogue with border theory scholars, he argues that sound and music must be considered as part of an unofficial border of experience and storytelling produced by the state’s official border. Much of Kun’s work addresses the mixing of musical styles to forge political reimagining. Quinto Imperio’s music crosses between genres and styles to open new political possibilities that are both constituted by and confront national borders. Their songs rely on a cumbia rhythm and instruments including a güiro percussive sound, drum set, cowbell, wood box, electric guitar, accordion, and various synthesized sounds such as panflute. Their sound is a “hybrid cumbia” that combines several cumbia styles such as Andean with popular world rhythms such as reggae, salsa, and hip-hop (Quinto Imperio 2019 Sabado). This blending of musical genres and styles (which individually are always already the product of a mix of African, indigenous, and European cultural influences due to a long history of colonization, slavery, US imperialism, and a globally connected music industry) becomes a vehicle for questioning the validity of national borders and the subjugation of undocumented communities.

As a global phenomenon that defiantly cuts across national borders, cumbia music is a fitting choice for performing the agency of undocumented Latinx communities and contesting U.S. policy designed to maintain their exploitation. Originating in Colombia and developing transnationally across Mexico, Peru, and Argentina among other countries, cumbia is shaped by and impacts a variety of ethnic, racial, regional, and national identities. Several case studies from Cumbia! Scenes of a Migrant Latin American Music Genre examine marginalized migrant and working-class affiliations with cumbia to voice aspirations for their future in new host countries. Héctor Fernandez L’Hoeste (2013, p. 248) finds that “cumbia offers a vehicle of study unlike any other, providing an enormous opportunity to explore the arbitrariness of our ways of conceiving of the idea of nation, above all, in terms of rhythm and difference.” Quintiliano confirms that cumbia adapts to different local socio-economic climates and serves as “a gateway that gave us an opportunity to express our feelings, frustrations, and experiences as immigrants. As we explored our hybrid of sounds, we remained true to folk elements from our background” (Ríos 2019). Folk styles such as marimba, from Veracruz, Mexico, impact some of their melodic arrangements. Mariachi corridos, particularly from Jalisco, Mexico, also guide their storytelling (Ríos, 2017).

Since cumbia is primarily a dance music with no lyrics or short lyrics, Quinto Imperio runs counter to the cumbia form by developing multiple verses that tell a story through the sociohistorical legacy of corridos. Scholars such as Américo Paredes (1958), María Herrera-Sobek (1993), and Martha I. Chew Sánchez (2006) analyze how, since the nineteenth century, corridos have documented the social struggles of Spanish-speaking communities. QI keyboardist Quintiliano Ríos describes how, “Much like the corridos, our songs honor the virtues and challenges immigrants face, particularly in times where our community is under attack through policies aiming to instill fear and disenfranchise us. At the end of the day, we hope to let them know that we have to keep on going and not lose hope through our music” (Ríos 2019). QI’s music is appealing because it uses a cumbia rhythm that is widely popular among current Mexican and other Latinx groups living in Back of the Yards. At the same time, they honor corrido narrative tradition to raise social consciousness of injustice and feature undocumented subjects as fallen heroes.

Corridos are such a powerful part of Mexican storytelling tradition and documenting unofficial immigrant history that they have also been appropriated to discourage would-be undocumented immigrants from crossing the border. Lorenz (2016) investigates how the US government manipulated the corrido musical form as part of its propaganda campaign beginning in 2004 to dissuade migrants. Via radio and TV, the US Border Patrol’s No Más Cruces en la Frontera campaign disseminated this music along with commercials and public service announcements. Lorenz (2016) demonstrates how the lyrics legitimize Border Patrol as a humanitarian agency while they individualize and decontextualize migrant lives from sociohistorical and economic contexts, reducing the decision to migrate to a culturally gendered performance of masculinity. In contrast to this benevolent nation-state performance of sovereignty, migrant detainees have reported that these migra corridos were used as sonic psychological torture, as lyrics about migrant death and suffering were played continuously at high volumes to keep detainees from sleeping (Lorenz 2016, pp. 311–313). It is in the face of this violence through militarized borders, detention, and deportation that Quinto Imperio invites listeners to interrogate the injustices of the immigration system. In addition to contextualizing QI’s work within the influences of cumbia, corrido, and migracorrido genres, QI is also situated within the sociohistorical realities of Back of the Yards, Chicago and the Midwest.

Locating sound: Sociohistorical realities of Chicago and the Midwest

While the Latinx population may be relatively smaller and newer in the Midwest than other regions such as the Southwest, a growing body of academic work contests the idea that Latinxs are solely newcomers to the Midwest and builds an archive of their long and ongoing history. The Latina/o Midwest Reader, for example, outlines the social, cultural, and economic contributions of Latinx residents to the region for more than a century (Valerio-Jiménez et al.). Midwest Latinx communities face many of the same challenges as other regions and can have different dynamics given the history of migration and racial communities in cities such as Chicago.

Migration to the Midwest began primarily with Mexican immigrants fleeing the violence of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1917); and/or pursuing an increasing demand for labor with the upward mobility of European immigrants and the Immigration Act of 1917, which limited new European immigration. Mexican laborers were recruited for railroad construction to connect Mexico with Kansas City, St. Louis, and Chicago, as well as agricultural and manufacturing jobs. Labor shortages during WWI and increased industrialization and the resulting Bracero Program brought more Mexicans and Mexican Americans to the Midwest (Diaz McConnell 2004, pp. 29–32). Hostilities in the Midwest include an increase in deportations, tough working conditions, and anti-Latinx feelings in areas where non-Latinx residents have little personal experience with Latinx communities. However, a lower cost of living and several state and federal regulations have made the Midwest, in relation to regions such as the Southwest, seem more hospitable (Diaz McConnell 2004, pp. 37–38).

Arredondo (2004) writes that Mexican immigrants arriving to Chicago near the end of World War I found a population that, unlike the Southwest and its legacy of conquest, had little contact with Mexicans. They were not integrated like other immigrant groups because “they were not only a nonwhite racial group but also foreign, that is, outside the ethno-racial orders of Chicago, on the margins, unabsorbable” (Arredondo 2004, p. 401). Despite efforts to separate themselves from the black community and claim whiteness, Mexicans in Chicago were foreclosed from the possibility of incorporation by their segregation and the fear of forced deportation due to federal repatriation programs during the 1920s and 1930s (Arredondo 2004). Today, Back of the Yards residents experience violence and gang recruitment because of structural removal of resources, such as the closing of 40 churches and schools by the Catholic Church in the 90s, as well as abandonment and corruption of city government (Komenda and Ali 2017).

Undocumented Latinx communities in the Midwest and across the US face increasingly tough immigration policies. Macías-Rojas (2018) finds that the crime politics of both the GOP and Democratic Party under the Reagan and Clinton administrations led to criminal provisions of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act to restructure and provide resources for immigration enforcement to detain and deport a broad range of immigrants beyond those with convictions. De Genova (2018) explains that deportation is based in expressly racist exclusions, beginning with measures such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Since only a small minority are deported, the most productive power of deportation is wielded inside the space of the state by subordinating undocumented immigrants who remain in the US. Their legal vulnerability to deportation drives the demand and importation of undocumented workers as highly exploitable and disposable laborers (De Genova 2018). It is within the context of these racialized subordinations that Quinto Imperio voices its resistance through storytelling.

The stories that a community tells about themselves recover the specificities of that community and reveal how they connect with the experiences of people in other parts of the US and the world. To best understand Midwest Latinx specificities and connections, scholars work to recover Latinx Midwest storytelling due to its erasure from official archives. In her work to collect Latina Midwest oral histories, Delgadillo (2015, p. 11) asks, “What could we know about ourselves, and what could others know about us, if so little was in the archive? What other parts of city life were absent from the historical record?” In studies of Latinx music, scholars such as Aparicio and Jáquez (2003) examine tensions between shifting transnational meanings and reaffirmation of local culture while scholars such as Limón (2017) unearth translocal cultural connections between the Midwest and Texas. By foregrounding immigration status alongside other intersections such as race, gender, sexuality, and class, the field can expand its perspective on the negotiation of identity and belonging through undocumented Latinx storytelling that is both constituted by and defiant of state exclusions.

“Nostalgia” and advanced parole: Interrogating militarized borders

Quinto Imperio’s album, Crónica Inmigrante (2017), works both visually and lyrically to engage in counterstorytelling to counter dominant portrayals of undocumented individuals as unworthy of national inclusion. The CD album cover features a photograph by Carolina Sanchez of its six band members against the brick wall of their church’s rooftop superimposed onto an image of an open passport (see Fig. 3). These passport pages feature the Statue of Liberty on the left and a close-up of her hand holding a tablet marking the date of the US Declaration of Independence. Only the torch and word “July” are visible on the cover because the brick wall of the roof covers the rest of the image. Three band members sit on the wall with their feet hanging off the edge, one leans against it, and two others lean on a ladder. This situates the band as defying border walls and exclusion through cultural place-making. The ladder highlights their persistence to create upward mobility for themselves and undocumented communities.

Fig. 3

Quinto Imperio, Crónica Inmigrante (2017), Album Cover

The selected 2016 US passport pages cite Anna Julia Cooper (1858–1964), a black author and advocate for women’s education, “The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class – it is the cause of humankind, the very birthright of humanity.” For Gordon (2018), Cooper’s political thinking is relevant today because she explored how blindness toward human dependence and inequality lies at the core of republican self-governance; she examined how the US denied the contributions of recently freed slaves to the development of the nation. Cooper’s quote physically frames the cover, reminding audiences that the US is founded through racialized, class-based inequalities and that undocumented populations continue to struggle for representation and rights even as their labor is vital to US development.

The same cover image appears behind the CD, but the photo of the band is removed to reveal the full passport image. The CD is covered in rectangular boxes with the name of the band and album at different angles, which simulates tearing down the brick wall on the cover. The physical act of taking out the CD, and choosing to listen to Quinto Imperio’s music, becomes an invitation: by witnessing and sharing these counterstories, listeners are asked to question and undo borders and undocumented subjugation. Because the album was published in 2017, this reference to a wall indexes the rhetoric of the Trump Administration, including the xenophobia and racist subtext of its promise to build a wall to protect American citizens from Mexico’s rapists and “bad hombres.”

The removal of the wall to reveal the full image of the Statue of Liberty behind the CD reminds audiences of the failure of the US to live up to its mythology as a beacon of democracy. French abolitionist Edouard de Laboulaye proposed the monument as a gift to mark the end of institutionalized slavery with the end of the civil war. The poem inscribed at its base, “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus (1883), also builds the popular imaginary of the US-as-savior by personifying Lady Liberty as “Mother of Exiles” who cries, “Give me your tired, your poor,/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” This unfulfilled expectation is underscored by another prominent feature on the CD album cover, a passport that reads, “Quinto Imperio” at the top and “Paroled” at the bottom. The stamp is a deep purple except for the date printed in red, “31 Dec 2016.” On the passport image behind the CD, the stamp is placed front and center and twice as large as it appears on the cover, prompting audiences to consider the meaning of this date and the significance of the word “Paroled.”

The stamp marks how the band was given a respite from limited mobility through the DACA program. At the beginning of the program, recipients were also able to apply for “advanced parole” which granted them permission to travel abroad and authorized re-entry. In 2016, the band used this opportunity to travel to Mexico to visit family and record video for a song on their Crónica Inmigrante album entitled “Nostalgia.” In the YouTube music video description for this song, the band explains that taking advantage of Advanced Parole still incurred a risk, “We made the trip fearfully but above all with hope of reuniting with our families, to those we had not seen in so many years. In this video, we share with you images of what we experienced that year” (Quinto Imperio 2018).⁹ Even when spaces and opportunities such as Advanced Parole somewhat mitigate the danger of deportation, safety is relative. At the same time, band members wear t-shirts in their videos and live concerts that read “Undocumented and Unafraid,” affiliating themselves with the political activist movement for immigration reform. The seeming contradiction between “fearfully” and “unafraid” captures the tension within undocumented subjects’ choice to expose themselves despite the physical threat to undocumented bodies.

The “Nostalgia” video uses a hand-held camera to capture their journey as they carry suitcases through a snow-covered yard in Chicago and say goodbye at the airport. If muted, the video would appear primarily celebratory in tone as they embrace family in rural Mexican settings and record themselves dancing, enjoying Christmas traditions, and visiting iconic sites such as Mexico City plazas, parks, markets, and the pyramids at Teotihuacán. These images construct a borderlands spatial imaginary that reaches across the US-Mexico border to demonstrate how Mexico, a devalued and criminalized space in a white spatial imaginary, is a source of community strength for undocumented communities in Back of the Yards. The band’s connections to Mexican family and traditions foster cultural pride that inform their music and advocacy.

While an upbeat cumbia rhythm underscores this joyful mood and their gratefulness for this reunion, the video both visually and lyrically reminds audiences that the privilege of travel is bittersweet. Most undocumented individuals do not qualify for DACA and continue to be separated from loved ones. In a melancholy G minor scale, the chorus is vocalized without words, simulating nostalgia and longing for a half-remembered past. In the verses, a narrative voice yearns to return home after many years. It expresses the impossibility of being reunited with a lover or their homeland, “Cada noche cada mañana / llevo tu nombre en mi oración / y tu imagen llevo congelada / en el fondo de mi corazón” ‘Every night every morning / I carry your name in my prayer / and I carry your frozen image/ in the depths of my heart.” The urgent need to be home and with a lover is stressed through rap in the final verse that repeats the phrase “Quiero regresar” ‘I want to return.’ There is a doubled haunting throughout “Nostalgia;” undocumented individuals in the US are haunted by the memories of loved ones left behind while DACA recipients are haunted by the experience of being granted a reunion when millions of others are denied the freedom to be with family. The doubling of jubilance and tragedy between image and sound demonstrates how QI, as formerly undocumented individuals, offer this anthem to unite undocumented communities and encourage viewers/listeners to continue demanding for immigrant rights. QI leverages a higher degree of freedom through Advanced Parole to invite all audiences to consider their potential privilege to represent undocumented communities’ interests without fear of retribution.

At the time it was published, the YouTube video description reminded viewers that Advanced Parole was no longer available to DACA recipients, underscoring the fickle nature of political support for undocumented youth.¹⁰ Two shots reveal the death of keyboardist Quintiliano Ríos’s father. Both a tombstone (2:19) and a roadside memorial (3:35) feature his name, Qunitiliano Ríos-Cordero (1965–1996). Viewers are invited to contemplate the year 1996 and wonder if the band members’ arrival to the US was spurred by this loss, or if they were separated from their family and unable to say goodbye. Ríos shared that his father was a police officer and, because he was killed while on vacation, his family did not receive a pension. After receiving a series of threats, his mother decided to move the family to the US (Ríos 2019).

The two shots marking death and separation across borders as well as scenes of reunion underscore and resist the way that undocumented immigrants other than DACA recipients are excluded and kept from their families. While family separation under the Trump Administration was egregious, families have long been separated by deportation and the militarization of the US-Mexico border under both conservative and liberal administrations. Moreover, as Inés Valdez (2016) argues, both positive and negative regularizations of undocumented communities serve to legitimize the harsh and differential treatment of immigrants, including deportation. Although DACA provides some privileges, it provides no pathway to citizenship. Even if it did, such as the never-enacted DREAM Act, it would only protect a small portion of a much larger undocumented population.

The contrasting jubilance and tragedy expressed between image and sound in “Nostalgia” publicizes the injustice of militarized borders and immigration policy that immobilize undocumented communities to facilitate exploitation. Through a borderlands spatial imaginary, QI resists official narratives that dehumanize and show undocumented individuals thriving through the strength of their families and cultural traditions. From a privileged position as DACA recipients, QI offers “Nostalgia” as an anthem to unite undocumented Latinx communities in shared pride of their connections to home countries.

“Crónica Inmigrante” and belonging: A Latinx Wizard of Oz

While “Nostalgia” asks audiences to consider the impact of militarized borders, the title song of Quinto Imperio’s album, “Crónica Inmigrante” is an anthem claiming undocumented immigrant belonging and right to thrive in hostile spaces. The song features an ABAB binary structure that alternates between multiple verses, several which are rapped, and a chorus. Crucially, its intro simulates an immigrant rights protest by offering a two-verse chant that repeats the phrases “Vamos” ‘we go’ and “Levátense mi gente” ‘Get up my people’ at the beginning of each line to encourage immigrants to keep moving forward toward equal rights. Each narrative voice in “Crónica Inmigrante” represents collective, shared experiences from various perspectives that complicate limited official accounts.

The first narrative perspective is that of a child witnessing their father leave for the US while the rest of the family remains in their home country. The second perspective is that of a DREAMer, or someone brought to the US as a child. Much of this perspective is rapped, which lays claim to transnational urban belonging. The narrative voice explains that their parents came to the US to work and explicitly rejects dominant, criminalizing rhetoric by positioning themself through both economic and social contributions, “Soy un inmigrante mas no un ilegal/ No soy un terrorista a mí me gusta estudiar/ me gusta trabajar, ayudar en la comunidad” ‘I’m an immigrant but not illegal/I’m not a terrorist, I like to study/ I like to work, help in the community.’ This narrator outlines forms of resistance and solidarity in the face of hostility, “Por eso sigo marchando, sigo votando, sigo apoyando/ a toda esa gente que están agarrando y están deportando/ Y nos contratan y nos explotan y nos asfixian como una serpiente.” ‘So I keep marching, keep voting, keep supporting/ all the people being snatched up and being deported/ And they hire us and exploit us and strangle us like a snake.’ Quinto Imperio positions themselves as surrogates who, while speaking from their own experiences, also represent those whose voices are silenced for fear of retribution. Furthermore, the lyrics position undocumented communities not simply as victims, but as social agents that advocate for change.

The third voice is a young immigrant working in the US so that younger siblings back home can go to school. This verse contrasts the injustice of tough working conditions with hope for their family’s future and photos of loved ones carried in a lunchbox as sustenance for a broken heart. Audiences may be prompted to interrogate their own positionality by comparing their work conditions and life chances with those of the composite undocumented characters.

The lyrics to “Crónica Inmigrante” are primarily in Spanish, as are most QI songs. Yet, a key moment in the DREAMer’s perspective employs translanguaging, or the full use of Spanish–English linguistic repertoire that is the normal mode of bilingual communication (García 2009). “Since I was very little, I wrote and spoke the language,/ no different from my friends except I don’t have papers./ My parents always told me ten orgullo de tu gente/ and take on opportunities que pasen por enfrente.” The narrative voice refuses to replace the Spanish language/Mexican identity with English/US identity; they coexist. The seamless nature of US Latinx bilingualism in these lines defy English-only rhetoric that would reject these identities as un-American. Potowski (2017, pp. 124–125) finds that, like other regions of the US, Midwestern Latinx communities eventually abandon Spanish in favor of English over the course of generations. One of the driving factors behind this loss is the enormous pressure of U.S. hegemonic forces against any language other than English. Speakers of languages other than English are challenged in public spaces while others are fired for using a non-English language. Through reconfigurations of colonial dynamics, racialized subjects’ language practices are ideologically assumed to make US Latinxs unfit for participation in the modern world (Rosa and Flores 2020). It is in the face of this racialized hostility that Quinto Imperio defiantly wields the power of their bilingualism.

As the lyrics of “Crónica inmigrante” underscore solidarity to counter exclusion, its music video, too, foregrounds the power of undocumented communities and allies. Directed by Chicago-based artist José Alejandro Córcoles, the music video for “Crónica Inmigrante” was created in conjunction with QI members as well as editor/cinematographer Cesar Ríos from Upriver Productions. In his interview with me, Córcoles (2019) explains that the extras were recruited from Holy Cross Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish, where the band members first met and played music. He describes his surprise by the large number of extras who showed up to participate on set, “Usually when I hear they don’t have anyone yet, 6 people will show up and I’ll have to make it look like 20. But 25 showed up, women brought tamales, brought all this food, it was a communal effort. I was like, ya’ll are loved” (Córcoles 2019). QI singer Edy Domínguez says,

The people in the video are activists, organizers, people throughout our years of struggle, marches and trips to DC, that’s what makes it special to us, they have been in some way on the front line of the movement. We were very intentional about that, that we wanted them to be part of it, authentic, not just have random people but portray the energy of the people who live the struggle, they know, they’ve been part of the movement. (E. Domínguez 2019)

Throughout the video, these community members join the band to share the lyrics, dance, and pump their fists to the beat (see Fig. 4). The music cuts away for several seconds in the middle of the song as they chant “Undocumented, Unafraid.” Later, a series of close-ups show individuals raising their fists in protest. The collective production of this music video with community members builds a borderlands spatial imaginary; QI recasts the devalued Back of the Yards neighborhood, which is typically portrayed in media as crime-ridden, into a space of political possibilities through congregation.

Fig. 4

“Crónica Inmigrante” by Quinto Imperio (2017a, b), Community Support

These images of protest work alongside iconography of The Wizard of Oz to stake a claim to belonging. Rather than dreaming of leaving for another land, a switch from black-and-white film to Technicolor represents remaining and thriving openly in Chicago where the video’s characters have already made a new home. While there are a wide variety of interpretations of both the original Baum Novel (1900) and the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) film starring Judy Garland (1939), Quinto Imperio’s video resonates with the latter through several film techniques and shots. As the MGM film was produced at the end of the Great Depression, Dorothy’s dream of reaching “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and ultimately learning there is “no place like home” can be interpreted, along with classic films about the Midwest such as State Fair (1945), as encouraging youth to invest in the Midwest’s political and economic future by remaining in rural areas rather than moving to more urban cultural centers. Quinto Imperio borrows this dream imagery to relay, instead, Midwestern undocumented immigrants’ power to overcome isolation, justify their full participation in US society, and raise political consciousness. Unlike Dorothy, QI cannot be dissuaded from the possibility of change.

Adriana Velázquez, describes the significance of the shift to color in the video as awakening political possibilities:

You see the protagonist, living between two worlds, the world as it is and the world as it could be, immigrant that is informed versus not, ignoring and in fear versus seeking to be aware, some sort of a magical feeling when she steps out of that. The image changes to color and fuzziness to represent that fantasy and switch from shadows and fear into life where it could be, this could be. (Velázquez 2019)

Edy Domínguez describes how the switch from black and white to color relays the opposite experience of a friend who realized she was undocumented in elementary school when her parents did not want her to travel on a school trip, “it was backward, color to black and white, trapped in black and white. I remember her sharing her story that way, all of the sudden she was afraid of many things. A lot of our stories are very similar to that, so that is the intention of that, the shift in color” (E. Domínguez 2019). In this way, the video creates a “borderlands spatial imaginary” that contests subjugation by envisioning and enacting an alternative possibility, an undocumented support network that affirms the social value of Back of the Yards, Chicago.

In the video, a family of three live in a black-and-white world, eating dinner while wearing black blindfolds. Behind them, a TV without reception flickers snow, indexing how the family’s undocumented status isolates them from their surrounding community. The youngest member and protagonist is played by undocumented activist Angy Rivera, known for her advice column for undocumented youth, “Ask Angy.”¹¹ Presumably the couple’s daughter, she moves her feet under the table to the music. Water drips onto her hand from a leak in the ceiling, indexing a storm and spurring visions of Undocumented and Unafraid protests that dissolve in and out of a close-up of her face (see Fig. 5). Later, she sips water from a glass that also collects rainwater. The rain, music, and social protest are framed as a transformative force that seeps into her reality and transports her into another. In the 1939 film, a tornado blows a window across the back of Dorothy’s head. After she collapses on her bed, a close-up Dorothy’s face is distorted through a dissolve and lap dissolve technique that superimposes multiple images of her face. The same technique is used to liken Angy Rivera’s character to Dorothy as her face is superimposed and blurred on itself to represent her journey “Over the Rainbow.” Yet, the undocumented character is not transported to a new world. As her family has already made their new home in the Midwest, she arrives in an alternative Chicago where she can draw on community resources to be more socially and politically conscious.

Fig. 5

“Crónica Inmigrante” by Quinto Imperio (2017a, b), Dream Sequence of Protest

Like the 1939 film, Rivera’s character awakens from a black-and-white existence to a world of color. She startles awake without a blindfold, finding herself lying in a field of bright green grass that contrasts against the red and orange stripes of her sweater. In a subsequent scene she runs down the street and pauses to look up and smile, just as Dorothy does upon opening the farmhouse door and stepping into Oz. Rather than the opulent flowers of Oz, the background is a colorful mural that reads “Back of the Yards” (see Figs. 6a and 6b). Shots of Rivera’s characters’ journey across town are interwoven with shots of the Quinto Imperio musicians waiting at a bus stop and later performing at a dance party and protest for fellow activists and community members behind their church. Because they are also shot in color, viewers may infer that Rivera’s character has entered their reality and may anticipate their eventual encounter. QI’s Adriana Velázquez leans out the doorway of a house, also mimicking Dorothy’s entry into Oz and connecting the two female characters as headed to the same destination. The protagonist picks a dandelion and later hands it to Velázquez, who, in turn, gives her a large red flower. Exchanging a weed for a socially desired flower underscores QI’s work to build self-worth and solidarity among undocumented Latinx communities in Chicago.

Fig. 6

a Wizard of Oz (1939), b "Crónica Inmigrante" (2017), Awakening to Technicolor

The red color of the flower further associates the character with the Wizard of Oz by referencing the ruby slippers that allow Dorothy to return home to Kansas. However, in this Latinx Wizard of Oz, living in color relays the support of the artist/activist undocumented community to leave “the shadows” and live as fully integrated and visible members of society. While holding Velázquez’s flower, the protagonist closes her eyes as if making a wish and, with the same dissolve/lap dissolve technique that blurs her face, she finds herself back at home in tones of grey with hints of color. After removing her blindfold and discovering she still holds the flower, she remains transformed into color (see Fig. 7).

Fig. 7

“Crónica Inmigrante” (2017), There's No Place Like Home

The protagonist removes her parents’ blindfolds and hands her mother the red flower. Their embrace and smiles index the responsibility that Latinx youth often feel to support adult members of their family who may be exempt from national inclusion. While celebratory, this reunion with her family is shot in muted tones rather than full color, signaling the political organizing and struggle that lies ahead. Both the visual and aural elements of the video capture the tension between undocumented aspirations to overcome oppression and the structures of power that continue to limit life chances.

Quinto Imperio reclaims the Midwestern imagery of the Wizard of Oz to confront Anglo anxiety about maintaining racial and cultural purity of the Heartland. This is a particularly compelling choice of imagery because the Wizard of Oz is preoccupied with convincing younger generations to stay and maintain the home. With declining Anglo birth rates, Paral (2017) finds that both rural and metro Midwestern populations depend on Latin American immigrants and long-established Latinx populations as economic lifelines. Within this socioeconomic context, audiences may understand QI’s Latinx Dorothy as defying dominant voices that insist Latinxs “go back home” even as they are keeping Midwestern economies afloat. Undocumented Latinx communities are already home in Back of the Yards and will transform their home into a more egalitarian space in which they can participate fully.

The audience is invited to reimagine Back of the Yards as a place organizing itself from the ground up. QI combats a white spatial imaginary that devalues this neighborhood as a space abandoned by government and social services, while oppressive housing, schooling, and immigration policies are designed to confine and immobilize its residents. Through a borderlands spatial imaginary, QI strategically realigns this place as valuable by branching across Back of the Yards homes, churches, and streets as sites through which undocumented individuals build networks of solidarity.

Conclusion

Quinto Imperio engages in a borderlands spatial imaginary to promote the full inclusion of undocumented communities across the US. The two songs analyzed here combine multiple genres, styles, and testimonial narrative voices to construct belonging and protest violence against these devalued communities. Their composite characters privilege lived experiences shared by band members, their families, and surrounding community in Back of the Yards, Chicago. In the face of “law and order” rhetoric, these undocumented anthems tell counterstories that unlink undocumented immigration from deviance. QI narratively contests the exploitation of labor as it is maintained by immigration enforcement via surveillance, detention, and deportation. These songs assert that the law is not only wrong, but it is wrong because it is not informed by the lived experiences and diverse perspectives of undocumented communities in the US. Crucially, they ask privileged audiences to consider their own positionality and responsibility as social actors to support undocumented communities.

This research endeavors to raise awareness of the agency and diversity of undocumented Latinx communities in the US. These narratives have much to teach about positioning undocumented communities as dynamic social agents, challenging myths of meritocracy, and interrogating mechanisms of exclusion. Moreover, carefully contextualizing these works in a variety of curricula can disrupt colorblind multiculturalism and the erasure of current injustices. Because the threat of deportation makes it dangerous to share these stories, undocumented students, or students from families with mixed status, do not often see their experiences represented at school. QI confronts this silencing as a surrogate by circulating collective stories through their music and performances. Individuals who listen to QI’s music signal to others their beliefs and support for a more dignified life for undocumented individuals.

Keyboardist Quintiliano Ríos says many of their teachers in Back of the Yards appreciate QI’s music and message, “It’s gotten to the point where Edy’s little sister was in school and one of the teacher’s was playing our music and his sister said, ‘I know that band it’s my brother.’ The teacher said, ‘I love their music, how powerful it is in embracing immigrants and the culture.’ Throughout our time, we always supported school projects. In Chicago we all end up knowing each other” (Ríos 2019). Much like “DREAMer” signs posted by educators to let students know they are allies, QI’s music aurally signals a safe space. Much like the sense of belonging and possibility QI felt by meeting formerly undocumented González of La Santa Cecilia, Quinto Imperio creates sound and space in which undocumented communities and allies can transmit solidarity and see themselves represented as leaders of social transformation.

Cultural criticism is a crucial part of the fight for social justice as it offers a lens through which to examine social transformation beyond the limitations of voting booths and the foreclosure of undocumented communities. Like Lipsitz, I find that “we have much to learn from people who have learned to transform spaces of deprivation into places of possibility” (Lipsitz 2011, p. 125). Through further study of undocumented Latinx storytelling and prioritizing immigration status within intersectionality, Latinx Studies can deepen its perspective on the diverse narrative strategies deployed to negotiate identity and belonging. Moreover, the field can avoid reproducing exclusions by further attending to undocumented communities’ specificities and connections with others. Grassroots organizing and traditional forms of civil disobedience, such as sit-ins, are crucial. Yet, we must also look to how the words, images, and sounds of creative work open spaces for a politics of possibilities in which both documented and undocumented communities can bring about social change.