Promoter Routes Protest Through Latin American Song

Arnulfo Casillas doesn’t do the expected. The expected would be to finish high school before tackling college. Casillas has two masters degrees but no high school diploma.

One might expect a Chicano political activist to give speeches and lead protest marches. Casillas’ vehicle for social change is song. The Glendale Community College official brings socially conscious musical groups from Latin American to perform in Los Angeles.

The music Casillas promotes is that of the New Song Movement, a broad effort among Latin American singers, musicians and composers to sing about the struggles of their people. Rather than simply being harsh, strident protest songs, many of the compositions are either surprisingly peppy or hauntingly soft.

At 38, Casillas works full time as director of Glendale Community College’s Transfer Center, which helps low-income, minority and disabled students make the transition to four-year schools. He must do his work for the New Song Movement during free time and sometimes pays out of his own pocket to support this music of protest.

“It’s important to promote music that has a statement,” he said. “Latin American artists, even if they don’t have a political message, aren’t very well received here. If we don’t bring these groups, nobody else will.”

Studied in Mexico City

Casillas became aware of the New Song Movement while studying for his master’s degree in Spanish literature in Mexico City. That was in 1977, when Chilean refugees from the coup that overthrew Salvador Allende, many of them musicians, were moving to the city.

“There was a series of festivals in solidarity with Chile and Uruguay,” Casillas recalled. “I was everywhere--the penas , the concerts. I met the groups. There wasn’t enough time. . . . I was able to buy every New Song record on the market at the time. I brought them all back in my Gremlin.

“When I came back, I was really charged up,” he said. “But there was no music like that here.”

So Casillas arranged a tour for a Mexican group, Un Viejo Amor, in 1979.

“That’s when it all started. Once one group makes contact with you, the others find you, too. These groups from Mexico didn’t have anyone to contact here outside the university circuit. Nothing in the community.”

Eventually, Casillas formed with seven other activists--representing Chicanos, Salvadorans, Puerto Ricans and Chileans--to form Colectivo Violeta Parra, which has brought several more New Song groups to Los Angeles.

The organization takes its name from a Chilean cultural worker and folklorist who was the catalyst of the New Song Movement.

“She would go out in the countryside in Chile and sing songs to the farm workers,” Casillas said. “Then she’d ask them to sing her a song and she’d write it down to preserve it. Recopilacion is the word in Spanish. That word doesn’t exist in English.”

Parra composed songs using elements of folklore, adding social content and breaking down national barriers. She combined folkloric instruments from Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia and Argentina and opened a pena (a sort of coffeehouse) in Chile that attracted international attention.

Parra influenced Victor Jara, an internationally known Chilean singer and composer who was killed during the coup against Allende when he refused to stop singing in the stadium where Allende partisans were detained.

“Jara formed Nueva Cancion Chilena, which was the example to all of Latin America,” Casillas said. “He’s up there with Che Guevara in terms of influence and example. But he did it with music. His songs did what three marches couldn’t.”

Today, in places like El Salvador and Chile, the New Song Movement is clandestine music. In other countries, the movement uses subtle phrasing to get the message across. Casillas cites a Brazilian song that equates the wind with revolution.

But in Los Angeles, thanks in part to the efforts of Colectivo Violeta Parra, the music plays openly.

The collective helped arrange last year’s tour of Cutumay Camones, a group from El Salvador. Arranging one or two such tours a year demands a lot of work. The members all work at full-time jobs and must sandwich in their concert-promoting activities on the side.

Casillas has allowed musicians to stay at his house during their tours, driven them to performances in San Francisco and paid their bus fare back to Los Angeles.

The collective also has staged dances to help defray tour costs and will hold another this spring. Meanwhile, members have “absorbed the costs.”

And planning for a local tour starts months before the actual concert.

“We have to get letters from a university inviting them to play. And a donation for their performance. We line up the concert hall. Raise money to pay the deposit. Set up the program. Arrange for an emcee and someone to do a pitch.

“Then we do flyers. The minimum run is 10,000. We find organizations and bookstores to distribute them and the tickets. We’re not into Ticketron,” Casillas said with a laugh.

The organization’s recent tours for Leon Chavez Teixeiro and the group Anastasio Aquino required months of detailed arrangements.

Chavez is a singer, songwriter and guitarist who is also a union organizer in Mexico City and is known in the New Song Movement for his steadfast refusal to join the more lucrative, highly commercialized Mexican music world.

Chavez’s performance with Urbano Pacheco--the name of the group means “Urban High,” a sly reference to Mexico City’s smog problems--brought a standing ovation from the crowd at Los Angeles’ First Unitarian Church where the main concert was held.

Chavez also played for students at California State University, Northridge.

Visiting With Local Groups

Anastasio Aquino members--two Salvadoran women now living in Managua who take their name from a historic rebel leader--spoke to groups of local Central American women while visiting here. Although the air fare for Anastasio Aquino was picked up by another organization, the collective had to raise funds for Chavez and two other musicians and find places for them to stay.

The collective plans a return engagement next fall for Cutumay Camones and another for Leon Chavez the following spring.

Casillas sees this work as an outlet for the sense of activism he gained while serving in Vietnam.

“I went over as a very naive young man, not even knowing where Vietnam was on the map, much less why we were there. I could see we were being used. When I came back, I had a lot of anger,” Casillas said.

Disabled by a battlefield injury, Casillas returned home and went back to school. It was at Ventura Community College, from Chicano studies teacher Ray Reyes, that he learned to put his anger to use.

“Ray taught me how to channel my anger into something constructive. He was an organizer, not a theorizer. He taught me how to learn the system and to beat the system at its own game.”

The result can be seen today in the collective, he said.

“We’re all activists, not just music freaks.”