Poet Versed in Struggle Gives Drywallers a Lift

En Zacatecas nacido (I was born in Zacatecas) poeta y compositor (poet and composer)

--Lino Espino’s business card

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There was one for Cesar Chavez, the Latino labor organizer. When President John F. Kennedy died, dozens were written. Another, on the life and times of a Mexican outlaw, was made into the movie “The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez.”

And now, a corrido, or folk song, has been dedicated to hundreds of striking drywall workers.

“I’ve been watching the strike for some time now, and I felt I had to sit down and write this song,” said Lino Espino, a 52-year-old Anaheim father of six, who wrote the lyrics to the song, “Long Live the Mexican Brotherhood,” in one day.

The lyrics, which have yet to be set to music, were first performed at a rally in Santa Ana in support of the strike.

On that day, Espino stood nervously before a microphone and unfolded a piece of paper. Hundreds of drywall workers and their families had just marched around Civic Center Plaza, loudly demanding better wages and a union.

Then, as Espino began reading the lyrics to his ballad in Spanish, the crowd grew quiet. It depicts Mexicans as poor, working-class heroes in a foreign land who distinguish themselves “in the eyes of God” with their labor. Many times, Espino wrote, these heroes are exploited by employers, dubbed “pale-haired” villains, “who only want to see us squeezed against a wall.”

One passage reads:

Our struggle is very unfair

because they are the executioners.

but if there are any who demonstrate

that we are not your dummies

the time has long since passed

when we have worn (oxen) yokes.

The words captured the spirit of the crowd, drawing loud and sustained applause.

Espino has written more than 100 songs, or canciones, odes highlighting romance, the infamous, even the Los Angeles riots.

Already, he has won awards for his work, although he wrote his first poem only two years ago as a student in a civics class he took to help him become a United States citizen.

“The corrido is almost like the town crier,” said Jorge Huerta, a professor of theater at UC San Diego. “They usually chronicle something of historical importance or popular importance, like what is happening today.”

“The corrido is kind of like the National Enquirer of the barrio. They help commemorate an incident by retelling it in verse form and create a fascinating form of verse music documentation--making whatever the event larger than life.”

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Espino says corridos should be funny when humor is appropriate, or grandiose when formality is required.

“Lino is one of the few poets around who can write a poem from one day to another, and it rhymes. He does write well,” said Sally de La Fuente, co-publisher of El Sol Latino, a weekly newspaper, which recognized Espino, a regular contributor, as the newspaper’s “composer and poet of the decade.”

Espino was born poor on a rancho deep in the state of Zacatecas. As a teen-ager, people would often ask him to say a few words at social occasions such as birthdays and baptisms, he said.

He first came to the United States in 1973. Then, his dream was to find a job, not write songs. He worked in a small factory in Santa Ana that manufactured airplane parts. Three years later, he had enough money to bring his wife and five children to Orange County. His youngest, Alejandro, 15, was born in the United States.

But the recession in 1982 crippled the aerospace industry. He was laid off, and at times traveled to Mexico and Canada in search of work.

“I worked one year straight without seeing my family,” he said.

Like many immigrants who came before him, Espino said he was convinced that his destiny was in the United States. After a brief return to Mexico, where he sold his family’s house, he moved for the last time to Orange County.

He now lives in a cramped, two-bedroom apartment with his wife, and six children: Estella, 29; Lino Jr., 27; Ricardo, 25; Lucy, 23; Maria Elena, 19; and Alejandro.

Espino recently sold several of his songs and bought an electric typewriter, now sitting on the kitchen table, which he uses as a desk.

“I bought it two weeks ago. I used to write all my songs with pen. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”