Voces Nuevo Mexicanas: Power, Gender & Recovery of el corrido de "la votacion" - A Centennial Celebration of New Mexico's Suffrage Movement
Through an ethnopoetic analysis which connects form to meaning , I shift the focus of the iconic male-dominated genre of the corrido into an investigation of the feminine. I argue that the corrido, "La votacion," which discusses women's suffrage in New Mexico, illustrates the importance of alternate,community-based archives in reimagining Mexican American feminist histories of the U.S. Southwest Borderlands. Through textual and ethnographic analysis, I show how “La votación” has been used intergenerational as an empowering media form to unite and mobilize Nuevo Mexicanas in their march for equal rights. By examining formal textual and musical elements of “La votación,” I relate them to key historical moments and contextualization, thus contributing to omitted histories of New Mexico through what I term as the social media of the day, the corrido.
