Filemon Lopez hosts "La Hora Mixteca" - music, advice and news aimed at Mixtec, Zapotec and Triqui Indians from Oaxaca. Fresno Bee/John Walker

Radio gives Mixtecs their own voice

'La Hora Mixteca' reaches out across California.

By Stephen Magagnini -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 a.m. PDT Sunday, October 20, 2002

It's Sunday morning. And in Arvin, Lamont, Oxnard, Santa Maria, Kerman, Arbuckle, Five Points, Madera and a hundred other dusty farm towns from Oregon to the Mexican border, they're listening to "La Cancion Mixteca."

The achingly beautiful anthem of the lonely Mixtec farm worker floats from the Fresno studios of Radio Bilingue, the only public Spanish language radio network in North America. The network has more than 60 affiliates from Tijuana to Puerto Rico and reaches a million listeners per day.

Every week, a different version of the song opens "La Hora Mixteca" ("The Mixtec Hour"), which is actually four hours (10 a.m.-2 p.m.) of music, talk radio, advice and news in Spanish and Mixtec.

The host of the show, Filemon Lopez, knows his audience -- he has walked in their shoes, if they had any. At 14, he left his mountain town of San Juan Mixtepec to pick cotton in Sinaloa state, on Mexico's Pacific coast.

"I imagined a nice city," he said. "I found this infernal place. I was sleeping in the street or under trees in the rain, among the mosquitoes. I saw people very different, white people who spoke Spanish. Almost every day, the ranchers or labor bosses would make fun of us because we were short, because of the way we looked."

He sizzled with rage but was forced to take the taunts in silence because he couldn't speak Spanish.

"I said, 'I may not be able to speak now, but one day I'm going to show you who I am. One day, you will hear me.' "

Today, Lopez, 45, is the voice of Mixtecs everywhere. When he's not playing Chilenas -- up-tempo folk songs he says bring his audience to tears -- he and his weekly guests address a cornucopia of issues confronting Mixtec, Zapotec and Triqui Indians from Oaxaca.

"We get calls about workers' rights, housing abuses, work accidents, auto accidents, how to keep electricity bills low, where to find interpreters and how to enroll their kids in school," Lopez said.

Callers sometimes ask for donations to send the remains of loved ones home to be buried.

Most of the calls lately are about health, particularly diabetes, an increasingly common disease among migrants.

"Diabetes wasn't a problem in Oaxaca, where people ate beans, rice, corn tortillas and more vegetables," Lopez said. "Here, the people totally change their lifestyle -- more pan dulce, ham, flour tortillas, creamy dressing, sodas. They may not be aware of the dietary consequences."

Lopez admits a weakness for carne asada and hamburgers.

"At 20, I was thin and climbed high mountains," he says. "Now, I'm fat and can't climb the stairs when I go back. The stark difference I notice is the people in Oaxaca are sprightly and work into their 90s. My father is 70, and I can't keep up with him."

Several years ago, Lopez founded the Benito Juarez Civic Association, named after the Zapotec Indian from Oaxaca who is known as the Mexican Abraham Lincoln for liberating Mexico from the French. Last year, the association learned that the Mexican Consulate in Fresno had thrown out a bag of gifts and letters to newly elected Mexican President Vicente Fox, a populist hero. After Lopez led a protest outside the consulate, Fox fired the consul.

Lopez, who wears pressed white shirts and a 10-gallon white straw hat, has become a legend here and in Oaxaca.

"It never occurred to me as a child to come to the U.S.," he says. But when he was 7 or 8, his uncle Demetrio returned from El Norte (the United States) with a transistor radio. "I was amazed to hear voices coming out of the radio," he says. "It was another world. It still is."

In 1970, young Filemon went to work in Sinaloa, where he said he was paid child's wages for doing a man's job.

"After a year of continuous racism and abuse, I decided to teach myself Spanish," he said. "I read whatever magazines I could get my hands on."

From Sinaloa, he went north to Baja California, where he organized 100 Mixtecs and staged a strike that forced ranchers to pay them by the hour.

He crossed the border in 1980 to pick Florida citrus. He didn't speak a word of English, didn't understand American money, didn't know how to buy clothes or food. Like the leaves in the wind described in "La Cancion Mixteca," he and other Mixtecs eventually landed in the Central Valley, where in 1997 he was recruited by Hugo Morales, Radio Bilingue's Harvard-educated founder, to help produce "La Hora Mixteca."

Now, before dawn every morning, thousands of farm workers head to the fields with clippers, water, lunch bags and radios, so they can tune into Radio Bilingue while they work. Lopez is training Zapotec and Triqui DJs, so they, too, can give their people a voice.

"Radio Bilingue has opened a very interesting door to us, where we can focus on our culture ... how to educate our children, how not to forget our music or our Mixteco language," he said. "It's a sharing, a fiesta that we have every Sunday."

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Sounds of Radio Bilingue

Filemon Lopez, a DJ for Fresno's Radio Bilingue, hosts a weekly radio show celebrating Mixtec culture. The show is broadcast on the Web at http://www.radiobilingue.org/.

Two songs -- "Cancion Mixteca" and "Mi Linda Oaxaca" -- are staples on the show. The tunes are from an album called "Linda Oaxaca" by a group known as Trio Fantasia.

Your computer must have an audio player to hear these mp3 music samples. Versions of each clip are offered for Macintosh and PC users.

"Cancion Mixteca"

Macintosh
PC

Que lejos estoy del suelo donde he nacido!
inmensa nostalgia invade mi pensamiento;
y al ver me tan solo y triste qual hoja al viento,
quisiera llorar, quisiera morir de sentimiento.
Oh tierra del sol!, suspiro por verte
ahora que lejos yo vivo sin luz, sin amor;
y al verme tan solo y triste cual hoja al viento,
quisiera llorar, quisiera morir de sentimiento.


Mixtec Song (English translation)

How far I am from the land where I was born
Immense sadness fills my thoughts
I see myself so alone and so sad
Like a leaf in the wind
I would like to cry I would like to die
From the feeling
Land of the sun
I long to see you
Now that I live so far from your light, without love
I see myself so alone and so sad
Like a leaf in the wind.

"Mi Linda Oaxaca"

Macintosh
PC

Muy lejos estoy de ti
rincon de ensuenos y flores.
la tierra donde naci
y en donde estan mis amores

Oaxaca, vives enmi
y yo por ti doy la vida,
oye la voz de mi anguista
que llora y canta
queriendo volver.
Linda Oaxaca de mi alma,
no quiro morirme
sin volverte a ver.

Carino que llevare
guardado como un tesoro,
jamas yo te olvidare
es mucho lo que te adoro.
Si nunca te vuelvo a ver,
Oaxaca de mis amores,
dile a mi amor que sus besos
que anoro por siempre quisiera tener.
Linda Oaxaca de mi alma,
no quiero morirme
sin volverte a ver.

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