Los Tigres del Norte video shoot, 2002.

Nearly four decades ago, a group of teenage musicians from the Mexican coastal state of Sinaloa crossed the U.S./Mexico border to play a concert in San Jose, California. They never left, and now the three Hernandez brothers, Jorge, Raul, and Hernan, and their cousin Oscar Lara, better known as Los Tigres del Norte, are the most beloved voices of migrant Mexico.

They have been dubbed los ídolos del pueblo, the idols of the people, and with good reason. Since releasing their first single, “Contrabando y Traición,” back in 1971, they have done more than any other artist on either side of the line to give voice to the multiple worlds of the Latino immigrant. Over the course of 32 albums, a slew of low-budget border action films, and a non-stop touring schedule that takes them everywhere from Kansas to San Salvador, they’ve gone from being just another corrido-belting norteño band to being the ultimate corrido-belting norteño band: top-grossing, Grammy-winning musicians and entertainers as much as heroic representatives of a community. Their latest release, Historias de Contar, was just honored with a 2006 Latin Grammy for best norteño album.

Los Tigres don’t just sing about their audience, though—they embody their triumphs and struggles, whether those of the undocumented laborer or the monolingual parent with bilingual suburban children, the prosperous money-wiring immigrant or the vanquished farm worker who gives up on his American dream to get back to his Mexican family. Yet in true pop-activist style, Los Tigres’ new school people’s music goes beyond concerts and CDs. In 2000, they created the Los Tigres del Norte Foundation at UCLA—which includes a massive digital archive of border music—and this past March, as they’ve done countless times before, they hit the streets to add their voices to the millions-strong pro-immigrant rallies.

In August, I spoke by telephone with the band’s lead vocalist, Jorge Hernandez, while the group was at work on a new album at a San Jose studio.

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Issue 98 Winter 2007