In my brother-in-laws’ X-Terra I head toward El Bronco, an El Paso flea market.
I am in search of “Arriba Juarez,” a tiny clothes booth where Cuca Aguirre, now Cuca Aguirre García, at ninety-two years of age, sells clothes and waits for me, perhaps the one of the last pioneers of the Juarez Border Arts Renaissance of the 30’s that laid down the groundwork for the aesthetic revolution we are still living. José Montoya comes to mind, poeta, muralista and an RCAF general whom I met in the early seventies, back in Logan Heights, San Diego. Then I think of Alma Lopez, Lila Downs and Yolanda Muñoz, a digital artist, a singer and a sculptor – going strong.
My initial interest was to get more info on my own familia – los Quintana – who arrived in Juarez from Mexico City a few years after the Mexican revolution of 1910. And it happened that my uncle Roberto was a leading figure of Juarez’s “El Barco de La Ilusión” radio-theatre cast of XEJ and who worked with Germán Valdez (Tin-Tan), the comedic actor, originally from Guadalajara, Jalisco. After Tin Tan left Juarez to Mexico City in the early 40’s, he became a major movie star of the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema. An intimate portrait of Tin-Tan lured me too. After meeting Cuca and listening to her stories, songs and poems and returning a month later, things changed.
The more Cuca described her leap, as a teenager, into song, theatre, comedy and dance in the Juarez border Jazz and Ranchera scene from 1932 to 1942, the more I began to realize that she was a seminal part of an explosive site of cultural production.
With her sister, Eva Aguirre, now Eva Aguirre Amezcua, and Elvira Macías, Cuca formed part of “Las Tres Chatitas” singing and dancing and on occasion reading out loud, “declamando,” poetry touring Texas with Tin-Tan, and other artists. Returning to Juarez, she and her sister would delve back into a thriving cadre of radio and teatro artists, including “El Charro” Pancho Avitia, Pepe Gamboa, Meño García, Alfredo Corral and Roberto Quintana. The performance schedule was an intense project of experimental theatre based on improvisation and multiple characters all elaborated through various radio stations and radio shows such as “La Familia Feliz,” “Pablo el Ranchero” and “Pablo Barranquillo y Su Comadre Chencha.” There was no set script other than a last-minute given theme.
Cuca laughs recalling a one-act called, “El Millón,” that La Familia Feliz presented on XEJ. “They told us we had won a “million.” So, we jumped up and cried out our dreams – a palace, a world tour, a mink stole! Then the announcer gave us the leash to a tiny dog called ‘El Millón. We were so disappointed!”
The Juarez arts collective was tireless in production and in mentoring each other. Local singer Miguel Aceves Mejía, who later became a national sensation, stopped Cuca and pointed out various options in singing in harmony. “Once Miguel showed me how to do it, I never changed my style
By: Lauri Lu,
on 8/10/2016
By: msedano,
on 9/6/2010
I am in search of “Arriba Juarez,” a tiny clothes booth where Cuca Aguirre, now Cuca Aguirre García, at ninety-two years of age, sells clothes and waits for me, perhaps the one of the last pioneers of the Juarez Border Arts Renaissance of the 30’s that laid down the groundwork for the aesthetic revolution we are still living. José Montoya comes to mind, poeta, muralista and an RCAF general whom I met in the early seventies, back in Logan Heights, San Diego. Then I think of Alma Lopez, Lila Downs and Yolanda Muñoz, a digital artist, a singer and a sculptor – going strong.
