Born on the Border

摘要

At the club santa fe in corpus Christi, Texas, Pete Astudillo is working the crowd. The Santa Fe is a big, engulfing place—too big for Astudillo, maybe too big for a Wednesday night in this midsize city on the Gulf Coast. Until last year Astudillo had been a backup singer in Selena's band; now, with her family in support at the rear of the room, he is on his own. One by one, couples slip onto the dance floor: Anglo and Latin, twentysomethings and middle-agers, easing or wrestling each other in a jaunty two-step as Astudillo sings songs of love in Spanish. The accordion propels them, the joyous oom-pah that is the heart of Tejano music. It came to these parts with the Czech and German settlers of the 19th century and flourished in the canti-nas of the Mexican working class. Now, as men in cowboy shirts swing their partners in front of him, its buoyant fluttering makes Astudillo silly. "Put your hands in the air," he chants, "and wave 'em like you just don't care. "He has crossed not only to English, but to the English of rap music and the South Bronx, come down this way via MTV. As the polka beat barrels behind him, this is a perfect Tejano moment: a first-generation Mexican-American playing the past against the present, the cantina roots of the south against the video rootlessness of the north, while a bicultural audience drinks 50-cent beers and has a good time.