For centuries, Mexican corridos have narrated tall tales and historical events to the backing of accordion, guitar or brass band, preserving the memory of fictional heroes and villains – as well as real-life figures from revolutionaries to drug lords.
After a man with an AR-15-style rifle opened fire at a campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, it took barely two days for the attempted assassination of Donald Trump to be immortalized in a viral corrido.
El Atentado a Trump, or The Attack on Trump, was released by Conjunto Diamante Norteño, a band composed of Mexican immigrants who live mostly in North Carolina. It recounts the shooting, which left one rally attendee dead, and how the former president escaped “by a miracle” with an ear injury.
“From far away, they aimed at his head with a rifle / and when they opened fire, they hit him in the ear/ they wanted to end ex-president Trump’s life,” the song says.
It continues: “Trump is a brave man who does not know fear / because he looked calm and of that there are many witnesses / he didn’t back down at all despite what occurred.”
Meliton Mendez Ramirez, the vocalist and accordionist who recorded the corrido, was taking a break from performing at a quinceañera party near Greensboro last weekend when his bandmate told him about the shooting.
“This is world news. This deserves a corrido,” thought Mendez, quickly sending a text message to Pepe Sanchez, a songwriter for the band who lives in Texas.
Since then, the corrido has surpassed 3m views on TikTok. In the comments, mostly written in Spanish, many praised the song and voiced support for Trump. A few asked for an English translation to share with others.
This is not the first time a corrido has been written about Trump: before the 2016 presidential election, one song referred to him as “crazier than a goat”.
The Mexican ranchera star Vicente Fernández sang a corrido that supported Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. And in 2014, Conjunto Diamante Norteño also produced a corrido applauding then president Barack Obama for an executive action to shield potentially millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation.
Joe Biden and Trump have been working hard to appeal to Latinos, a key voting bloc projected to make up about 15% of eligible voters in November’s presidential election. Despite promising mass deportations and claiming, unsupported by evidence, that there’s a migrant-driven crime wave, Trump has made progress with Latino voters.
Corridos have evolved into a variety of forms. Narcocorridos tell stories about drug traffickers – and are sometimes even commissioned by them. In recent years, corridos tumbados – which combine traditional Mexican music with hip-hop and reggaeton – have exploded in popularity.
Mendez, who arrived in the US as a teenager, said that he remains undecided about Trump and called his disparaging remarks about immigrants “pure verbiage”. The song, he said, aimed to simply “narrate the facts”.
“It’s not that we’re supporting him,” he said. “He was a victim. He was close to death. He escaped death.”
