Singing Our Way to Freedom

• Published in: Latin American music review Vol. 44; no. 1; pp. 83 - 95
• Main Authors: Garcia, Peter J, Carrasco, Carlos
• Format: Journal Article Book Review
• Language: English
• Published: Austin University of Texas at Austin (University of Texas Press) 22.03.2023
• Subjects: Families & family life; Hispanic Americans; Murals; Music; Musical performances; Political activism; Political activity; Political aspects; Singers; New Mexico; California; United States > US; Mexico
• DOI: 10.7560/LAMR44104
• ISSN: 0163-0350

Singing Our Way to Freedom is a feature-length documentary that chronicles the life and music of Ramon "Chunky" Sánchez, whose lifelong community leadership and commitment to social justice, visual art, and music has been recognized by the US Library of Congress. Born in Blythe, California, Sánchez learned to play traditional Mexican folk and popular ranchera (country) songs from his working-class family members who performed parrandas-greater Mexican informal family-, barrio-, and community-based music-making and dance events typically set at home or during small intimate gatherings such as semipublic street scenes and backyard parties throughout the US-Mexico borderlands. Demanding better wages, civic rights, education, and improved living conditions, Sánchez witnessed the early political and economic struggles, marches, and hunger strikes in the farmworkers' labor movement, led by César Chávez and Dolores Huerta of the United Farm Workers (UFW). Barrio Logan and its mural display were created in response to a long-standing local community struggle begun before 1969 that protested the harm and adverse effects of urban decay, city rezoning, municipal industrial waste and junkyards in the barrio, and the construction of the Interstate 5 highway on-ramp to Barrio Logan residents and the neighborhood.