ABSTRACT
A corrido typically begins with a greeting from the singer to his or her audience and an opening or prologue to the story that will be told. After telling a story, the corrido often closes with a moral. Corridos have been written about a wide variety of themes, including historic events, tales of famous people, sensationalistic reports of natural disasters and crime, and love stories. Corridos were transmitted orally as well as on broadsheets sold on the streets and in markets. As an art form, the corrido was eclipsed in part by the spread of mass communication media such as television and radio. Nevertheless, they continue to be sung throughout Mexico and beyond its borders. While one of the more widely known corridos, “La Cucaracha,” relates events associated with Pancho Villa and pokes fun at the revolutionary general Venustiano Carranza, the following corridos tell of events associated with modernization and politics.
