Todos La Conocen

We let out an excited shriek and rush back to the dance floor. The night sky above us is a mix of wispy clouds and muted stars, and cigarette smoke floats up from around us through the open ceiling. I pull my body tight against my best friend, his arms cradling my back, our chests flush, chins on shoulders, as we — and everyone around us — begin to dance, belting out the first lines of this iconic song: La Chona. Pairs collide as we bop around, bouncing and drunkenly crooning. The DJ has redeemed himself after a few duds that sent us to the bar to re-up our Dos Equis Lagers — now, we’ve abandoned our half-full beers and melted into the music.

When I first moved to Mexico in 2018, fresh out of an undergraduate degree and the better part of a lifetime living in the US, I was overcome with impostor syndrome. I had had meaningful international experiences while growing up — attending middle school for a year in a small town in southern France, and spending a college semester studying in Chile’s bustling capital city — so pursuing a grant to teach English in Mexico piqued my interest. At the time, I saw myself working toward a future career as a high school teacher in California, where I’d likely work with many Mexican-American students and families. This move felt aligned with my professional development, but was also a new adventure — a chance to go somewhere I’d never been, to challenge myself, to explore. Though I wasn’t ready to admit it, I was also running away — from the highly structured capitalist rigors of the US, hoping to find something that resembled balance after years of burnout. While my contemporaries were transitioning into graduate school, jobs at tech startups, and high-powered political internships, leaving the US felt like a better plan for me: a way to build my skills (pedagogy, Spanish language, and navigating a new place) away from the environment I’d known for so long.

Though I knew I was interested in the opportunity, I struggled to decide whether teaching English in Mexico was an ethical post-grad move for a white woman, especially one from such a privileged background. I was sensitive to the judgments of my fellow social justice-minded peers, and to memes I saw online shitting on recent graduates from the US who go to other countries to teach English, but really to “find themselves” and dick around, at the expense of — so the posts implied — the communities that host them. In particular, my worries revolved around two key axes. One, the black-and-white thinking that had enveloped me in college insisted that any US national — especially a white one! — participating in an English teaching program abroad will inevitably reinforce neocolonialism and engender a net negative impact. Two, on top of this, I had a limited knowledge of Mexican culture, which I feared made me undeserving to live there, to take up space. Fueled by these fixations, once I committed to the choice to travel to Mexico, I had this internal sense of owing some kind of penance.

Though my concerns about neocolonialism and the larger societal impact were more recent, the latter anxiety regarding cultural belonging wasn’t brand new. Throughout my international experiences as a young person, my mom — with good intentions, surely — had instilled in me a high level of consciousness being an American outside the US. While visiting family in Paris, we’d speak hushed English in public, or better, speak only in French; we’d roll our eyes at other tourists (who we thought were doing a worse job blending in than us); and on more than one occasion, I remember my mom telling people we were from Canada, which we are not — anything to avoid being seen as American. While I commend her for making the effort to be a conscientious visitor, and I definitely appreciate some of the important travel lessons I learned — especially when I do see flagrantly disrespectful visitors around me — I nevertheless came away with the overall understanding that when you’re an outside visitor, you should stop at nothing to conceal that fact. In particular, the negative reputation of rude, bumbling Americans with loud speech, egregious accents, and brazen self-centeredness was seared into my subconscious. Years of this messaging had led me to this conclusion: if I go to this new place where I am an outsider, especially one who is so obviously foreign, I need to do everything in my power to assimilate.

So, I set out to do just that. Never mind that plenty of Mexican nationals can’t place all 31 of their country’s states on a map — I downloaded an app to learn the country’s geography, plus all the state capitals. I spent months laying in my hammock, moving through the gamified process of placing Sonora, Coahuila, Campeche, Aguascalientes in their respective spots, the screen lighting up when I succeeded. Never mind that no one was expecting me to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of Mexican music, cinema, and humor — I still felt so inadequate every time someone made a reference I didn’t get. I had Spotify’s “Viva Latino” playlist on repeat all summer, soaking up the newest hits, humming them on the bus and belting them in the shower. When I did arrive in Mexico, I scrubbed my Spanish of any vestiges of Chilean slang that had stowed away from my six months studying there, replacing them with chido, la neta, and of course, the all-purpose no mames.

So, when about four years into my Mexican sojourn, I started engaging much more regularly in nightlife, and I found myself drawn to the club on weekends and weeknights alike — I began to recognize the songs that would play often, and developed an immediate and intense desire to memorize the lyrics. Even though I’d been present in the country for years, I hadn’t shaken this instinct to outwardly project my façade of belonging. Discomfort enveloped me when a song would come on and everyone knew the words, but I didn’t. Again, no one knows every song; in plenty of US contexts, there are lots of songs I don’t know; and not knowing the lyrics to a popular song is morally neutral, not an indicator of worth. Though I could recognize these realities and acknowledge their logic, my nervous system wasn’t convinced. I still constantly felt that I had to prove my deservingness to be here, and especially to distinguish myself from the other foreigners who were just passing through — like my mom had instilled in me. These random tourists had no idea that I was competing with them in my head, helpless against the inner voice that barked at me: “You’re better than them, and you need everyone to know it.” If I could perform my knowledge, maybe I could get the external validation I was craving. I could pretend like I belonged, even when I felt in my bones that I did not.

Once again, I went about it methodically. I made a playlist titled “songs I’m desperately trying to memorize so I can have more clout when they come on at the club”, and added songs that I had picked up on, crowdsourcing the rest from friends. I had a pretty good grasp of the reggaeton hits of the past few years, since I’d been listening to top 40 Latin American pop music regularly. But what I had clearly missed were the classics — the sorrowful banda tunes that come on at the end of the party when everyone has had a few too many, drawing tearful warbles from inebriated uncles; the early 2000s reggaeton bangers, grittier and less produced than their 2020s counterparts; and the intergenerationally beloved regional hits of the last few decades that remain in steady rotation at parties, clubs, and corner store setlists. 

The song in this latter category that I heard the most often — the one that most captivated my attention, the one that I most fervently wanted to sing the words to, the one whose melody ignited me the most — was La Chona, a 1995 song by Los Tucanes de Tijuana, a still-iconic norteño group churning out bangers to this day. I wish I could remember the very first time I heard this song, but I don’t. It feels like it’s been omnipresent since I first stepped foot in Mexico, like humid air and the greasy, late evening scents of suadero and al pastor.

For those who haven’t had the pleasure of listening to this song, I’ll share a bit about what makes it special. It starts with a jovial accordion riff — high and lilting — that blends with the strum of the guitar and the bass, and the steady cymbal beat typical of the genre. The leading man begins to tell us, the listeners, the story of a famous person — everyone knows her, he says, by the nickname of “Chona”. He describes her escapades — dancing every night with a bottle in her hand, never losing the rhythm, captivating all in her path. Its simplicity and repetition make it irresistible. The song’s lyrical prowess is bolstered by its technical impeccability. Each one of its lines follows the rhythmic structure of trochaic heptameter — fourteen metric syllables, alternating between stressed and unstressed, and of course with rhymes to close each line out. It’s essentially like if Shakespeare, king of iambic pentameter, was from Baja California. In layman’s terms: it’s a catchy-ass bop with a super danceable beat and a fun, irresistible story.

La Chona defies her husband, drinks, dances, and is the life of the party. She is, in short, the quintessential hot girl. She is partnered, but free. More than that, though, everyone knows her; everyone knows her name. La Chona is from Northern Mexico — or at least, we can infer as much, from the song’s genre and the band’s Tijuana roots — yet she is not confined to her area of origin, as the song spreads its influence far and wide, across Mexico and the world. Maybe more than anything — more than the infectious beat, the way this song gets everyone off their feet — I’m drawn to this protagonist’s autonomy, to her ability to connect with others, to command a room not as a sex object, but as a part of a community; a mainstay of the bars and dancehalls she frequents.

Maybe that’s what I’m looking for when I memorize the geography and capitals of all 31 Mexican states, when I study the lyrics of regional norteño hits from the 90s. I guess I want to walk in and hear todos la conocen — everyone knows her. I don’t need to be a standout like La Chona — after all, per the song’s lyrics, no one can compare to her, and there’s no way I expect to be that exception — but I still yearn to be seen, to be known. To be celebrated, to have enthusiastic cheers thrown my way.

There’s another complicated layer here, of acknowledging that the song is still situated within a very male-dominated genre, and is still the story of five men singing about a woman, void of any commentary or voice from the titular Chona herself. Though I’d like to believe she is independent, a rebel, a woman doing what she wants, I also have this sense that she’s still vulnerable to the male gaze. (I’ll be the first to admit that I’m susceptible to wishful thinking, even when it requires suspension of disbelief.) We don’t know La Chona’s motives; maybe she secretly (or not-so-secretly) likes the male attention. Maybe she craves it, her guilty pleasure. Maybe, as she searches for a dance partner, she really does want everyone to look at her, to be the center of attention. Maybe she leaves her husband at home to feel free again.

I feel this affinity with La Chona — indulging a desire to be autonomous, to flit around the dancefloor with eyes closed, bottle in hand, beginning with the band’s very first song of the night — while also cracking my eye open to peek out, to see who is looking at me, to bask in the attention that I have attracted. It brings up a complicated idea — that belonging, or at least the illusion of it, has one easily accessible shortcut: seducing men. Getting their attention and praise as a way to feel connected with others; perhaps unsustainable, but temporarily effective. It’s a topic I’ve discussed with other women living outside of their country of origin — the relative ease we’ve observed of connecting with men, leaning into societal roles and letting them envelop us into their arms. (I’m new here — take care of me! See also: I’m just a girl, cooed while batting eyelashes.) After all, no matter how foreign you are, patriarchy is nearly universal, and there’s maybe even a warped comfort in these pre-assigned roles, this known territory of objectification.

—

In Oaxaca de Juarez, where I now live, the influx of international visitors is massive. More and more, especially in the years since the COVID pandemic offered many US residents the option of remote work and spurred a desire to travel to locations with less strict lockdowns, in Oaxaca’s downtown as well as its peripheries, foreign faces are now ubiquitous. This shift — gradual, then seemingly all at once — has made me even more self-conscious about my presence than I already was. Competing thoughts battle each other in my mind. I try to reassure myself, backed up by my friends: your depth of knowledge, fluency in Spanish, and conscientiousness distinguish you. You’re committed and invested in this community. On the other hand — there is nothing you can do to change the fact that you are a US-born, white-privilege-having, dollars-in-your-savings-account-accumulating, English-as-a-first-language-speaking bitch. Even here on this page, my defenses rise, my senses suddenly alert. Do you believe me? Do you absolve me? Can you? Should you?

When people ask me how I got to Oaxaca, why I’m here, I’m quick to give them context, then internally cringe at my reaction. I tell them I came to the country on a government-funded scholarship to teach English at a public university (not as a remote worker! I didn’t throw a dart at a map and randomly show up one day just to vibe, jot that down!). I then moved to Oaxaca when I fell in love with my ex-partner, who is from here. We dated for years, and when I ended the relationship, I decided to stay and continue building community. Do you hear that? A man, a man from here, invited me! He cosigned my presence, at least for a time. Does this patriarchal permission change your calculus on whether I’m allowed to be here? Does it change mine?

—

La Chona is not an outsider in the way that I am in Mexico; she and I come from different worlds. But being able to bury myself in her story, imagine myself as the perennial hot girl, looking for a dancer, buying myself a bottle, evoking bravos from onlookers, leads me to feel like never fully assimilating might be okay. After all, she is willing to stand out. My kinship with La Chona makes being an other less of a big deal. I find myself reflecting on what I can learn from her, from her place in her community (no matter how little information I have about that in reality), from the energy that she exudes. Assimilating, blending in — that’s the opposite of what La Chona does, and I love her for it. She has everyone’s eyes on her, unapologetically. Maybe I can embrace that, too.

La Chona recently turned 29 years old  — just a year older than me. This song and its enigmatic protagonist predate me by a year, but this desire to dance somewhere where everyone knows your​​ name; where the cheers from around you let you know that yes, you belong, is evergreen. As La Chona and I move through our late twenties, her momentum has not slowed, and I’m just getting started. I wonder: now that I know all the words to this song, and can sing it with confidence while I dance with gusto and verve, do I feel more assimilated? Have I reached my goal, however flawed, however motivated by ego and anxiety? I wonder: what was my goal in the first place?

Really, I think, now approaching the six-year mark of my move to Mexico, the questions that plagued me at the beginning of my journey feel nearly obsolete. Do I belong? Am I good enough? It’s not to say that belonging and feeling worthy are irrelevant — on the contrary, they are still as important as ever for me, and on some days feel even more persistent, as my city’s demographics change and its storefronts and rents gentrify. But even with all of this, the way that I frame these questions internally has changed. At the end of the day, the biggest gatekeeper of whether I felt like I belonged was always me, my internal monologue pieced together from all the messages of my youth and young adulthood. The biggest thing that has helped me feel like I belong isn’t memorizing lyrics, slang, or geography — it’s deciding that I get to engage on my own terms, and working slowly but surely to quiet the chaotic critic that lives in me.

These days, when La Chona comes on, the corners of my mouth turn up in a wistful smile, especially if I’m with friends who know of my love of this seminal tune. These big questions of belonging, of assimilation, of worthiness, have not completely left me — they still cross my mind, especially in situations where an unpleasant interaction triggers my insecurity. But on most days, I can just be present and enjoy. And on most evenings, when I hear that telltale accordion refrain, I give myself over to the music, laughing and appreciating it for what it is — just a song about a girl, grabbing a partner and moving her feet. I find the closest warm and willing body; we make conspiratorial eye contact, embrace each other, and dance.