A powerful voice in support of change

01/24/03

Telling Betty Robles not to talk seems to have backfired. She began singing instead, and truly found her voice—not so much as a musician but as a labor organizer who understands the power of songs to unite workers in pursuit of better conditions and justice.

Robles used labor songs to help start a strike at a Mexican factory where she worked in 1980, after she was forbidden from talking on the job. She remains a workers movement leader in Coahuila, Mexico, but it was a group of Portland labor activists and musicians who took Robles as inspiration and created the album “Nuestras Voces Se Levantan Para la Justicia (Our Voices Will Rise for Justice).”

The album is a project of Enlace, a Portland organization that provides training, technical support for unions and other low-wage worker organizations in the United States and Mexico, coordinating “trans-national campaigns to fight trans-national corporations.” Enlace solicited songs from its affiliate groups that told of their issues and struggles, then assembled a band led by composer, multi-instrumentalist and arranger Jesus “Lolo” Rivas, a Salvadoran musician who plays nueva cancion, mariachi and other Latin styles around Portland. Saxophonist/co-producer Michael Bard and top-notch drummer Reinhardt Melz are among the other fine players, and Robles, fittingly, traveled north to be the featured vocalist.

The result is a stirring set of Spanish-language songs (with printed translations provided) in a variety of styles—cumbia, ranchera, ballads, marches. “Las Hormiguitas (The Ants)” is a children’s parable about labor, capital and revolution: “Thousands of ants make a cake. They put candles and honey on it. Then the fly comes and eats it. Thousands of ants take up arms.” Similarly, “Corrido de Pedro Animales (The Ballad of Pedro Animales)” suggests that self-respect, unity and cleverness can endow workers with near-magic powers to advance the cause. Other songs are straightforward narratives of specific labor relations struggles. Most poignant, perhaps, are “Por una Vida Justa (For a Just Life)” and “Justicia e Igualdad (Justice and Equality),” which convey the hardships of the immigrant laborer’s experience.

It’s all delivered with a vibrant musicality that balances skill with homespun honesty. If nothing else, these views of the working world might give you something worth talking about on the job.

MARTY HUGHLEY