Prologue

It began as a joke, when I was in my late twenties.

I thought I’d make my older brother Dan laugh by learning a song in the long-forgotten Spanish from our youth, then belt it out unexpectedly some afternoon when we were having beers.

The song was by Vicente Fernandez and was an unofficial anthem for the Mexican farming class, back when Dan and I were growing up on the border of Texas and Mexico in the 1970s and 1980s. When it came on the radio, it would make anyone listening stop what they were doing and sing along at top volume with Mr. Fernandez in pure, animal joy, like an overemotional call to arms.

The song was, or is, rather, “El Rey,” (“The King”), and was originally written by José Alfredo Jiménez, a near-illiterate troubadour who wrote over one thousand songs, it is reported, even though he never learned to play an instrument.

The song was so popular on the border that even my grandmother, who was not known for her joie de vivre, would bounce along happily in a mock waltz and sing out as the spirit overtook her, in uncharacteristic glee:

Con dínero, o sín dínero . . .(If I’m rich, or if I’m poor . . . )

One afternoon, after blaring the song repeatedly on my stereo in order to retrace those disused paths of language—much to the confusion of my neighbors in Seattle, I’m sure—I made one of the most startling discoveries of my early adulthood.

Vicente Fernandez, I was told by my friend, David Saldana, who grew up in the Chicano movement of 1960s California, was sort of a farmer’s Frank Sinatra, and sang the rancheros and corrídos traditional to that class. (David, who grew up in urban areas, was more partial to Juan Gabriel, who was considered “posh.”)

What I could not have known growing up and hearing Vicente Fernandez all around me in South Texas was that he was singing the paean of machismo, the topographical map of the rural Mexican male’s emotional processing.

Right in front me, after a quick online search, was the lyrical genome for machismo. José Alfredo Jiménez had mapped the emotional DNA of the border male, had illustrated clearly what had so viciously plagued my father, and, well, his mother, who was as butch as they come.

Here was the source code for everything I was trying to escape: the generational compulsions and impulses of alienation, narcissism, self-destruction, emotional blackmail, and a profound conviction that everyone else in the world is wrong—wrong!—wrapped in a deep, all-consuming appeal to be accepted, protected by an ever-ready defensive, fighting posture, perfectly captured in a song. I was stunned at the accuracy; Jiménez, in his illiteracy, was nothing short of brilliant.

This is the song, and my bad rendering to the right1:

El Rey

Yo sé bien que estoy afuera
pero el dia en que yo me muera
sé que tendras que llorar
Llorar y llorar
llorar y llorar
Diras que no me quisiste
pero vas a estar muy triste
y asi te vas a quedar
Con dinero y sin dinero
hago siempre lo que quiero
y mi palabra es la ley

no tengo trono ni reina
ni nadie que me comprenda
pero sigo siendo el rey

Una piedra del camino
me enseñó que mi destino
era rodar y rodar
Rodar y rodar
rodar y rodar
Después me dijo un arriero
que no hay que llegar primero

pero hay que saber llegar
Con dinero y sin dinero
hago siempre lo que quiero
y mi palabra es la ley
no tengo trono ni reina
ni nadie que me comprenda
pero sigo siendo el rey

The King

I know very well that I’m on the outside
but on the day I die
I know that you’ll have to cry
to cry and to cry
to cry and to cry
You say you never loved me
but you’re going to be really sad
and that’s how I demand you stay
If I’m rich or if I’m poor
I will always get my way
and my word is law

I have neither a throne nor a queen
nor anyone that understands me
but I will keep on being the king

A stone in the journey
taught me that my destiny
was to roll and roll
to roll and to roll
to roll and to roll
Then a mule-driver once told me
that you don’t have to be the first
to arrive,
but you have to know how to arrive
If I’m rich or if I’m poor
I will always get my way
and my word is law
I’m without throne or a queen
nor anyone that understands me
but I will keep on being the king

It loses quite a bit in the translation, but dear God, this is really what they felt. This was truth, and it was the water Dan and I swam in, growing up.

We were the sons of kings.

1 Music and lyrics by José Alfredo Jiménez; translation by Domingo Martinez.