‘San Patricio’ honors Irish-Mexican solidarity

In an outstanding contribution to the music of the world’s peoples, the renowned Irish artists, The Chieftains, have produced a stunning new compact disc entitled “San Patricio.” It is a tribute and a history lesson, set to music.

The CD’s theme of solidarity is as timely today as it was more than 150 years ago when the San Patricio Battalion joined with the Mexican people to fight U.S. expansionism.

The CD features Ry Cooder and many Irish, Mexican and other artists of varying nationalities, including Lila Downs, Los Folkoristas, Los Cenzontles, Carlos Núñez, Moya Brennan, L.A. Juvenil, Chavela Vargas and Liam Neeson. The music deploys a vast array of traditional and contemporary Mexican and Irish instruments, with lyrics sung in English and Spanish and with recordings gathered in Dublin, New York City, Mexico, Los Angeles and Spain.

From rousing sessions to ballads to the “March to Battle” (Across The Rio Grande) by Banda de Gaitas del Batallón de San Patricio, the spirit of the San Patricios and their Mexican compatriots comes through. Linda Ronstadt sings “A la orilla de un palmar” in Spanish.

Fighting U.S. ‘Manifest Destiny,’ building solidarity

In the CD’s liner notes, Chieftain leader Paddy Moloney tells the story of the San Patricio Battalion: “[It] is a little discussed ... footnote in the great panorama of American Westward Expansion. During the Mexican-American War of 1846-48, Captain John Riley and a small battalion of soldiers abandoned their pasts and futures in the burgeoning [U.S.] and followed their conscience ... across the Rio Grande to fight side by side with the Mexican army under the command of General Antonio López de Santa Ana. Reviled ... as traitors and deserters, they have largely been forgotten in the retelling of history.

“But to generations of Mexicans and Irish,” Moloney explains, “they are remembered to this day as heroes who fought bravely against an unjust and thinly veiled war of aggression. While the San Patricios were comprised of the displaced, the downtrodden ... from many nations, runaway slaves among them, the majority were ... Irishmen recently arrived in America. Driven from their homeland after years of oppressive occupation and the ... Irish Potato Famine, pressed into military service by poverty and circumstance, they often found themselves obliged to serve under officers [in the U.S.] with the same English and Protestant leanings they had suffered under at home. Mistreated and maligned as unwelcome and untrustworthy and asked to fight in a war few understood, it is not so difficult to imagine their motivation.”

The Irish San Patricios, who were anti-colonialist, due to British imperialism’s actions in their homeland and in the Irish diaspora, identified with the Mexicans, Native Americans and former enslaved peoples of African descent who were fighting a fast-growing expansionist U.S. Solidarity had developed among many of these groupings, as they resisted the U.S. aim of expanding slavery into Mexican territory in the late 1840s.

Moloney concludes: “After distinguishing themselves for skill and bravery in many hard-fought battles, the battalion [made] their last stand at the fort of Churubusco alongside their embattled Mexican compatriots. Knowing their fate would be sealed in defeat, they fought on against the inevitable, some say captured only after their ammunition had been exhausted, refusing to surrender. In a final show of patriotic disdain, many of the surviving San Patricios were unceremoniously separated from the Mexican regulars, court-martialed for treason and made to pay the final price on the gallows. A select few were branded on both cheeks with the letter ‘D’ for deserter and left to their fate.”

During their time together, the Mexicans and San Patricios learned each other’s languages, shared their cultures, and developed close bonds. Though the U.S. oppressors defeated them militarily, they could not bury their contributions. Their legacy continues through oral, cultural and other traditions. A statue in Mexico City honors the San Patricios.

Spirit of resistance today

That spirit of resistance is seen today among artists who contributed to “San Patricio.” Just after the CD was released, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law the racist anti-immigrant SB 1070. Since then, Ronstadt, a longtime Arizona resident whose grandfather was Mexican, and many other artists are speaking out, joining marches, contributing funds and publicly opposing the racist attacks in Arizona and elsewhere. An artists’ boycott of Arizona is growing.

Carrying on the San Patricios’ legacy, the CD’s artists are showing, through concerted action, that working-class and oppressed peoples have more in common with each other than with their oppressors and can only bring about a better world by uniting, building solidarity and fighting back.

For information on “San Patricio,” which also has great Mexican and Irish dance music, go to www.thechieftains.com.