Among the films playing at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival is “Going Varsity in Mariachi,” a feature documentary about the highly competitive world of high school mariachi.
In 2019, the University Interscholastic League, the governing body that oversees all high school competitions in Texas, held its first sanctioned mariachi contest. Since then, these have been largely dominated by high schools from the Rio Grande Valley , which really isn’t that surprising given that many districts in the region have funded these types of programs many years before UIL recognition.
What struck me about this film was that it was very much a border story, and one in which immigration is not at the foreground.We talked a lot about how much we wanted to foreground immigration politics in the film, and some days I would think, “Guys, there are refugee camps 30 minutes away on the other side of the border. How could we not address them?”
As I watched the film, I couldn’t help but to think about how these kids felt very American. There’s a scene in which mariachi director Abel Acuña asks his students what they know about José Alfredo Jiménez, arguably Mexico’s greatest singer-songwriter, and the best they could muster was that he had a mustache. It felt a little shocking, but it also made me realize that these kids’ roots are one or two generations further entrenched in this country than my own.
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