Mojado
Ricardo Arjona is a Guatemalan singer-songwriter and former basketball player and school teacher. Arjona is one of the most successful Latin American artists of all time, with more than 20 million albums sold. He is often called El Animal Nocturno (The Nocturnal Animal), thanks to his breakthrough success with his fourth studio album which bears the same name. His music ranges from ballads to Latin pop, rock, pop rock, Cuban music, and more recently a cappella performances and a mixture of Tejano music and Norteño music, and other Afro-American and Latin sounds. Arjona is noted for his lyrical style, and often addresses topics such as love, sexuality, violence, racism and immigration.
"Mojado" (wetback) is a Latin pop song. Lyrically, the song revolves around immigration, telling the story of a man who abandons his country to another in search of a better quality of life. These people who look for a better life are mistreated by a lot of people including their own race. They fight to provide for their families. The grand majority of them just want to work, and what they find is hate and discrimination. It is true that some of them cross by the Rio Grande but that is not a reason to call them any names. If recall history we will realize that the first settlers had to cross not a river but miles and miles of ocean. In my opinion that will make all of us a “wetbacks.”
Mojado
(wetback)
He packed a couple of shirts, a hat
His call to adventure
Six pieces of advice, seven photos
A thousand recollections
He packed his desire to remain
His state of transforming himself
Into the man that he dreamed of
And has not achieved
He said good-bye with a grimace disguised as a smile
And supplicated to his crucified God on the mantelpiece
For the protection of his loved ones
And he broke through (lit: perforated) the border
As he could
Chorus:
If the pale moon slips
Through any cornice
Without any permission
Why does the wetback needs
To show with visas
That he is not from Neptune?
The wetback has the desire to dry off
The wetback is wet because of the tears that nostalgia evokes
The wetback, the one without documentation
Loads the packages that the legal would not load
Not even when forced
The torment of a piece of paper has turned him into a fugitive
And he is not from here because his name does not appear in the files
Nor is he from there because he went away
{Chorus}
Wetback
He knows your truth through lies
He knows anxiety through sadness
Of seeing a freeway and dreaming of the path
That leads to your house
Wetback
Wet from so much weeping
Knowing that in some place
Waits a kiss taking a break
Since the day on which you left
{Chorus}
If the universal visa is issued
On the day that we are born
And it expires upon death
Why do they persecute you, wetback
If the consul of the heavens
Already gave you permission?
Works Cited
Ricardo Arjona. "Mojado." You Tube. You Tube, 22 Feb. 2013. Web. 01 Mar. 2015.
"Social Media: Facebook Ricardo Arjona Músico/banda." Web. 01 Mar. 2015.