Season 2, Episode 13: “I’m Sorry I wasn’t Here” ft Diana Gameros

Narration: My name is Meklit and this is Movement, music and migration remixed.

People always ask me why we started this podcast and there’s a bundle of reasons. We wanted to use storytelling as an antidote to our deeply harmful toxic political climate. We were on a quest to build narratives of migration centered on the people who have experienced it. And we wanted to use music to talk about things that are hard to talk about.

But there’s another reason we started this podcast that’s the easy one to overlook, love. I am in love with the music coming out of immigrant communities. And the people making this music, well I am in love with them too. They’re my people.

Today I want to share the story of a woman who is most definitely one of my people. Mexican singer, composer, and multi instrumentalist, Diana Gameros. In this story, which we originally produced in 2018, we follow Diana’s story through one song which she wrote here in the U.S while living as an undocumented person.

Melkit: Check, check, check, check, one, two, check, check, check. So, I’ve known Diana for about 12 years. Do you have, like a favorite sound check song? You know how people,

Diana: No

Melkit: We met in the Mission District of San Francisco when we were both young artists just starting our careers.

Diana: No, I just make it up as I,

Meklit: Let’s do one right now

Diana: All seven and we watched them fall, cuz I’m singing

Narration: We would often perform at the same neighborhood festivals in like garages, and backyards, and livingrooms, and studios. Always free, always packed, and full of life.

Diana: And I have to bring a stand, a music stand, even though I,

Narration: We got to know each other at after parties and sound checks. You know, two songwriters with guitars and the sounds of our homelands.

Diana: All seven and we watched them fall.

Narration: I knew she was something special, right from the start. So one of the amazing things about Diana is that her whole story is right there in her music. There’s one song in particular I’m thinking of called En Juarez, and what I want to do is kinda tell you her story through that song.

Meklit: Can you tell me the story of the song “En Juarez” and what the process of composing it was like?

Diana: Sure. I remember I had just moved to San Francisco. I didn't have family there. And so I remember that I would reflect more. About all that time Juarez was in the news.

NEWSREEL: Maria Caridad’s husband and two sons were kidnapped and executed. Over Thirty girls have gone missing in similar circumstances since 2009.

Diana: Because 2008, 2009 were some of the roughest years for Juarez.

NEWSREEL: This year alone, more than 500 people, or nearly seven people a day have been killed in Juarez. Ten people every day.

Diana: Regarding the femicides and the drug cartels.

NEWSREEL: In a city that is increasingly run by drug cartels. One of the most dangerous in the world.

Diana: Very vividly, I remember that I started thinking about the park that I used to play in in Juarez. Then I started remembering about the time when I was little and how you would see a lot of kids out on the streets. It was a song that a mother would sing, you know? Cme here, my little children, I’m going to tell you about the time when we could still dream. And so, in a way, “En Juarez” was a way for me to comfort myself, comfort the children in a city as violent and as dangerous as Ciudad Juarez.

Narration: Now there’s a reason Diana wrote that song in San Francisco and not in Juarez. And the reason begins with music

Diana: I think I kind of always knew that I was going to do music.

Narration: Diana comes from a very musical family. Her grandmother taught her folk songs as a little girl, and her mother was a singer also.

Diana: She would walk me to a church that was giving guitar lessons for free.

Narration: She nurtured Diana’s dreams of studying music.

Diana: Probably the guitar was bigger than I was, and so she was carrying it with no case.

Narration: Ultimately it was that dream, of studying music, that led Diana to leave her home, and come to the United States.

Diana: And so I tried my best to become an international student. You know, in the, you know the legal way.

Narration: At first she came on a tourist visa, to stay with some family in Michigan for just a couple months.

Diana: I kind of went back and forth, I mean I always had a visa, and was able to travel freely.

Narration: But then when Diana applied for a student visa, she ran into trouble because her parents didn’t earn enough money to prove that they could cover all her expenses.

Diana: You know, I kept failing and failing, and so and so I decided to stay. And went through four years of college completely as an undocumented student.

Narration: After college, those four years turned into five, then ten.

Diana: Yeah. And then fast forward 15 years and I'm still here.

Narration: Just imagine that. Diana’s home town, Ciudad Juarez, is on the US/ Mexico border. She can walk right up to the bridge that connects El Paso, Texas to Juarez, Mexico. She can walk right up to the fence that divides the two countries. But she knows that if she crosses that bridge, if she crosses that fence, she may never be able to cross back. And so she stayed, and built her career here, starting at a little tamale parlor in San Francisco.

Diana: It used to be painted orange and there was a sombrero on top of where I would play.

Narration: She found the gig as soon as she arrived in the city, in 2008.

Diana: And I go on Craigslist and then there's this ad in Spanish that read: Solicitamos cantante

Narration: Basically, the restaurant wanted a singer. Someone who could do ballads, and Mexican pop songs.

Diana: Music in English and in Spanish. It almost, for me it was like it had my name like Diana Gameros, we need you because it's everything that I could do. And then I come to the what. I think it's an interview. And the guy said, OK, so can you start today?

Narration: Since that first gig, Diana has performed all around the US, sharing stages with folks like Joan Baez and The San Francisco Symphony. At first, she kept her legal status a secret. Wherever she went, Diana sang the song “En Juarez” and told audiences about her hometown as she remembered it. Yet she didn’t dare to play it in the one place she wanted to most, in Ciudad Juarez. But when Diana and I sat together in the tamale parlor, she could picture her homecoming show in her mind.

Diana: I know that it's gonna be outdoors. I can already feel the breeze. I'm probably going to like, I'm already ready for maybe one or two songs and not being able to sing them because I'm gonna be crying, you know? But it's really this feeling of like the air for some reason. The things, the thing that keeps coming to me is the sort of the air and kind of feel the breeze.

I am with or without a paper. With or without a document. I am because everything comes from the Earth and just for the simple fact of being, it just is.

Narration: A few months after that conversation, Diana finally received her green card. I can remember the party she threw to celebrate.There were about 30 of us there, spread out on blankets, with tons of food and instruments. It almost felt like a wedding, where the guest of honor drifts around to different groups of people to celebrate with each one of them.

And then, after sixteen years away, she finally went home in the fall of 2018, and now she’s been back several times since.

Meklit: So what we wanna do right now is talk through the trip to Juarez when you were there to perform. So maybe we can just start at the beginning when you arrived in Juarez.

Diana: My mom's home is very colorful. And there's kids. You know, I have my nephews that live next door and my brother. We are all into music. And so it's yeah, it's a very festive vibe. And everybody speaks very loudly.

I've always found it so important that families stick together, you know, and it may be contradictory to the path I chose, which was leave my family. But maybe that's why I appreciate it now more because I didn't have it.

There was another beautiful thing that happened. I got to collaborate with young musicians that are part of the university, Universidad Autónoma De Ciudad Juarez.

DRUMMER: Jualiel, I play the drums.

Diana: A bass player.

BASS PLAYER: Carina Torres, and I play the double bass.

Diana: A clarinetist.

CLARINETIST: Diana Jimenes, and I play the clarinet.

Narration: They would be the band for Diana’s first show in Juarez.

Diana: To me, that was very meaningful because when I left Juarez, that music department didn't exist. You could not get a bachelors in music. But at the same time, it was challenging because, you know, I went to music school in the U.S. And so my musical vocabulary is in English, mainly.

I remember finding it difficult to communicate with them because I was, I would throw all these words in English. You know, I was also very nervous because we didn't have time to rehearse, you know, because I had just arrived to Mexico. And so just one rehearsal, that's what was going to happen, you know.

Narration: Leaving the rehearsal hall that day, Diana couldn’t help but marvel at how much had changed in the years she was away.

Diana: I think I was about their age when I left. You know, when I left in search for a music program and, you know, I immigrated to the United States. And when I left, none of this existed. That big theater, we didn’t have you know, places where

Narration: The murder rate in Juarez peaked exactly a decade ago, in 2010, and then began to fall. Businesses have reopened, nightlife has returned. And so this is the Juarez that Diana is returning to. It’s not the Juarez of her childhood, but it’s also not the Juarez she heard about on the news for all those years.

Diana: You know it’s sort of like I’m seeing the place after the storm has passed

Meklit: Can you take us through how you got yourself ready to actually step onto the stage?

Diana: It's a very festive area because the streets are closed off. There are vendors, there's a cathedral. Before each performance I usually take a few minutes to reflect and to and to thank life for the opportunity. And it took me a few minutes to sort of have it sink in.

You know, when I first arrived in Mexico, I was receiving. Everything was receiving, receiving. But then when I got to perform, I was finally giving them a piece of me, telling them through music. I am here. This is me. You know, seeing people's faces. And for me, they were just the most beautiful faces I've ever seen, the most beautiful audience. You know, I long so much to sing for them that that was the moment it was happening.

Of course I sang En Juarez, and to me, you know, singing that song for my people is like saying to them, you know, I'm sorry I wasn't here for all this. And, but here I am now. And I thought of you this whole time. You have been on my mind and I want to make up for it. And hopefully this song will serve as a, an offering.

Narration: That was Diana Gameros singing her song, “En Juarez”.

This story was produced by Ian Coss, Julie Caine, and me, Meklit Hadero. With support from the Mellon Foundation, The Pontarella Foundation, and Cal Humanities a partner of the NEH. Our broadcast partner is The World. We are distributed by PRX.

If you enjoyed this story, consider sending it to a friend, or leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts. Believe me, this stuff really does help people find the show. If you happen to be curious about my albums, or performances, you can learn more at meklitmusic.com. Movement will be back with new episodes every other Tuesday through the fall.