Music has been used throughout history as a form of activism and protest.
From El Corrido of Gregorio Cortez to La Cucaracha, the tradition of corridos — or narrative Spanish ballads — continues today with ties to traditional and modern techniques.
The guitar quartet Los Inocentes used corridos in San Antonio’s cultural and musical activist scene from the mid-1990s to the mid-2010s.
Husband and wife duo George and Maria Zentella founded the group and started using songs as a way to preserve Mexican American culture in their children.
“They were losing Spanish. So, they needed something to retain the Spanish” Maria said. “My husband and I decided to teach them the history and the culture, and the music … the folkloric music.”
Since then, three generations of the Zentella family are keeping the music alive in a refreshed version of Los Inocentes.
The group now includes Maria’s daughter, Binisa Zentella, and Binisa’s 15-year-old son, Jonathan Wittwer Zentella.
Binisa was inspired to create music in honor of civil rights activist César Chávez after San Antonio’s inaugural march in 1997.
“For me to express everything that I was seeing was really through the art form, and it was like my canvas, the corrido was my canvas,” she said.
The original Los Inocentes recorded an album in 1998 called Not Guilty.
It includes two songs written by Binisa for César Chávez: the Corrido de César Chávez and La Temporada.
