Chicano Pride Hits Sour Note With Mexican Bureaucracy

MEXICO CITY — Most members of the bilingual band Kumbia Kings carry U.S. passports, but as a manager of the musicians put it, "they pretty much work, eat and breathe Mexico."

So when the Tex-Mex group appeared on a nationally televised Mexican talk show last month — with a guitar emblazoned with the colors and symbols of Mexico's national flag — they thought it would be clear the guitar was a gesture of pride in their Mexican heritage.

Wrong.

Since that fateful mid-September appearance, bass guitarist A.B. Quintanilla III, brother of the late singer Selena, and the rest of the Kings have been answering to news reports here that the Mexican government took offense at the guitar.

According to sources in Mexico's Secretariat of Government, somebody in the bowels of an obscure sub-agency called the Department of Civic Promotion saw the Kings play on TV and decided the guitar violated Mexico's law of protection of national symbols.

Not only that, a secretariat spokesman who asked not to be identified confirmed, somebody in this same department concluded the guitar violated two international treaties, including something called the Treaty of Paris on trademark protection.

The violation could result in a diplomat letter of complaint from Mexico to the U.S. State Department, or a fine levied against the band.

"Wow ... really?" is all band assistant Bert Trevino could say first at first when he was reached in his McAllen, Texas, home and informed that the band struck a sour note with the bureaucracy.

"A.B. loves Mexico, man. He didn't do it to disrespect anybody," a dumbfounded Trevino added.

The Kumbia Kings are developing a huge following among Latinos in the United States and in Latin America, where they travel this weekend to play in Bolivia. Next week they are scheduled to play at least three sold-out shows in Mexico City.

Unwittingly, the band also seems to have also wandered into the thorny divide between officialdom in Mexico City and the culture of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans who live in the United States.

Some Mexican officials have trouble coming to terms with mounting U.S. influence in Mexico, including that of Mexican-Americans.

"You must always keep in mind we have a hate-love relationship with the United States. We want the business, but there is resentment, too," said Rossana Fuentes, who has explored the U.S.-Mexico relationship as deputy director of Foreign Affairs magazine in Spanish.

She called the flap over the flag on the guitar "stupid."

"Who's minding the shop over there? What kind of a priority is that?" she asked of the Secretariat of Government.

In another example of discomfort, Mexico's Congress voted this year to allow potentially hundreds of thousands of Mexicans abroad — in the United States, mainly — to vote in the July 2006 presidential election. But the Congress and elections officials also barred candidates from campaigning or giving interviews on foreign soil.

Presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador chose to cancel an appearance in Los Angeles rather than risk being fined or disqualified for making a campaign-related stop abroad.

"Guys, come on," said Primitivo Rodriguez, a vote-abroad adviser to elections officials who doesn't see the difference between interviews here or abroad.

Rodriguez said there are legitimate reasons to limit campaigning because of concerns of unlawful donations of foreign cash, including from corporations.

"But what is a campaign?" he said. He wondered if Mexican political parties will try to object to Mexicans in the United States holding home meetings to support candidates.

The Kumbia Kings also drew heat recently when they played at a rally in Coahuila state for a gubernatorial candidate from Mexico's National Action Party. The opposing Institutional Revolutionary Party filed a complaint with election officials that the Kings broke a law prohibiting foreigners from involvement in politics.

"We're just trying to make a living. We're not for anyone in politics," said David "Chocolate" Martinez, the Kings' road manager. The Kings have been hired to play at other political events for other political parties in Mexico, he said, but won't do it again.

The Mexican government has taken on Mexican artists, too, for alleged abuse of national symbols. Pop star Luis Miguel was told to remove a flag design from a CD cover, and a mariachi singer was fined $45 last year for muffing the national anthem at a soccer game. A Mexican poet could face jail because he's been accused of violating the honor of the flag for writing a poem about cleaning up urine with it.

Quintanilla has decided to remove the flag symbols from his guitar, but the band still can't understand how anyone would think what they were doing was an offense.

"We're proud of where our ancestors came from," manager Martinez said in a phone interview in Mexico City before departing for Bolivia. "When A.B. puts something on his guitar, he puts something on it that is dear to him."