Word: cilindrero
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Last week, in a backs-to-the-wall gesture against the relentless onslaught of modernity, Federal District authorities took steps to remit all taxes and licensing fees for the capital's remaining hundred hurdy-gurdy men. "The best in popular entertainment," cried an official, "is represented by the cilindrero." The cilindreros, lugging their 80-lb. hand organs along Mexico City's farthest-flung streets, are still favorite visitors in the poorest barrios. "Anybody can play an organ, but not everybody can carry one," is a standard all-purpose joke in Mexico...
...Deal?" On a lucky day, an organ grinder may make as much as 20 pesos from such notoriously open-handed patrons as drunks, lovers and tourists. But his steadiest customers are the poor. When the shoeshiner's family takes a trip on the second-class bus, the cilindrero plays Las Golondrinas at the sendoff. He performs at dances for those who cannot afford to hire mariachis or fancy bands. When at midafternoon he shuffles into the big patio of a working-class tenement, children shriek, dogs bark, chickens scurry around, and women drop their housework to listen...
...walking and lugging, say the cilindreros, it is not a bad life. They get food at many kitchen doors in exchange for their music. They can usually make a deal at the saloon. And many a pretty lady's maid has succumbed to such seductive boleros as Even If You Kill Me, I Love You. Says Hurdy-Gurdy Man Angeles Reyes: "My cilindro gives me food, pulque and love." The tourist bureaus, hotelkeepers and the poor all agree that motorized Mexico must save a place for the strolling cilindrero if the country is to keep its soul...
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