The Halls of Moctezuma (2015)
In 2014, the Arizona town of Oracle was the setting for the largest protest to date against the admission of unaccompanied children from Central America.
For this piece, Yoshua Okón brought together nine undocumented immigrant children from Guatemala into a choir. They sing an adapted Spanish version of the Marines’ Hymn. The original version from 1929 was set to music by Offenbach and glorifies American invasions around the world, beginning with that of Mexico in 1847.
In this new version, children sing about the US invasion of their country. It foregrounds the complicity of international companies, such as Chiquita Brands International Sàrl, the successor to the United Fruit Company. The power of these American companies was many times greater than the political power at home. Countries in South America are often condescendingly referred to as banana republics.
The irony is that these children had to flee Guatemala precisely because US foreign policy stimulated the cut-throat and criminal practices of such companies.