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Pedro Rivera: Entrepreneur for a New California
Immigrant Rises from Poverty to Found a Record Company
 Listen to Mandalit del Barco's report.
 Return to 'The New California'
Aug. 9, 2002 -- Pedro Rivera's rags-to-riches story plays like the lyrics to one of the Mexican ballads -- or corridos -- that he's written, sung, and, produced at his small record company, Cintas Acuario.
As Mandalit del Barco reports for All Things Considered, Rivera was born the son of a farmworker in 1947 in Jalisco, Mexico. His family was so poor that his oldest brother died of hunger. Rivera was determined not to let that happen to him.
He says he can't remember a time when he wasn't working. As a child, he sold food to workers in the cotton fields, and peddled bread and tamales to the neighborhood cantinas. By 14, he had left home and school, and had already married the woman who is still his wife.
Alone, he headed north, crossing illegally into the United States to find some place to raise his family and earn money. He worked one season in the cornfields of central California before bringing his wife Rosa Melia and their son Lupillo to live with him.
Husband and wife both toiled hard, each doing various jobs to bring in money.
One thing Rivera did was to take Polaroid photos of baptisms and weddings, and at local cantinas, where he also would sing about the exploits of celebrated drug traffickers. "He was always a hustler," says Agustin Gurza, who covers Latin music for The Los Angeles Times. "Not a con man, but a guy who was always looking for the opportunity to sell something or make a little money or do a little something on the side."
The couple also sold candies and bootlegged music tapes at the Paramount swap meet, where thousands of Mexican and Central American immigrants gather to buy inexpensive clothing, housewares, makeup, music, and the like. Here and in the cantinas, Rivera tapped into the thriving underground economy of immigrant Los Angeles.
Lupillo Rivera |
With the money he scraped together, Rivera started a small company where he recorded the ballads of Chalino Sanchez, who sang about immigrant smugglers, drug kingpins, and other pistol-packing outlaw heroes.
Sanchez became an underground hit. His mystique became legendary after he was kidnapped and found dead in a ravine in 1992.
Since then, Rivera's record label, Cintas Acuario, has recorded CDs by his children Lupillo, Jenni and Gustavo, as well as his own efforts.
A few years ago, Rivera became a U.S. citizen, and now he and his family live in a large ranch house with a swimming pool in suburban Lakewood. The American Dream. While he speaks a little English, he does most of his business in Spanish.
"Pedro represents the new image of the entrepreneur," says Leo Estrada, a professor in UCLA's department of urban planning. "An entrepreneur who comes here with limited resources and background but he has an incredible tenacity to succeed…"
Lupillo, now 30, has become a sensation even bigger than his father. He's climbed the Billboard Latin charts and he performs before sellout crowds of bilingual Latinos. He speaks English perfectly, but he chooses to sing in Spanish. "Previously, Mexican bands had to go back to Mexico if they wanted to do anything, make it there, and then come back," says Gurza. "But Lupillo made it here primarily because of the big demographic changes. There's power in numbers."
Previous Coverage
In Part I of a report from November 2001, NPR's Renee Montagne talked with Elijah Wald, who spent years researching Mexican "narcocorrido" music, and later wrote a book about it.
In Part II, Mandalit del Barco talked with corrido composers, including Pedro Rivera, struggling with writing songs about Sept. 11.
In March 2002, Jacki Lyden spoke with folklorist Jim Griffith, who compiled a CD of corridos.
Other Resources
A review of the book Narcocorridos by Elijah Wald
The official Web site for Wald's book
Pedro Rivera's record label, Cintas Acuario
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