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Como un ángel o un fantasma
Se aparece al ilegal
Los cuida y hasta los cura
Pa' que puedan continuar
Y luego desaparece
Señal que van a llegar
Like an angel or a ghost
He appears to the illegal
He protects them and even heals them
So that they can continue on
And then he disappears
A sign that they will soon arrive
-Excerpt from "Santo Toribio Romo" by Los Originales de San Juan1
Many ghost stories are shared as chilling folk narratives, shrouded in macabre details that elicit fear and terrifying suspense for listeners. In other ghost stories, the threat of confronting malevolent spirits warns listeners against transgressing certain moral codes. However, based on musical testimonies circulating on social media, several undocumented migrants are telling a different kind of ghost story marked by themes of religious devotion, transborder survival, and an apparition who protects them and helps them cross the US-Mexico border. Since the early 2000s, a new phenomenon of corrido composition and performance, which has received little to no attention outside of its listening community, narrates the near-death experiences of undocumented Mexican migrants and their miraculous encounters with the ghost of Saint Toribio Romo in the desert. Saint Toribio Romo, a Mexican Catholic martyr killed in Jalisco in 1928, is referred to by migrants as El Santo Coyote, the Holy Coyote (or holy smuggler), whom migrants have adopted as the unofficial Patron Saint of Immigrants.
While the corrido, Mexico's emblematic ballad tradition, saw its peak compositional and performance period during the years surrounding the 19101917 Mexican Revolution, Mexican migrant and border-crossing narratives have long been preserved in song and corrido texts dating back to the nineteenth century.2 Corridos about and dedicated to Saint Toribio Romo, which I define as ghost smuggling ballads, depict the migrant journey in the transborder region, the liminal space of the thousands of miles of desert that stretch along the US-Mexico border. Ghost smuggling ballads redefi ne and transform the coyote figure-a human smuggler known among the migrant community as a potentially untrustworthy, dangerous, yet necessary guide in the bordercrossing process-into a source of trust and divine protection. These ballads, shared primarily as informally published videos on social media, relay testimonies of transborder survival and miraculous intercession. One such...