Madison Square Garden could've been El Foro Sol.
For one night, it felt like the entirety of New York's Mexican community was watching Los Tigres del Norte, one of the most celebrated corrido bands in the world, play one of the most historic venues in the United States for the very first time.
" What happened tonight at Madison Square Garden, it's something you never dream — you never realize, in your whole career, that one day you were gonna be here, at this place," says Eduardo Hernandez, a member of Los Tigres Del Norte.
The band has played almost every single place in the country — from armories to rodeos, in big cities and small towns — but the group has never played Madison Square Garden. It's a touchstone career moment for the band, whose every milestone has always been as much their fans' as those of its members.
"I think our fans deserve to be here," band member Hernán Hernández says. "Maybe for some people, it's their first time, like us."
Los Tigres have always made its fans — the immigrants, the people in this country who cook in the kitchen, cut the grass — the celebrated subject of each concert. Many of the band's biggest songs even take direct inspiration from fans' ordinary lives, making Los Tigres shows an exchange from the public to the band and back.
Elizabeth Vargas is a fan who identifies most with the song "La Puerta Negra." It's a song about two young lovers whose families don't approve of their relationship. La puerta negra, "the black door," is a device the families use to keep them apart, but the singer assures his lover that they will overcome it.
Vargas shares that there was a black door in her own life — her Mexican family did not approve of her husband, who's standing beside her tonight, because he is Cuban.
"No matter what happened, [the door] always opened for us," Vargas says in Spanish. "So that song was, like, wow, for me. Every time I heard it, it was for him."
For Jocelyn Romero, she hears her parents' immigrant experience reflected in the song "La Carta." In the song, Los Tigres describe delivering a letter from a son to his mother who've been separated by the border.
The song's lyrics reflect the son's words to his mother: "Espero estar el día de la despedida / Para realizar mi sueño de volvernos a abrazar" (I hope to be there on the day you say goodbye / to realize my dream of us hugging again).
"You put yourself in their shoes," Romero says. " I understand their whole life." The closeness she found with her parents through Los Tigres' music inspired her to buy them tickets to the show.
In recent months, there have been conversations in the Latin music community raising concerns that ticket sales and concert attendance for artists like Los Tigres might be impacted by fears of ICE raids. Some cultural events and concerts have been scaled back or canceled.
For the band, this potential risk for fans is something it is intimately familiar with. The group shared that its members previously lived in this country without legal status.
"I know that people are a little afraid, but it's something us Mexicans like — the fear, the action," Ernesto Sanchez, a sombrero salesman who frequents Mexican cultural events and concerts throughout the city, jokes in Spanish.
" Pues, aquí estamos," Sanchez says — "well, here we are."
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