Local folk rock group Bee Humana have released a song, “Corrido de Adelanto”. The song calls attention to the brutality and denial of due process by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The band is donating proceeds from the sale of the song through bandcamp.com to Amnesty International U.S.A.
Singer, songwriter and guitarist Bee Shuman explains in the latest episode of The Ear Opener that “Corrido de Adelanto” is an update of a classic corrido called “La Carcel De Cananea”, which dates back to 1917. Shuman learned the song and performed it for years before making the decision to write an adaptation.
“The original story,” Shuman said, “that the original song was about was there’s a place called Cananea in Mexico where there was an American-owned and operated mine back in the early 1900s. And there were American workers and there were Mexican workers…But the Mexicans at some point go on strike. In fact, it was right when they announced that they were going to start paying the American workers $5 an hour compared to like the maybe $2 an hour that the Mexican workers were getting…And it was brutally suppressed, as you might imagine. These things usually are.“
Shuman and her husband, Marcus Roth, decided to write new lyrics for the song, and it became “Corrido de Adelanto”.
“So in the original version, it’s the story of a man who goes down to the strike and then gets arrested and thrown into the jail of Cananea,” Shuman said. “And in our new version, it’s a story about an honest, hardworking man who comes to the United States doing all the things he’s supposed to do…doing all the paperwork he’s supposed to do, keeping up with all the stuff to get citizenship eventually. And he shows up for this routine visit to immigration court and gets nabbed by ICE.“
Shuman added, “We know that this story that we’re depicting in this song is actually not unique, and there’s lots of people getting taken by ICE that are not the so-called criminals…according to what the government told us was going to be happening. Lots of innocent people are being seized and so we just really want to say something about it, and this is what we’re saying. This is the song.”
Shuman noted an interesting point about corridos that is also relevant to news media in the United States in 2026. “Corridos actually were also used back then in Mexico to spread news,” Shuman said, “especially since the newspapers were owned by the corrupt president of the time. So it’s important for people to have different ways to get news. And corridos were one of the ways that people got news.” Shuman added, “In the era when the original song was written, the Mexican press was being controlled by the Mexican government. In our current era in the U.S., the government is attacking the freedom of the press both at home and across the globe.”
“Corrido de Adelanto” is one side of a double-A single the band is releasing. The flip side is a haunting song, “The Crow”, that turns a superstition about crows on its head. Digital versions of both songs are available on the Bee Humana bandcamp site, and proceeds from the sale of “Corrido de Adelanto” are pledged to Amnesty International U.S.A.. The songs will be released to streaming platforms this Friday August 14.
The episode featuring Bee Shuman airs Tuesday night, August 11, 2026 at 8 p.m. You can also stream it through the applet below.