Unlikely band of officials jams on border
ALTO BONITO — The show began with the gentle squeeze of an accordion, a strumming guitar and a call to residents of this tiny border hamlet.
“Good afternoon, Alto Bonito,” shouted Manuel Maldonado, keyboardist and lead singer of Los Federales, a band made up of immigration officials. “You’re few, but beautiful,” he continued in Spanish, riffing on the town name to describe its people.
The residents of Alto Bonito looked on in befuddled wonder at these uniformed men jamming popular Tejano and Norteño songs.
Most people had come out for the free hot dogs and a glimpse of the 30-foot intrepid utility boat that patrols the Rio Grande waters nearby. Few expected to see the normally stonefaced U.S. Border Patrol agents and Customs and Border Protection officers cut loose.
“They think we’re out there just to arrest people,” Maldonado said, moments before the show began. “We’re human, too.”
In recent months, Border Patrol has been putting on regular community outreach events that offer communities across the Rio Grande Valley an opportunity to meet the agents who patrol and sometimes live in their communities.
Los Federales has become an integral part of those outreach efforts, but this improbable union of musicians almost never happened.
One serendipitous day in September 2012, the agency was celebrating a Hispanic heritage event that called for music. Maldonado and a couple of other officers had agreed to bang out a few songs, but they were several men short of a proper band.
Amador Carbajal, a former assistant manager at Wal-Mart turned Border Patrol agent, offered to play bass. Quickly an amalgamation of weekend warriors and church band stars began to emerge from the agency’s rank and file.
They played only a few songs that day, but the response from their comrades in blue and green showed they had been a resounding success. Los Federales was born.
‘I was shocked’
After their inaugural show, interest in the band “blew up,” according to Maldonado.
The band swelled into a nine-piece group with drums, guitar, keyboard, accordion and saxophone. With each gig, Los Federales has expanded its repertoire, adding country ballads, a few Ricky Iglesias songs, and fast-paced rock for good measure.
“I was shocked,” said Nora Dams, 52, a city employee from neighboring Rio Grande City. “We thought they only had a talent for border crossing issues. Who would have thought they would be such good musicians?”
That sort of public reaction is typical, said drummer Edgar Sanchez.
His friends used to tease him about his days in the high school band. Earlier this year, Sanchez was the only agent in Texas selected to the national pipe and drum band. No one is laughing now, he said.
“Who would have thought?” Sanchez said. “I’m working customs and still playing drums.”
On a sweltering afternoon, Erby Villarreal, a 28-year-old butcher, leisurely walked his family around the park, stopping to inspect the Border Patrol equipment on display. Villarreal had brought his wife and two young children to the event to prove to them that border agents were not to be feared.
“Sometimes the kids are scared of them,” Villarreal said. “They’re here to protect us.”
Easing the suspicions that border communities sometimes have of the several thousand Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley is entirely the point of outreach events. The way Javier Nieto sees it, bridging the divide is easier to accomplish if you can make them dance.
“We want these people smiling and dancing,” Nieto said.
Word spreading
Before joining Los Federales, Nieto played in fledgling garage bands in his hometown of Brownsville, and worked different jobs to pay the bills. When he finally joined the largest law enforcement agency in the nation, he figured his playing days were behind him.
Since then, word of Los Federales has spread across the borderlands and some of the band members have begun entertaining the idea of playing a gig north of Falfurrias and the Border Patrol checkpoint. No matter where they play, this band of men in blue and green are happy to jam every chance they get.
”It was good to come back,” Nieto said during a break. “I never thought I was going to do it again.”