Influential Mexican punk band Tijuana No! has always seen itself as the mouthpiece of the downtrodden on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border.

“We are a continuity of the voice of el pueblo,” said Teca García, one of three singers in the band, which has been putting injustice and human rights abuses under the spotlight for over seven years now as one of the premiere underground groups in the rock and punk en español scenes.

But these days the pueblo is an international one, thanks in part to a new album, Contra-Revolution Avenue, which pairs Tijuana No!’s official members &emdash; García, along with Luis Güereña on vocals and percussion, Ceci Bastida on vocals and keyboards; Jorge “Borja” Velásquez on bass; Jorge Jiménez on guitar; and Alex Zuniga on drums &emdash; with some of indie rock, world beat and hip hop’s most experimental musicians.

With participating musicians hailing from as far away as the Basque region of Spain and America’s midwest, Tijuana No! has taken the phrase “border region” beyond its obvious geographic meaning to encompass a psychological and musical space inhabited by artists willing to break down artificial boundaries of language, genre and citizenship.

Contributors include tracks with Rasta-punk legend H.R. of Bad Brains, former member of The Breeders and the Pixies Kim Deal, Chicano hip-hop pioneer Kid Frost, Fishbone’s Angelo Moore, Horny Toad’s Kid Caviar, Negu Gorriak’s Fermín Muguruza, as well as members of L.A. punk-a-billy favorites Calavera, the Pietasters and John Pantle, Tijuana No!’s trombone-playing manager who had also previously managed Sublime, Save Ferris and No Doubt.

On the album, Deal and Bastida pair up for a grungy, bilingual duet. Moore sings and plays his sax and the space-age, violin-like instrument, the theremin. H.R. offers backup vocals, as does Muguruza of Negu Gorriak, a Basque tropical-punk band with a separatist political agenda. Frost raps with Güereña in “Stolen at Gunpoint,” a song about U.S. land acquisitions.

“We have always been versatile, always experimenting and not necessarily with Mexican music alone, but also employing all the cultures of the world,” says founder and primary songwriter Luis Güereña about the music on Tijuana No!’s first two critically acclaimed albums in the Latin market on Culebra/BMG, Tijuana No! and Transgresores de la Ley (which Negu Gorriak’s Muguruza produced).

The result is Tijuana No!’s hybrid sound, which blends Afro-Latin folk-punk with reggae and hard core, world beat and ska, coated with abrasive male and melodic female vocals. “We don’t look to fall under any one musical line or genre,” Güereña says. “Our sound is a fusion that reflects what everyone brings to the group.”

But while the band has always seen itself as an international, rather than strictly regional, band, Contra-Revolution Avenue (BMG Latin U.S.) marks Tijuana No!’s first official attempt to tap the U.S. market.

“We think it’s important that as many people as possible listen to our music,” said Güereña, who wears a T-shirt with a manipulated image of the Pope holding his pregnant stomach &emdash; an obvious jab at the Catholic Church’s stance against contraceptives.

One half of the new album is English, which means Tijuana No! is not afraid of wandering beyond the constrains of a genre of music that is often called “rock en tu idioma” or rock in your language. “So many Latinos know English,” Güereña says. “To record in English gives us the opportunity to not only reach the Latin market but the mixed U.S. market as well.”

Tijuana No! started as a group of friends with shared ideals. In the 1980s, Güereña was a punk concert promoter who organized shows for U.S. and Mexican punk bands in Tijuana. At the time, he was in a band called Solución Mortal. When the band played in San Diego or Los Angeles, he would smuggle his bassist in through border tomato fields. (Everyone but the bassist had legal papers.)

Later, he met Zuniga at a fundraiser he had helped organize to raise money for the leftist rebels in El Salvador and Nicaragua. It featured bands such as Black Flag and the Dead Kennedys.

Zuniga had been working with Julietta Venegas in a band called Chantaje. Güereña joined Chantaje and recorded a demo featuring the ska-punk sound &emdash; with Venegas as vocalist &emdash; which later became Tijuana No!’s signature sound.

Venegas, who wrote one of Tijuana No!’s most popular songs, “Pobre de Ti,” left for a solo career and just released her first album in Mexico this year.

The rest of Tijuana No!’s current line-up &emdash; including Bastida, who replaced Venegas &emdash; came on board.

Originally, the band was just called ¡No!, but members soon found out that another Mexican band already had the same name.

“We were going to call ourselves No de Tijuana, but realized that other bands could just say No de Monterrey, No of whatever town or city in Mexico,” Güereña says. “We wanted to keep ‘No’ in the name, so we decided on Tijuana No!”

In the 1990s, the band moved on to sing about the Zapatista and Tupac Amaru guerrilla movements in Mexico and Peru, respectively. In the meantime, they played key benefits such as the Big Top Locos 1 and 2 festivals in Los Angeles in 1994 and 1995, where they performed alongside Rage Against the Machine and Youth Brigade.

Having three voices gives Tijuana No! the amorphous quality of being three bands in one. García raps. Güereña growls. Bastida sings with a folksy bite.

In the past, Tijuana No! &emdash; unfortunately &emdash; didn’t capitalize on Bastida’s voice. One of the few high-profile female vocalists in the rock en español scene (Andrea Echeverry of Aterciopelados among them), Bastida has sung at most a couple of tracks per album, relegated to back up vocals most of the time on the first two albums.

But her vocals have always been the highlight of any performance.

Her rendition of The Clash’s “Spanish Bombs,” a simple three-chord classic, displays her ability to switch from accentless English to the Spanish-language chorus in the song, which appears in the album Transgresores de la Ley.

Now, on Contra-Revolution Avenue Bastida sings on at least four of the tracks. She adds grace to the forceful rhetoric the band employs to get its message across and strengthens the music’s impact.

And while this newest album may catapult Tijuana No! to a new level of popularity and sales, politics will still be front and center for this group, whose name is interpreted by many as a protestation of the flight of Mexicans to the United States via the Baja California city of Tijuana.

In fact, Güereña can often be seen goose-stepping across stage while he sings “Gringos Ku Klux Klanes,” a protest of California Governor Pete Wilson’s hostile anti-immigrant legislation, or kicking an effigy of former Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

With their aggressive lyrics &emdash; sung in Spanish, English and Spanglish &emdash; and political-rally style stage show, Tijuana No! delivers a message the members believe will take a long time to get across to a wider audience.

Contra-Revolution Avenue, a play on the name of Tijuana’s commercial strip Avenida Revolución (an oxymoron, the band members say), stays true to the group’s political leanings. The song is a statement about the hypocrisy involved in a commercial strip populated by destitute people.

Recently, Tijuana No! headlined a benefit for Zapatistas in Mexico City. It was the culmination of a march that began in Chiapas and ended in the city, where food and supplies awaited the Zapatista rebels. It’s a sign that for some, being there for the causes you believe in is more important than just sending cash contributions.

“Until the quality of life for the underclass improves around the world, we will always sing about political awareness, ” said Güereña. “As long as those who cause misery to the underprivileged don’t change their ways, we can’t stop trying to spread our message.”

This article originally appeared in Frontera Magazine, which chronicled the Chicano/Latino arts and cultural movement from 1995 to 2001.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!