Song of the Day 9/12: Linda Ronstadt, “La Cigarra”

Big shout-out to Linda Ronstadt, who took to Instagram on the occasion of a Trump rally in her hometown today to blister the immigrant-hating/immigrant-marrying ex-president.

Donald Trump is holding a rally on Thursday in a rented hall in my hometown, Tucson. I would prefer to ignore that sad fact. But since the building has my name on it, I need to say something.

I don’t just deplore his toxic politics, his hatred of women, immigrants and people of color, his criminality, dishonesty and ignorance — although there’s that.

For me it comes down to this: In Nogales and across the southern border, the Trump Administration systematically ripped apart migrant families seeking asylum. Family separation made orphans of thousands of little children and babies, and brutalized their desperate mothers and fathers. It remains a humanitarian catastrophe that Physicians for Human Rights said met the criteria for torture.

There is no forgiving or forgetting the heartbreak he caused.

Trump first ran for President warning about rapists coming in from Mexico. I’m worried about keeping the rapist out of the White House.

Ronstadt’s roots in Tucson go as deep as anyone’s. Her German great-grandfather immigrated to Mexico in the 1840s and settled in Tucson, then a part of Sonora. Tucson didn’t become part of the United States until the Gadsden Purchase in 1854, so there’s a bitter and ugly irony in holding an anti-immigrant rally there.

Ronstadt was the rock diva of the ’70s, but she was too versatile to be confined to rock and country. She sang Gilbert and Sullivan on Broadway in the early ’80s, then released an album of traditional Sonoran folk songs in 1987. “La Cigarra” is Spanish for “the cicada,” which the singer wishes wouldn’t sing anymore. Sort of how most people feel about Trump.