El Viajero Lyrics in English by Luis Miguel
El Viajero is a road trip through Mexico told by a traveller who keeps walking until he finally decides to stay. He opens with "Yo soy ese viajero que va por el camino" (I am that traveller going down the road), heading "por brechas y veredas" (along dirt tracks and footpaths) looking for his destiny.
What he sees is very specific and very rural: golden wheat, cornfields swaying, stone walls that "serpentean" (wind like a snake) and little houses of whitewashed adobe (sun-dried mud brick). Then the song names real places and things. La virgen del cerrito (the Virgin of the little hill) is the kind of hilltop shrine Mexicans visit "el día de su santo" (on her saint's day). Sones jarochos are the folk songs of Veracruz, a molcajete is the stone mortar Mexican kitchens grind salsa in, and el Popo y el Iztaccíhuatl are the two snowy volcanoes near Mexico City, pictured in a famous legend as lovers, which is why he calls them "amantes postrados" (lovers lying down).
The chorus is pure mariachi pride: "México, México, te llevo en el corazón" (Mexico, Mexico, I carry you in my heart) and "de bronce tu corazón" (your heart is made of bronze). By the end the traveller stops travelling: "Me quedo en este suelo" (I'm staying on this land), because he found songs, affection and comfort here. It is a love letter to a whole country, and a lovely list of Mexican vocabulary to steal.
