AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

We’re joined now by the acclaimed, Grammy-winning Mexican singer-songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist, Julieta Venegas. She’s been a leading figure in Latin rock and pop for decades, often transcending genres, beloved by audiences around the world. She was also a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador for Mexico and has been an outspoken voice for gender equality. She has released nine albums. Her first, Aquí, was released in 1997.

Julieta was born in Long Beach, California, but grew up in the Mexican border city of Tijuana. Her latest single, featuring Yahritza y Su Esencia, is titled “La Línea,” which roughly translates to “The Line.” It’s a colloquial term that refers to the Tijuana-San Ysidro border crossing. The song featured in her new album, Norteña, in which she explores her roots growing up along the border. The album is set to be released on May 14th. Her new memoir is also titled Norteña.

Earlier this month, she received the Artistic Excellence Award at the 2026 Billboard Latin Women in Music gala in Miami. She dedicated the award to, quote, “all the people who are currently separated from their loved ones, whether due to detentions or deportations, or perhaps they are chasing a dream that takes them away from their families.”

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Julieta Venegas.

JULIETA VENEGAS: Thank you, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s great to have you with us. Congratulations on the release of your album and also the publication of your book, Norteña.

JULIETA VENEGAS: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s start with Norteña, the album. Talk about what’s behind it and your work overall.

JULIETA VENEGAS: Yeah, well, I have been thinking about doing this record for a long time. I wanted to do something that had to do with the music that I grew up listening to at home, that when I was a kid, it was like — it was cooler to listen to the American radio, but in my house, my parents loved listening to Juan Gabriel, to José Alfredo Jiménez, to all these, like, Mexican singers. And so, it was always like a mix that I grew up with.

And this record is sort of like a homage to all that, to how my family made me live with music and live happily with music, you know, sort of. So, I’m inspired in all those sounds that I grew up listening to, the música norteña that my parents would play for me, which was mostly, I don’t know, like Tigres del Norte. And I think about Juan Gabriel also, who’s a composer who was born in Ciudad Juárez, and he’s like super, like, incredible. So, you know, I’m sort of roughly getting inspired by it. I wasn’t doing technically like a norteño traditional album. It was more like what I imagined to be my own version of norteño music.

AMY GOODMAN: What does norteña mean to you? Translated it into English.

JULIETA VENEGAS: Norteña means somebody from the North, I think. So, I would be a norteña. I always say I’m a norteña, because I’m from Tijuana, although I’ve been living in Mexico City for a while, and I was also living in Buenos Aires for a while. I was always norteña. I’m a norteña from Mexico, from, you know, Tijuana, and I grew up in a border city. So, I think that that gives you just a different vision of, you know, where you grow up. And, for example, Mexico was like a myth in my family. We love Mexico. It was always about what was going on in Mexico, the politics. Everything was always being discussed. And yet our daily life was much closer to the U.S. So we have this mix, you know? So, I went to live in Mexico City very young, because I felt like it was the most glamorous city in the world. I still consider it one of the most glamorous cities, so I still enjoy it.

AMY GOODMAN: So, your music has been so influential throughout Latin America and around the world and has spanned decades. You have just released your ninth album. Can you talk about your new single, “La Línea,” what la línea means?

JULIETA VENEGAS: Well, la línea is the border, I guess. So, whenever we refer in Tijuana as going to the other side of the border, it’s always like, ”cruzar la línea.” And we grew up seeing people and families who were migrating, because that’s what — Tijuana being a border city, it’s always been like that. It’s always been like a lot of people who come through and maybe don’t want to stay. They just want to cross the border. They want to go to the U.S. And sometimes they’ll stay in Tijuana and sort of become part of the city.

But this song is particularly about a situation of two people being separated because of a deportation, because I think that that has definitely changed a lot. I mean, when I was growing up, somebody who was deported was maybe someone who had done something illegal, or whatever. Now it has nothing to do with that. It just has to do with, you know, with cruelty and the cruelty of the times. But I wanted to express a feeling of hope, of being sad and at the same time hopeful that that person — you will see that person again, no? So, that’s — the song is mostly just emotional. You know, it’s more like …

AMY GOODMAN: Share a few of the lines with us.

JULIETA VENEGAS: Una línea nos separa — no. “A line separates us from so long ago, a capricious line that divides our world. It leaves you on one side, which is not for me.”

JULIETA VENEGAS: [performing “La Línea”]

Una línea nos separa desde hace tanto tiempo
Una línea que me impide poder llegar a ti
Esa línea caprichosa que divide nuestro mundo
Te deja a ti de un lado que no es para mí

Te extraño tanto, no puedo sin ti
Pero tengo que seguir, tengo que seguir
Hasta el día en que vuelva a ti
Seguiré cantando
Seguiré cantando
Seguiré cantando

AMY GOODMAN: Julieta Venegas, singing her new single, “La Línea,” which means “The Line.” Can you talk about Trump’s immigration policy? It has led to so many deaths of U.S. citizens and noncitizens.

JULIETA VENEGAS: Well, it’s terrible. I mean, no matter where you might see it from, it’s just so cruel and something that — I mean, when I talk about it through the song, when I talk about how it is that people can be separated from their kids or separated from their families, and, you know, basically it’s just a way of showing cruelty, I think. It’s just — I think it’s so sad that the world that we live in right now will have — you know, has a place for that, no?

AMY GOODMAN: And talk about what it meant to release “La Línea,” but also the book, Norteña. So, you are multimedia here.

JULIETA VENEGAS: Being multimedia.

AMY GOODMAN: And what it means? Your book is now released in Spanish. It’ll be released in English and other languages. But the difference in how you express yourself?

JULIETA VENEGAS: Yeah, I think this project came about like that. I hadn’t really thought about doing it all together. But I realized, as I was working on the album and working on the songs, that I was sort of working on a sort of musical memoir, you know, that this was like what I evocatively felt that was the music that I grew up with, and it made me feel like at home, you know? And I was also living in Argentina and missing my family and missing — I guess this was my way of coming back, you know? I mean, first by working on the album and the book, and then, when I finished it, I realized the whole thing — I was doing this whole thing because I actually just wanted to go back to Mexico.

And so, basically, the book is also a memoir from my — my big question was: Why music? Why do I do music? Why is music something that I ended up doing? So, I guess the memoir, I sort of investigate on that and sort of try to get to that answer. And the album is also like just celebrating my family, the music that I listen to with my family and the way that they taught me how to listen to, which is just an emotional enjoying, you know, with other people and a connection with other people also.

AMY GOODMAN: You sing about Tijuana. You love Mexico City. Talk about the differences, for a global audience.

JULIETA VENEGAS: OK. So, Tijuana, you know, is a border city. In Mexico and in other places, it’s always been sort of like a mythical creature, Tijuana, you know? It’s like a border city. There’s a lot of — it’s dangerous, and at the same time there’s people from all over the world there. And then, Mexico City is, you know, this huge — at least the way I saw it when I was growing up was like this huge, glamorous place, which is, you know, all the culture that comes out of Mexico happens to be from. I mean, it doesn’t have to be from the capital city, but it also, you know, has to go through there. And I think that when you’re from Tijuana, you feel very far away from Mexico City, and yet you feel connected to Mexico. So, you know, it’s very different to be in the south of Mexico than to be in the north of Mexico, I think.

JULIETA VENEGAS: It’s a song called “Oleada” from my third album.

[performing “Oleada”]

No quisiera detener
Esta oleada que me lleva
A dónde, adónde no lo sé
Sólo me muevo con ella

Y todo lo que ya viví
Lo sigo cargando
Lo llevo muy dentro de mí
Nunca lo he olvidado
Lo siento tan cerca de aquí
Lo llevo muy dentro de mí

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about your collaboration with the group Yahritza y Su Esencia? Translate it into English, but then also what that meant to you.

JULIETA VENEGAS: Yeah, well, “La Línea,” when I — I knew I wanted to have Yahritza y Su Esencia in the album when I was barely writing it. I wanted them to be, because I think they’re — what they’re doing right now, they’re doing — they’re sort of rethinking Mexican popular music. And although they’re from the U.S., you listen to them, and they definitely sound — I mean, what they’re doing, the new songs and the style that they’re working with, is just — I think it’s wonderful, because it’s a renewal of something that, you know, sounds familiar, and yet it doesn’t, no? And her voice, I think Yahritza has a very expressive and emotional voice, which I really wanted to have her somewhere in the album.

So, you know, I had a bunch of songs, and then I realized that “La Línea” was this place. The part that she sings is exactly the part where it’s an image of the moment when, you know, like, the protagonist in the song was taken away, you know, and was separated from his loved one. So, I don’t know. It’s just like a really intense and emotional moment.

AMY GOODMAN: They’re based in Washington state?

JULIETA VENEGAS: Yes, they’re based in Washingon state, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: And who do they identify with? Do they identify with the United States or Mexico?

JULIETA VENEGAS: I think both, I mean, because they grew up in the U.S., and yet the music they’re doing is definitely Mexican. So, I think it’s really funny, because I’ve thought about that a lot, how, for me, language has been also an emotional expression. I mean, I think Spanish, for me, is what I think about when I think about my mom. I mean, that’s the language she spoke to me — I mean, she speaks to me. And now my — I don’t know — my couples that I’ve had, I’ve spoken to in Spanish. So I feel like Spanish is sometimes more close to my emotions, no? At one point even, I had tried to write in English, and I thought it was really bad. I just felt like it didn’t sound natural. And I think that happens a lot with language. I think you do have like an emotional connection. And obviously, Yahritza y Su Esencia have that connection, because they do all their music in Spanish.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about how artists have responded to what’s happening in the United States today under President Trump, the attacks on the immigrant community, why you see songwriting as a vital part of dissent and protest?

JULIETA VENEGAS: Well, the thing is that I feel that art has its own way of giving people something, not necessarily — I mean, I don’t know if art can actually do something structural, like change something that’s structural, besides the feelings that it gives you and maybe trying to express those feelings, because I feel that, like, when I write a song like “La Línea” — which I don’t even know if I could consider it political, I think it’s more, like, emotional — I feel that at least it’s a way of opening up other doors of feeling, because that’s what music is about, you know, expressing things about you — you don’t have the words for, maybe, at that point and that you need them, or maybe you need to say something about certain things. But I don’t know about the — besides that, I mean, I don’t know if musicians or artists can change the structure of things. I feel like we can do what we do, but I don’t know if we can actually change — I don’t know. I think we can, in people’s minds or in people’s emotions, you know?

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you so much for being with us. Julieta Venegas is a Grammy-winning, acclaimed Mexican singer-songwriter, instrumentalist and producer. She happened to be born in Long Beach, California, but grew up in the Mexican border city of Tijuana, released her debut album, Aquí, in 1997. Now her new single, featuring Yahritza y Su Esencia, is titled “La Línea,” roughly translates as “The Line,” a song featured in her new album Norteña. This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.

JULIETA VENEGAS: This song is called “Me Voy.” It’s a song about leaving somebody, but for the best reasons, which is, like, self-love. It’s sort of — I recorded it for my fourth album.

[performing “Me Voy”]

Porque no
Supiste entender a mi corazón
Lo que había en él, porque no
Tuviste el valor de ver quién soy

Me voy
¡Qué lástima, pero adiós!
Me despido de ti y me voy
¡Qué lástima, pero adiós!
Me despido de ti y me voy