Vivir Quintana Turns Mexico's Corridos Into Songs of Women Who Fought Back

Vivir Quintana will perform at the Latin Grammy Awards in Las Vegas on Thursday, nominated for song of the year for "Humano" alongside Colombian star Juanes — her second Latin Grammy nomination and the latest milestone for a singer who has spent a decade rewriting Mexico's ballads around women who fought back.

In October, at the women's conference Decididas in Oaxaca, Quintana sang a corrido before a centuries-old stone church, backed by a brass band of young Indigenous girls in embroidered blouses. The song drew on the true story of a woman who fought back when her abusive partner tried to gouge out her eyes with a knife.

"I used to think that what united us women was our pain. Now I have realized it is love and resistance," she told the crowd, drawing applause. "We must keep defending ourselves!"

Corridos — traditional Mexican folk ballads — are typically sung by men, about men, recounting revolutionaries, outlaws, folk heroes and, more recently, drug traffickers. Quintana has redirected the form toward women the justice system punished.

How a murder changed her music

Born Viviana Montserrat Quintana Rodríguez, 41, she grew up in Francisco I. Madero, a small town in Coahuila, where corridos like "Rosita Alvírez" — which makes light of a young woman shot for refusing to dance — played at home. A music teacher discovered her voice at age 11; her parents took her on hourlong bus rides to Torreón twice a week for lessons. She studied piano and opera in Saltillo, sang mariachi in bars, then left music for teaching.

In March 2010, her close friend and teachers' college classmate Sandra Abilene Rivera Molina was abducted by a man who had harassed her at work. Three days later, Rivera's body was found in a car on a highway. A newspaper headline read "Students Die After Love Pact" — but investigators later determined the man had strangled Rivera and shot himself, leaving a note framing them as lovers.

"I became obsessed with the idea of self-defense and what would have happened if she had fought harder, and what happens to those who indeed survive and kill their attackers," Quintana said.

That question drove a decade of prison visits and interviews with women jailed for defending themselves. The resulting 2025 album, "Cosas Que Sorprenden a la Audiencia" ("Things That Surprise the Audience"), carries 10 corridos based on those true stories and earned her first Latin Grammy nomination.

What does a corrido change for these women?

One case shaped her most directly. Yakiri Rubio was abducted in 2013 by two men on a Mexico City street; during a rape, she seized her attacker's knife, stabbed him to death and escaped — then was arrested and charged with murder. An appeals court reclassified the offense as excessive force in self-defense, she was released on bail after nearly three months, and she was eventually acquitted on all grounds. With Rubio's permission, Quintana wrote "La Nochebuena Más Triste," a corrido told in her voice.

"People are often shocked or surprised when women kill, and they are punished socially and cast as 'murderous women' and stigmatized, and I wanted to use my music to do something about it," Quintana said.

Her reach extends beyond prisons. In March 2020, after Mon Laferte asked her to write a song for a women's rally in Mexico City, she produced "Canción Sin Miedo" ("Song Without Fear") in nine hours. It went viral within days, was shared millions of times, and became a fixture at demonstrations across Latin America and beyond. In 2024, feminist groups sang it outside the courthouse in Avignon during Gisèle Pelicot's sexual assault trial.

"It came from something deeply felt and lived, from the depths of her heart and soul, from her own experience of losing a friend," said Gabriela Rochín, Quintana's longtime friend and editor of her autobiography.

In 2024, ahead of Claudia Sheinbaum's election as Mexico's first woman president, Quintana released "Compañera Presidenta," urging: "Do not forget your eyes as a woman / Do not forget your voice as a woman / Do not forget your struggle as a woman."

Alfredo Delgadillo, president of Universal Music Mexico, credits both craft and courage: "She found a courageous way to sing not only about love, heartbreak, life, but also the social reality of this country that many of us recognize, but few dare to talk about."

At an Oaxaca rehearsal for "Dolerás," written for Netflix's adaptation of Ángeles Mastretta's "Mal de Amores," Quintana told the young band to play with emotion and pain "to honor those who are no longer with us." A Las Vegas stage on Thursday will test whether that message travels as far as the Avignon courthouse steps.