Cielito Lindo

Quirino Mendoza y Cortes wrote Cielito Lindo in 1882, drawing the refrain and part of the text from an older Spanish copla about bandits in the Sierra Morena. Mendoza was a schoolteacher and church organist in a village south of Mexico City, and he wrote hundreds of pieces, of which this alone survived. It became a Mexican anthem abroad rather than at home, carried by mariachi ensembles and by the recordings of Pedro Infante and Tito Guizar. Mendoza died in poverty in 1957, having sold the rights long before.