77 Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 43:2 Fall 2018 © University of California Regents Mapping the Burrito Circuit On How the Dirty Reggae of the Aggrolites Remains an Eastside Persuasion Paloma Martinez-Cruz ABSTRACT: Formed in 2002 in Los Angeles, the Aggrolites contribute to the Chicano reggae and ska revival scene while maintaining fidelity to the Chicano power soundscapes that gained cohesion along the “Burrito Circuit.” This essay defines the Burrito Circuit based on interviews, an analysis of three representative Aggrolites songs, and album cover art that reflects the early Chicano movement’s visual representations of cultural affirmation. Featuring bands such as Thee Midniters, the Premiers, Tierra, and Los Lobos, the Burrito Circuit helped develop a nonrepresentational stylistic influence that expands our understanding of Chicano soundscapes beyond the Mexican corrido and Afro-Cuban styles previously associated with cultural reclamation. As national popular music catalogs remain organized along a grid of R&B (“black”) and pop (“white”) music, Chicano identity markers within these racialized categories have largely gone unacknowledged. By examining the Aggrolites’ brand of Chicano soul, funk, and garage rock–inflected reggae, as well as their visual profile that hails working-class Chicano experience, we can discern how the Burrito Circuit’s sound and sights that began on Los Angeles’s Eastside continue to be sensually available and politically relevant to audiences as an expression of cultural audibility and spatial entitlement. The first time I heard the Aggrolites live was at Reggies Rock Club in Chicago in the fall of 2012—many miles away from Los Angeles, the hometown I share with several of the band’s members. The soundscape of fiercely soulful vocals, aggressive yet playful organ stylings, and a funky, hard-driving rhythm section powered their Jamaican reggae and rock- steady. The effect caught me off guard. I found myself transported to a Los Angeles of yore—the LA of my childhood, in the late 1970s, during the quasi-riotous festival called Street Scene. I am with my brother, father, and cousins, watching the thunderous performance of Tower of Power. The city streets are no longer a place for cars and buses, but rather the habitat of