In the city of Oaxaca, Mexico, on August 2, 1950, the newspaper Provincia reported that the current director of the city’s School of Music and Speech, Diego Innes Acevedo, had been designated the new director of the State Band of Oaxaca.1 Though later sources described Innes, a native Oaxacan, as having spent some thirty-five years in the United States and leading a “symphonic orchestra in Milwaukee,” the story of his life in the country remains largely unknown.2 While in the United States, Innes conducted a number of orchestras in Milwaukee, including the Wisconsin WPA Symphony Orchestra, which was established by the Works Project Administration Federal Music Project in the late 1930s.
In the United States’ conception of the interwar years, Latin America came to be seen as provocative, thrilling, cooperative,…