Gregorio Cortez, a Mexican farmhand born on a Matamoros ranch, didn’t speak English. T.T. Morris, a Texas sheriff with a Mexican problem, didn’t speak Spanish. When the two met for the first time in 1901 — north of the border, in Karnes County — they didn’t understand each other. Morris brought along a translator to help him accuse Cortez of stealing a horse. The translator got some words wrong, so when Cortez pled his innocence, what Morris heard was his guilt. Morris ended up dead, Cortez became an outlaw hero, and one of Latin music’s first great pop songs, " El corrido de Gregorio Cortez, " was born.

The making and marketing of Latin music in the US has never gotten over the dilemma that the Cortez saga has come to represent. If not for the language barrier, there might never have been a song that has become an identity anthem, a Mexican-American call for justice in a country that seemed bent on keeping Spanish speakers down.

The idea that Spanish is for Latinos and English is not — regardless of much evidence to the contrary — has given the Latin-music industry in the US its own sense of self and, most important, its own market. The pretense of untranslatability is the comfy, budget-padding myth that helps the Latin-music industry be what it is: an economic powerhouse built upon narrowcasting to US Latinos.

But this year’s ALMA (American Latino Media Arts) Awards on June 1 at LA’s Shrine Auditorium — a ceremony designed to celebrate US Latino arts achievements — painted a far more complicated linguistic portrait. The show opened with blonde Spanish-language pop goddess Paulina Rubio performing her new English-language single " Don’t Say Goodbye " (which sounds like Kylie Minogue) while running around the stage with a troupe of writhing dancers (who looked like Britney). The routine replicated the song’s glossy sci-fi video, which was produced by the Brothers Strause, directors who have kept the Chili Peppers current and put Linkin Park on the MTV map. Rubio, who’s from Mexico City, titled the English-language album the song appears on Border Girl (Universal). And she knows full well just which border it is: not the US/Mexican border that brought Cortez and Morris to a head but the linguistic border that defines two demographically targeted markets.

Security shouldn’t be as tight for Rubio’s border crossing. Already Shakira has gotten TRL singing along with her forced English in Herb Ritts–directed videos, and both Univision and Telemundo have created spinoff youth networks that dabble in bi-lingualism. Even Chilean singer Nicole speaks English throughout the promotional press video sent out by her Madonna-owned label, Maverick Musica. Her stylized new Viaje infinito — her first to be released stateside — takes all the pop poise of Latin fave Laura Pausini and filters it through enough flute-laced Jamiroquai sessions to make it remix-ready for another Ibiza summer.

But the real ALMA story had to do with how the border is being crossed in the opposite direction. R&B singer Mya sat in with Chile’s La Ley and dropped verses and choruses in Spanish on " El duelo. " And in the night’s best moment, Portuguese-Canadian alterna-popper Nelly Furtado gracefully crooned in Spanish on an emotional duet with Colombia’s Juanes. It’s reported that Furtado sought Juanes out and insisted on learning enough Spanish to sing with her. The song, " Fotografía, " is the highlight of Juanes’s Un día normal (Universal), and both on record and on stage Furtado flows through her new language as if she’d been speaking it for years.

These two trips into Spanish-language pop have already been seconded by Puerto Rican pop prince Luis Fonsi and ’N Sync’s Joey Fatone. The two used to be in an English-language pop group together, and now Fatone has directed the video for Fonsi’s " Amor secreto, " which comes in both Spanish and English versions, the latter debuting on of all places Nickelodeon. Of course, Fatone has done Spanish before: ’N Sync performed in Spanish on the first Latin Grammy Awards, and on the group’s CD single for " Girlfriend, " they included a Spanish version of " Gone. "

Because the ALMA Awards took place the same week the New York Times began scolding George W. Bush for losing political interest in the Latin American countries he had been courting so vigorously earlier in the year (Argentina, Venezuela, Brazil), the performances felt like pop culture’s unwitting answer to a dropped political ball. At least for one night, typical Latin American interest in the US was outdone by north-of-the-border interest in fitting in with Latinos (and benefitting from their expanding consumer markets). It might have been Sheriff Morris’s worst nightmare, but it would have saved his life.