Author Archives: Syndicated User

With a Pistol in His Hand (Part 1)

To be honest, at first this novel really confused me; however, after I went back and read the introduction (which I should have done in the first place), it did make more sense.  Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the novel is the narration; it’s incredibly simple and straightforward, like how we are told a corrido is.  In fact, the ‘Introduction’ states: “The corrido tells a story simply and swiftly, without embellishments”, and that is exactly what this novel does. The way Gregorio Cortez is described also caught my attention; there seems to be this sense of uncertainty as to what he was actually like/what he actually did/what he was actually capable of, for example: “Some say he was short and some say he was tall; some say he was Indian brown and some say he was blond like a newborn cockroach” (34). These discrepancies made me think about the space that exists between man and his legend, as well as how legends come to be/how they carry on for decades and centuries. The following sentence relates to this idea as well: “It was as if the Border people had dreamed Gregorio Cortez before producing him, and had sung his life and his deeds before he was born” (125).  We are also told that, “For one of the most striking things about Gregorio Cortez is the way the actual facts of his life conformed to pre-existing legend” (125).  What do we think about this?

This first half of the novel also made me think about borders and their function and impact; it’s interesting that there is such an overlap in culture (southernmost part of Texas and Mexico), due to a blurry geographical boundary.  This boundary seems to lead to further blurriness that extends into daily life, particularly in the social and political context.  It seems that it’s this blurriness that is the root cause of many problems.  

The idea of exaggeration is super important to this novel; for example the narrator claims: “The Rangers have been known to exaggerate …” (25), and he continues to speak about the exaggerations of how many Mexicans the Rangers said they killed, etc. Relating to exaggeration, different historial perspectives clearly play large roles as well; there is no ONE story when it comes to history. 

In saying this, why is it that we believe legends?  Or maybe a better question is, do we actually believe in them or do we ”believe” in them because we are supposed to believe in them?  How embellished are these stories that have been passed down through generations?  

Again, to be completely honest, I am still a bit confused by this novel, but I’m sure on Tuesday it’ll be more clear! 

“With His Pistol in His Hand” I

paredes_coverThe first half of Américo Paredes’s ”With His Pistol in His Hand” is about the construction and reconstruction of truth on the US/Mexican border. Part One opens with a historical panorama of the Lower Río Grande Border, previously “the old Spanish province of Nuevo Santander, colonized in 1749 by José de Escandon” (7), and continues with a narrative that combines history, geography, and anthropology from the colonial era to the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe and on to the early twentieth century. But right from the outset, Paredes manifests his discomfort with what he calls “those documented old men’s tales called histories” (xi). It is not simply that written history lies or is biased–though that is true, too, and Paredes quotes “the most distinguished historian Texas has produced” as claiming matter-of-factly that “The Mexican warrior . . . was on the whole inferior to the Comanche and wholly unequal to the Texan” (17). It is more that Paredes claims that by introducing a multiplicity of sources, ranging from contemporaneous newspaper accounts of specific events to folk memory, oral history, and cultural manifestations such as the border ballad, we gain access both to multiple points of view and also to the broader truths that the very fact of variation and deviation reveals.

Paredes’s case study here is the tale of Gregorio Cortez, a Mexican American who, the bald facts tell us and all renditions of the story agree, in 1901 shot and killed a US Sheriff and was then pursued on horseback and foot hundreds of miles by various posses of Texas Rangers before being captured, tried, and convicted of murder. Finally, however, after many years in jail his sentence was overturned as he was judged to have shot in self-defence.

But Paredes begins not with the bald facts or with what he can ascertain about the truth of the tale (this comes later), but rather with an extended version of the “legend.” This legend, he notes, never comes complete: it is an “amorphous body of narrative” (108) that is told in parts that are often inconsistent or contradictory. There is “no standard version.” As such, the compilation Paredes gives us is necessarily his “own version,” which he has constructed by combining “those parts that seemed to [him] the furthest removed from fact” and that yet (he implies) are for that very reason “the most revealing of folk attitudes” (109). For it is the inconsistencies and changes that ultimately provide surest evidence of continuities and certainties. It is precisely the “extreme elasticity of reminiscence and oral report” that makes the tale of Gregorio Cortez a suitable vehicle for the articulation of long-standing and deeply-embedded attitudes, affects, and beliefs about conflict in the border region.

Take for instance the very basic question of Cortez’s physical appearance, on which there is little if any agreement among the many variations. And yet there is a certain consistency depending on who is telling the tale’s. In the first instance, “Those who knew him describe him as opposite to themselves. Short men describe him as tall; tall men say he was short. Fair men call him dark; dark men call him fair” (11). But second, and “more interesting still,” Paredes tells us, “those who did not know him describe him as like themselves. A short, very dark man told me that Cortez had been just a little dark man, chiquitito y prietito. [. . .] A fair, blue-eyed Anglo-American [. . .] remembers him as fair” (111). Likewise when it comes to Cortez’s occupation: “The laborer made of Cortez a laborer, the farmer a farmer, the vaquero a vaquero, the suspected smuggler a smuggling suspect–each applying his own situation, his own disagreeable contacts with the Anglo-American, as the reason for Cortez’s defending of his right” (113). As a result, therefore, the plasticity and malleability of the oral production and reproduction of the story, handed down in bits and pieces on diverse occasions, give us “a synthesis of the Border Mexican, who saw himself collectively in Cortez” (113). The figure of Cortez comes to combine the particular (a name, a place, an event, a date) with the general (the situation and position of an entire community) and even aspects of the universal as the Chicano border legend resonates with similar stories told for instance on the Celtic frontier where England meets Scotland.

In the complex amalgamation of “fact and fancy,” of both “exaggerations” and “purely folkloric elements” (114, 115), it would be wrong to try to eliminate the fantastic, to pare down the story to the bare bones of whatever historical “truth” might still be identified. Indeed, to do so would be also to eliminate and misunderstand history itself, in that the legend is not simply a (foggy, distorted) version of what “really” happened, but it also helped to determine the events that it represents. As Paredes concludes Part One of his book, in what at first sight is a strange inversion of temporality and causality: “It was as if the Border people had dreamed Gregorio Cortez before producing him, and had sung his life and deeds before he was born” (125). The issue is less whether the legend matches the facts, but that border culture was waiting for the arrival of facts that might, more or less or closely enough, match the legend already in gestation and looking for a form of expression.

Week 4—With a Pistol in His Hand (part i)

I’m really enjoying With a Pistol in his Hand. It reminds me of the dusty westerns that used to be on TV Sunday afternoons, the ones my grandfathers used to watch. They had this strange appeal to them, the thrill of the chase, good vs. bad, being wrongfully accused. They were all the same, lots of men riding on horses, walking around wearing frilly, suede chaps and boots that made clinking noises when they walked bow-legged into the saloon. And guns, lots of guns.

Who knew that some of this stuff was based on reality. I’ve been through the west. In Buffalo Wyoming, we saw the ‘genuine’ bullet holes in some pub that were put there by Billy The Kid. That seems to be the whole allure of western folklore…the legend based on a shred of truth. Some romantic spin on an otherwise mundane event.

I can’t imagine the things described by Paredes in the first section of the book. The list on page 16 of the half dozen points which summarize the Anglo Texan legend made my blood boil: the Mexican is cruel by nature…cowardly and treacherous, thievering and degenerate. As I read on and some of the variations of the legend of Gregorio Cortez were told, I couldn’t help but think that these are a more accurate way of describing the Rangers. It also makes me think of the extreme racism that exists in today’s society…like the viral videos of some white person screaming their head off at someone speaking Spanish…or the senseless killing of black people by ‘innocent’ white cops.

It makes me think about the legends that exist in the media…the legends that are told by outlets such as Fox news, or that Orange Turd that calls himself the president. It never matters what the truth actually is, as long as the story attracts attention. Someone always gets hurt, loses out, or worse—gets killed.

The reading also made me think of one of my all-time favourite songs, “Seven Spanish Angels” by Ray Charles and Willie Nelson. It’s a blend of Ray Charles’ soulful, rumbling piano, along with Willie Nelson’s storytelling and smattering of trumpets playing the mordent motif that has become a cliché of anything Mexican. So I listened to it (for the nine-hundredth time…), paying attention to the words. The gun fight, the riders, the feeling of being cornered and accused for some unfounded offence. The story of Gregorio Cortez may not be unique, but it seems to be a trope that fills books, tv screens and music. And despite predictable, it still captures interest.

With His Pistol in His Hand – Gregorio Cortez: an everyday man

I’m really enjoying this text so far! What really caught my attention was the emphasis on ‘man’, what it means to be an ordinary man and how this affects the audience reading this text. Américo Paredes seems to make a point that this is not a story or ballad about a unique man; it is a story about an everyday man.

We see this during the first description of Gregorio Cortez; “He was a man, a Border man. What did he look like? Well that is hard to tell. Some say he was short, and some say he was tall; some say he was Indian brown and some say he was blond like a newborn cockroach… He was a peaceful man, a hardworking man like you and me”. The uncertainty and multitude of possibilities of Cortez’s looks allow the audience to use their imagination to decide the shape and appearance of the character. One thing that is clear is that he is a man “like you and me”.

This idea is reinforced by the fact that there are many different versions and facts that pertain to the actual story of Gregorio Cortez. There is not one definition of the man, nor is there one definition of the story of this man. Paredes therefore implies that there are many different definitions for an “everyday man”, making this novel suitable and agreeable to a wide and variable audience. However, there is a common theme amongst these different versions of the story Cortez and an “everyday man”; he is always the underdog who is up against an oppressive system. This is a concept and situation that is arguably in every community or social group. I believe that this is one of the major reasons that make With His Pistol in His Hand relatable to many historical events and groups of people.

Another interesting thought to ponder is the fact Cortez was seen as a hero while he, himself, was not looking to be a hero in any sense. In fact, it seems he was trying to be “normal”, to be an “everyday man” – he wanted to make an honest living to support his family and live a peaceful life. Paredes vocalizes this as Cortez “was peacefully minding his own business when the sheriff or other American showed up and committed some outrage”, and thus he became a man, alone at the border, and by reason of the people, became a hero. But, personally, I don’t think the point was whether he was a hero or not, but rather how he was, indeed, an everyday man.

With his pistol in his hand I: The legend of Gregorio Cortez

In this first part of the book, I have appreciated how there are specific aspects of the Tejano and the Mexican culture that shows the reader more than a story. It is possible to analyze the political and historical matters that were lived at the Rio Grande border. But, it is also possible to see the folklore and the vibrant music history of Mexicans and Tejanos. In a way, the corrido of Gregorio Cortez is a demonstration of the culture in this part of the border. The story itself contains many demonstrations of how specific aspects of culture interfere in the story. For example, the fact that the Gregorio Cortez`s story was transmitted orally by singing the corridors, let us see powerful dynamics of the legends and traditions of the populations who inhabited the counties near the Rio Grande border.

The story presents Gregorio Cortez as a hero and a  legend. In this way, the character of Gregorio Cortez is a rebel who tries to dignify the Mexicans, by imposing his craftiness and abilities to fight the rangers and Tejano sheriffs (who in turn represent all the injustices and discrimination that have affected the Mexicans in the Rio Grander border). Gregorio Cortez is also a hero that is able to do things impossible for a simple human being. He is able to always hit the target when shooting, to tame even the toughest mare,  to travel large distances leaving several sheriffs behind; he was able to obtain the empathy of many Mexicans, and he was even able to awaken the love of the daughter of a president of the United  States. One more thing that I found kind of funny in the story was that once he was incarcerated, it was not because of him murdering the sheriffs, but because he stole a mare.

All these unbelievable and ‘powerful’ abilities of Gregorio Cortez do not fit with how a ‘normal’ human being should behave. That’s why I think about Gregorio Cortez, as a kind of legend created and transmitted by the people of the Rio Grande in their ballads and corridos. The story of Gregorio Cortez, including all the marvelous things he overcomes, has many kinks to be considered.  Maybe in reality, Gregorio Cortex indeed existed, but much of the marvelous things he is able to do, could be part of the legend people have created about him.

Pamela Chavez

American Dirt

american-dirtA place-holder for some of the many articles written as part of (or about) the controversy over American Dirt:

There’s a lot more, of course.

Latino/Chicano Literature

tijuana-border-signSome posts about US Latino/Chicano literature, to go with a course by that name:

The Squatter and the Don (Part 2)

Overall, reading The Squatter and the Don, has been an eye-opening experience for me culturally. Even before we started reading the book for class, I found that this is a topic that I can say I can “identify” with not because I have any relations with the descent and historical background of the people in the story, but because California is a place that I frequent when school is not in session. I was excited to keep reading the novel because the place that are mentioned in the book like Napa, Sonoma, Alameda and so forth are places that I always pass or see when I’m in California when I visit my family.

Another thing I realized from this is that of the many times that I stayed in California, I never bothered to look up the history and how California was previously a territory, or it was previously Mexico. I would see places with names as Corte Madera, Palo Alto, El Cerrito, Embarcadero and just thought to myself “it’s so amazing how this place has so much Spanish influence because of Mexicans” without digging deeper into what actually happened back then.

We have mentioned in class that the reason for this inequality is a matter of a “system” problem rather than a “personal” problem. In my opinion, it goes back to being a personal problem. People who are in charge and who have the power are responsible for their greed and injustice. I think a unit that is made up of mostly selfish and prejudiced individuals will eventually make up a corrupt system. As it says in the book, “Bribery has been at work… successfully”. This then just goes on as long as individuals are willing to participate.

One of the parts of this book that I find really interesting is how the women aren’t allowed to have their say when the squatters would “assemble” and conduct their meetings. When Doña Josefa expressed her reasoning as to why he asked Clarence to pay Don Mariano, there was an element of irony as to how the one who had the least heard opinion had the most sensible thought. The contrast between Mrs. Darrell and Mercedes was also very interesting to me. Although they weren’t both matriarchal images in the novel, it shows how the representation of the female gender is in a wider spectrum. There is Mercedes, who is mostly emotion-driven and then there’s Mrs. Darrell, who is more of a rational image in the novel.

In my opinion, one of the reasons why everyone just gets sick towards the end of the book is because of the fact that we are all in a corrupt society and that we have the ability to “infect” each other. When one of the units of society crumbles down, or becomes corrupt, then we can see a divide and a sickness affects everyone, whether you are in the wrong or in the right.

The Squatter and the Don: Part 2

I have found it very interesting throughout my reading of The Squatter and the Don how María Amparo Ruiz De Burton has used this literary work to somewhat criticize and shed a light on society and also important institutions in our society such as the government. What was brought to my attention as I was reading the second part was how the author makes a case to criticize and mention the way that government works. Many parts in the book are dedicated in criticizing the way government and legislation works in Washington. For example, this is shown when George Melchin is witnessing the decision making for the construction of the Texas Pacific Railroad that is viewed as vital to the economy and livelihood of the people in California. To their misfortune they lose much optimism and pride in their institution and identity as an American citizen. Having trust and pride in your system is part of your identity as a citizen and being patriotic to your country. As George Mechlin is sitting in the House of Representatives with his uncle listening to the politicians who are supposedly working for the people and for the greater good of the country he comes to realize that it is the exact opposite. In reality these lawmakers are not conscientious of the effects their laws have on the citizens as they are purely interested in their relationship with other politicians and the people who truly govern them the ones who control the votes being the elites who have a major say in the governance of the country. They have no sense of responsibility or morality towards their constituents rather they have it for those who are willing to offer some kind of monetary reward to them.

Another point of interest for me in the book is how racism in society is addressed. This is clearly seen in the way the Californio landowners, these being Don and his family are treated by the squatters. It is clear that the squatters have no respect for them whatsoever. The discriminatory and disrespectful treatment towards the Californio landowners increases and is exemplified even more when the squatters learn that the appeal has been dismissed and there is no dispute whatsoever about the validity of the title of Don Mariano’s land. It infuriates them how a population that they see as the conquered ones can own more land than the rightful inhabitants of the country, the Americans. Their pride and feeling of being of the superior race has taken a hit as this racial group which they view as inferior, incompetent, ignorant and lazy has won a case that benefits and validates their equal ownership to land in the country.