With His Pistol in His Hand: Part I

While reading this first part of the novel, what struck me the most at first was the structure in which we find it. The first page starts with the music notes for the Corrido of Gregorio Cortez. And then we go into the contextualization of the story in Chapter 1, where the author gives an understanding of the different special settings and actors of this story. In Chapter 2 we find the telling of the legend. I found that it was being told as if someone was reading it out loud, transmitting it orally as one does around a campfire. That is how this legend was passed down, through singing this corrido. Chapter 3 brings a firm, somewhat biographical account of The Man himself and finally Chapter 4 goes into the progress of this person as a folklore hero. We note that there is a clear difference of the telling of the legend in chapter 2 versus chapter 3. In chapter 3 we receive more specific information, names, dates, the consequences and his descendants, this is where we see the actual ‘study’ of this legend.

After having an overall view of the first part, I was still curious as to why the author chose to start the novel with having music notes at its beginning. Personally, this is the first novel I read where that happens. I think that it takes the most important spot in the overall study the author is making, for without it the legend wouldn’t have existed. In my view, these 2 music phrases are the novel. From this corridocomes about the search for the story of Gregorio Cortez. And then taking it apart lead to telling the legend and the discovery of the man behind it. The lyrics, the story, of this hero is encapsulated in border folklore due to the ballad that is being sung. A tune is engrained in the memory for far longer than simply memorizing a song. We look at other cases such as gospel, jazz, any national traditional songs, are passed down through generations and embody a lifestyle, past sufferings of a people. I find that this ballad stays due to the empathy felt for Gregorio Cortez, for any good, family man would’ve done the same in his circumstances. It also resonates particularly to those by the border for there were hard feelings between the Mexicans and the Rangers. The ballad then also encompasses the suffering and emotions felt by these people, and how a heroic figure like Gregorio Cortez liberates them from the oppression they felt by the Rangers.

I was trying to find the original corrido that inspired this legend. I also attempted playing it on the piano. I am not sure if I found it, but I discovered the following song that I believe transmits that story with the same spirit:

https://youtu.be/M9Jp4p8_fH8

With his pistol in his hand (Part I): the folklore as a legitimate topic for research

With his pistol in his hand is surprising because it is not a novel but a scholarly work on the Chicano culture. The book uses the oral tradition by studying in detail a corrido on a folk hero, Gregorio Cortez, as a means of providing a social and cultural history of the Texas-Mexico border.

The first point I would like to make is that Paredes’ book is a mixture of different genres. It is partly historical with its chapters 1 and 2, which provide an in-depth factual study of the history of the north of the former Spanish province of Nuevo Santander, which became South Texas between the Rio Grande and the Nueces Rives, and the true story of Gregorio Cortez. Chapter 2 is of a folkloric nature with a complete account of the legend of Gregorio Cortez as it was told in the oral corrido. The book is also ethnographic in its description of the Tejano culture. This mixture allows Paredes to provide a complete description of the political and social climate of the northern Rio Grande.

The ballad of Gregorio Cortez describes a region where border conflicts are the cause and consequence of a cultural conflict between Anglo-Americans and Mexican-Americans living in South Texas.

In Chapter 1, Paredes demonstrates that knowledge of the historical border conflicts between the two countries is necessary to understand the cultural discrimination of Hispanic Tejanos. The history of the Mexican border is not the history of a peaceful straight line. The region was the scene of several border conflicts during the second part of the nineteenth century as well as the first part of the twentieth century. As the author explains, the conflicts between the Republic of Texas and Mexico around the Rio Nueces and the major impact of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo were crucial in creating this cultural rivalry. The former had the most dramatic impact by using the Rio Grande as the border between the United States and Mexico. This treaty thus created a separation where Mexican communities lived in cohesion. Moreover, these border conflicts were predominant in the association of Mexicans with the enemy. First of all, Mexicans were considered violent, thieves or criminals because of the atrocities committed by General Santa Anna during the war of secession between the Republic of Texas and Mexico. Second, Mexicans were considered to be foreigners from the United States. This is reflected in the glorification of the Texas Rangers who were considered a crucial element of border control. Mexican Americans were not considered part of the Nation but merely immigrants who wanted to benefit from the economic development of the region. As a result, the presence of Mexican Americans in Texas was seen by some Anglo-Americans as a violation of the border, which is ironic given that Mexicans were there long before the Anglo-Americans. This implies that Mexican-Americans were seen as people who had no place in the territory and were therefore considered undesirable. This construction of the Mexican as a foreigner was central to the association of Mexicans as a threat to the security of Anglo-Americans, as evidenced in the Ballad of Gregorio Cortez the association of several innocent people as belonging to the “Cortez gang”. Furthermore, treating Mexicans as second-class citizens or enemies provides the Texas Rangers with a moral justification for “enforcing” the law as they see fit. As a result, this cultural conflict has also fueled future border disputes.

Thus, through his academic study of the Ballad of Gregorio Cortez, Paredes provides crucial work on cultural conflicts in Texas. The story of Gregory Cortez could have been anyone’s story. This is why Mexican-Americans were able to identify themselves and translate the reality of conflict in this region into a ballad. Therefore, Paredes shows us that folklore is therefore a primary subject of study to understand the history of this region.

With His Pistol in His Hand: Part One

While reading With His Pistol in His Hand I thoroughly enjoyed reading the legend of Gregorio Cortez. I love how Cortez is said to have been feared across Texas and could strike fear into the hearts of 300+ armed men with a glance. The supernatural power of the sorrel mare also was quite impressive as it outran numerous sturdier and stronger horses. Though El Corrido de Gregorio Cortez is very hyperbolic and at times utterly ridiculous, I found two important topics covered in the first half of this book; the prejudiced beliefs held by the border people and how Gregorio is not only a simple icon but rather a representation of the characteristics of the Mexican people.

Both sides of the Border, whether Mexican or Texan, held unsavoury beliefs about the opposing group. Texans, mainly Texas Rangers, believed that they were superior to everyone, especially in relation to the thieving, inferior, and cowardly Mexican. On the southern side, we see Mexicans understand the Texan Rangers as bloodthirsty yet lily-livered Americans that were afraid of confrontation and often “shot first and asked questions later”. These beliefs about the other proved to further divide a people already separated by national boundary. We can still see some of these prejudices today, showing that they were not simply divisive remarks made to hurt the feelings of the other, but have tremendous implications in forming meaningful relationships with people of different backgrounds. The Mexican and Texan beliefs created an even larger divide between citizens of different societies, but in reality, the two groups may have had more commonalities uniting them rather than segregating them.

Though there were strong divisions in the Border communities, the legend of Gregorio Cortez truly brought the Mexican people together, as he represented what a Mexican citizen could become. Gregorio Cortez was a simple man with a very eventful life and though he was transformed into a historic icon, the legend was formed in such a way to connect wholeheartedly to every Mexican citizen. It is said he was neither short nor tall, not light nor dark, and not skinny nor heavy. He was an expert in farming, a master in taming horses, and an excellent gunslinger. Cortez represented every Mexican landowner, symbolizing what every Mexican wanted to become. The creation of the legend only strengthened the feeling of pride within Mexican communities, as they were honoured to share qualities with the Border Hero, Gregorio Cortez. Although the beliefs held by both the Mexicans and Texans sought to divide the people indefinitely, the legend of Gregorio Cortez was the epitome of brotherhood and unity within the nation of Mexico.

-Curtis HR

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

The 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