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!
I was also very confused with the novel in many respects!
I like your questions about why is that we believe legends? For me, I think we enter into this `magical` world of creating and exaggerating things because people love to be part of the process of creation. People like to have been recognized as part of `something special`, being this so little as maybe having heard of some part of a story, or having personally meet this particular person, etc.
The fact that the ballad of Gregorio Cortez is transmitted orally also makes the legend a part of the culture, and once it becomes a cultural thing it is even more interesting to be part of the transmission and creation of the legend. I do not know if people actually believe it; maybe no. However, they like to be part of this process of creation.
I hope we can sort our your and Pamela’s confusion! But it might help to start by pointing out that it is not a “novel.” This is both because a novel is usually fictional, and Paredes’s book, while interest in the definition and powers of fiction, ultimately wants to persuade us of the historical truth of his analysis. And then also because a novel is usually a sustained narrative, and while this book has narrative elements it is generally non-narrative and is indeed a study of how narratives (stories) come into being and change over time.