What stood out to me the most in this second half were the different variations of the corrido; what’s interesting to me is what details are added to/taken out of the original corrido. It seems that the variants get (for the most part) shorter and shorter, according to the way in which Paredes has organized them; “Varient I” is only 6 quatrains, while “Varient A” is 12. These changes in length fascinate me as one would think that over time they would become longer, because more and more details would be added (at least that’s what makes sense to me). I would assume that with the exaggerations, more details would be added (whether they be factual or invented doesn’t matter) but I was wrong. Some variants seem to mention at the beginning the county of El Carmen, but “Variation I” does not; it only mentions “Piedras Negras”.

In the first half of the book what interested me the most about the corrido is how direct the language is; if we think about it, it’s just telling a story. Descriptions are kept to a minimum, and that includes adjectives, figurative language, etc. I wondered about the role of imagery, and if the corrido was at all meant to provoke emotion through painting pictures in our heads. Flash forward to page 216, and my wonders were addressed: “But the corrido is not entirely bare of imagery”. We are told that in Gregorio Cortez there is figurative language used in a number of instances; the imagery used in these instances can be divided into two types. The first type is that that has its basis in real life of the Border; the other type is that which is “purely conventional and unsupported”, and even “contradicted by observation of things that the borderer knows” (216). I guess what I find interesting about this is the level of detail in the information extracted from the corrido – it reminds me of studying poetry. It made me realize that when you put words on a paper, you can analyze it in a completely different way that say, hearing it. I was also interested in what Paredes had to say about the symbol of the white dove. On page 218, the white dove is addressed: the faces of Cortez’s pursuers are said to be “whiter than a dove”. However, as Paredes suggests, it is unlikely that a white dove was ever seen; it is from religious paintings.