Throughout this course we have learned about various essential concepts that are demonstrated in the books that we have read. One of them being community. In Down These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas and With His Pistol In His Hand by Americo Paredes, we see this word and its meaning exemplified throughout both texts. A community is formed by those who have a sense of connection and belonging with each other. It is created through a sense of fellowship and people having commonalities with one another.
The first text that I will analyze will be the one by Paredes. In his text Paredes takes a corrido dedicated to Gregorio Cortez a Mexican American who shot a sheriff and defended and fought for his right with his pistol in his hand. This corrido dedicated to this hero brings a sense of identity and connection to the people of the Rio Grande. This sense of being able to relate to a figure such as Gregorio Cortez, as he has suffered and witnessed injustices and ill-treatments due to his race is a way of forming a community. These people are able to use a corrido which is sung throughout history to bring them together and remember figures that are known for their strength and perseverance and with which they are able to identify with. These corridos and the idols that make them, create a sense of community where people can come together and remember figures that represent something for them.
In Down These Mean Streets, we encounter Piri Thomas, who is in search of his community. Piri is looking for a place where he belongs. After moving to various areas such as the Italian neighbourhood in New York, Long Island, and the South Piri starts finding comfort with himself and identifies the place where he feels at home the most, which is Spanish Harlem. Throughout his moves to different areas in New York and in the country and later on in jail, we find a Piri who is always longing for his return to the place where he feels at home and comfortable. For Piri, his community is this neighbourhood. As it is explained in the book, he feels a sense of comfort and identification with the people, sights, smells, and sounds of Spanish Harlem. For Piri, the search for his identity and belonging somehow always brings him back to this neighbourhood, the place where he grew up in and from then on has always played a role in who he is.
The points you raise with regard to how community can be perceived in Down These Mean Streets, and in With his Pistol in his Hand, are very valid and I agree with them. The only thing I might add is related to how the construction of Gregorio Cortez as a hero is one of the factors that permitted not only the creation of this famous corrido, but also permitted for music to be the instrument that led people in the Rio Grande region to become reunited and create a strong sense of community.
In Down these Mean Streets, it remains important for me to also try to understand community at the lower level, such as by analyzing Piri’s family and the dynamics around this “small” social nucleus.
Great post!
Hola chica!
I agree with what you said about Piri longing for a community. I find it really heartwarming how that “community” will always be Harlem for him, though we see a shift when he got out of prison maybe because of the growing and mental shifts that happened within him during the time that he was locked up. I find it really interesting that whether it is through a place or a form of a song or written art, that people will always find a way to find community.