Americo Paredes: In His Own Words, an Authorized Biography (Al Filo: Mexican American Studies) (Al Filo: Mexican-American Studies Series, 5) - Hardcover

Medrano, Manuel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1574412876 ISBN 13: 9781574412871

Publisher: University of North Texas Press,U.S., 2010

Synopsis

Americo Paredes (1915-1999) was a folklorist, scholar, and professor at the University of Texas at Austin who is widely acknowledged as one of the founding scholars of Chicano Studies. Born in Brownsville, Texas, along the southern U.S.-Mexico Border, Paredes grew up between two worlds - one written about in books, the other sung about in ballads and narrated in folktales. After service in World War-II, Paredes entered the University of Texas at Austin, where he completed his PhD in 1956. With the publication of his dissertation, ""With His Pistol in His Hand: A Border Ballad and Its Hero"" in 1958, Paredes soon emerged as a challenger to the status quo. His book questioned the mythic nature of the Texas Rangers and provided an alternative counter-cultural narrative to the existing traditional narratives of Walter Prescott Webb and J. Frank Dobie. For the next forty years Paredes was a brilliant teacher and prolific writer who championed the preservation of border culture and history. He was a soft-spoken, at times temperamental, yet fearless professor. In 1970 he co-founded the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and is credited with introducing the concept of Greater Mexico, decades before its wider acceptance today among transnationalist scholars. He received numerous awards, including La Orden del Aguila Azteca, Mexico's most prestigious service award to a foreigner. Manuel F. Medrano interviewed Paredes over a five-year period before Paredes' death in 1999, and also interviewed his family and colleagues. For many Mexican Americans, Paredes' historical legacy is that he raised, carried, and defended their cultural flag with a dignity that both friends and foes respected.

About this title

About the Author

MANUEL F. MEDRANO is a professor of history at the University of Texas at Brownsville and the coauthor of Medieval Culture and the Mexican American Borderlands and Charro Days in Brownsville. He has written three bilingual poetry books and has produced and directed Los del Valle, an oral history of Rio Grande Valley people.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Américo Paredes

In His Own Words, an Authorized Biography

By Manuel F. Medrano

University of North Texas Press

Copyright © 2010 Manuel F. Medrano
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-57441-287-1

Contents

List of Illustrations, 
Preface, 
Acknowledgments, 
Introduction, 
Chapter 1 – The Formative Years, 
Chapter 2 – The Depression Years, 
Chapter 3 – The War and Post-War Years, 
Chapter 4 – Pursuing a Dream, 
Chapter 5 – A Professor of Legendary Status, 
Appendix 1: Unedited Transcription of Favorite Interview, 
Appendix 2: Graduate Studies Syllabus, 
Endnotes, 
Bibliography, 

CHAPTER 1

The Formative Years

Historically, the South Texas frontera has been inhabited by Coahuiltecanos, Spaniards, Mexicanos, Tejanos and Anglo Americans and many others. A century before the founding of Paredes' hometown, haciendas, villas, and ranchos dotted the landscape on both sides of the Río Grande. Then, the llano and river united, rather than divided, a people.

In 1836 it belonged to the Republic of Texas, and nine years later, it became part of the state of Texas. Within a year, the U.S.-Mexican War began on this same soil claimed by both countries at the Battle of Palo Alto. By mid-August 1847 military hostilities ended in Mexico City and in early February 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was ratified. As a result, Mexico ceded nearly one-half of its territory and over eighty thousand Mexicanos living on it. Mexico emerged from this conflict debt-ridden and seeking new political leadership, while the United States faced further division over the slavery issue. Former Mexican territory was viewed by many as conquered land and the new Americans, formerly Mexicanos, as conquered people. As a result, cohabitation and economic and political maintenance of the area were, at times, marked by distrust and conflict.

Soon afterward Anglos established an interim government in the territories of the Mexican Cession and in Texas laid the foundation for future control. Arnoldo de Leon, Tejano scholar and author of Mexican Americans in Texas, asserts that this was generally achieved through mechanisms that maintained Anglo sovereignty. The first was the threat of or use of violence by both Anglos and Tejanos. A prime example was the Cart War of 1857 involving Tejano arrieros and Anglo freighters competing for control of the transportation of goods between San Antonio and the Gulf of Mexico. Two years later, the Cortina War erupted in Brownsville, led by the hero/bandit Juan N. Cortina. This conflict was preceded by a struggle for political and economic dominance. In 1877 the Salt War near El Paso produced an ethnic conflict over control of salt lodes, which were communally owned by Tejanos.

A second mechanism of control was interethnic accommodation that included tactical marriages between elite Tejanos and newly arrived Anglos. Although partially beneficial to landholding Tejano families, these marriages gave Anglos increased social and familial acceptance among Tejanos as well as ranch lands. Sovereignty was also achieved through political bossism and controlled franchise, usually preceded by "pachangas," pre-election political fiestas. Finally, Anglo control was maintained by the accumulation of large quantities of land, usually bought inexpensively at sheriffs' auctions. The owners were forced to sell their property either for back taxes, after being intimidated, or because of losses as a result of decreasing beef prices.

Ethnic friction impacted by these mechanisms continued

Edition details

• Publisher: University of North Texas Press,U.S.
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1574412876
• ISBN 13: 9781574412871
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 180