Poetry and Violence: The Ballad Tradition of Mexico’s Costa Chica (review)

In this book John McDowell asks readers to consider the intricate connection between poetry and violence as performed via living ballads in the Costa Chica region of Mexico, an area that runs along the Pacific coast and includes the states of Guerrero and Oaxaca. McDowell, a professor of folklore at Indiana University, specializes in the ethnography of performance and communication and has published works including: “So Wise Were Our Elders”: Mythic Narrative of the Kamsá and Children’s Riddling (1994), Sayings of the Ancestors: The Spiritual Life of the Sibundoy Indians (1989), and Children’s Riddling (1979). Captivated by the heroic nature of Mexican corridos, McDowell dedicated over a quarter century of his life to researching this ballad tradition, and the result is Poetry and Violence, an outstanding contribution for contemporary scholars interested in exploring the performance of identity in Mexico.

The corrido is a narrative song or ballad that serves as a form of oral history detailing historical and current events often revolving around themes of love and betrayal. McDowell focuses on this living ballad by asking what role the corrido plays as both a symbol of violence and healing. The book is arranged into eight chapters, which include photographs that serve as visual markers of the community McDowell describes. With each chapter, the reader is gradually led through an introduction to the local community, its ballad tradition and history, as well as what McDowell notes are three main corrido functions or theses.

The author’s main objective is to evaluate the reasoning behind the association between poetry and violence in modern Mexico’s ballad tradition. The author uses in-depth interviews with corrido performers and composers and includes an extensive sampling of ballad texts to support this research. McDowell begins by providing the reader with important background information on this particular ballad community, which runs along the Pacific coast and includes the states of Guerrero and Oaxaca. In particular, McDowell notes the importance of Mexico’s afromestizo population to this area. He addresses the popular belief in what he calls “the Africa thesis,” which he describes as a propensity to link afromestizo populations with a greater capacity for violence and how this racist form of thinking influences the ballad tradition and its community.

In addition to the historical dimensions that shape this space, McDowell also provides detailed information on the contemporary community that composes corridos. He describes corridos as living ballads, “emerging from the shared life of the community and connecting with the mental world and social practice of its members” (43). In his analysis, McDowell uses a functionalist approach to the role corridos serve in the Costa Chica community, and he develops three theses: celebratory, regulatory, and therapeutic, to support his argument. The most convincing of the three theses is the celebratory approach. In this interpretation, corridos contribute to key components of local culture, which include honor, loyalty, and personal integrity. As McDowell notes, “Celebration here entails the rehashing of violent episodes in public narratives designed to exalt the noble qualities of story protagonists” (122). In the regulatory thesis, readers learn the important role played by the corrido composer who McDowell describes as a “social critic” who points out moral lessons for the community. Here corridos are described as “a kind of Trojan horse constructed to win acceptance through the thrill of heroic narrative, but nurturing a hidden mission, that of questioning and ultimately discouraging the indiscriminate use of violence” (171). Finally the therapeutic argument connects the editorial comments of the composer with the attitudes of the community. In this thesis, McDowell cites how, “Corridos, with their tragic themes, transform the sentiments of those who witness their performance, and like the elegies of learned poets, corridos no doubt help people transmute their feelings of sadness and anger” (174).

McDowell also utilizes these three theses to analyze contemporary corridos, in particular narcocorridos. These narcocorridos, more polished and commercialized in sound than traditional corridos, are often accused of romanticizing the drug...