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Notes Prologue 1. From diaries and notes of Woody Guthrie included in a special exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History , summer, 2000. 2. The word ‘‘Kermess’’ has European origins, often referring to a church or charitable festival. It was, however, the term used by the community for this festival. 3. Maquilas represent globalism close to home. They include assembly plants and other industries on the Mexican side of the border that employ low-cost Mexican labor and are usually owned by foreign corporations whose headquarters and primary operations are elsewhere. 4. An ejido is a traditional communal farm, once a staple of land reform programs in Mexico. Chapter 1 1. However, it would be overly facile to cast this as a totalizing explanation . The addicts on this corner or any corner are there for a complex of reasons, some individual, some structural. And there are plenty of addicts who are not on the corner, but are lawyers in the courtroom or doctors in the office, though the narratives surrounding their use may be substantially different. 2. I use the term ‘‘social strata’’ with a clear awareness that it is an arti fice, that social strata are not clearly bounded social entities. Nevertheless , as long as this is understood, it remains a convenient device for this discussion. 3. It is not clear how Gramsci defines ‘‘group.’’ 4. I am using ‘‘aggregations’’ instead of ‘‘system.’’ 5. That is, they share a similar constellation of economic, social, cultural , and symbolic capital, said by Bourdieu (1986, 1987) to be the factors that ‘‘together empower (or otherwise) agents in their struggle for position within ‘social space’ ’’ (see Crompton 1993, p. 173). 164 Notes to Pages 25–44 Chapter 2 1. The term ‘‘archetype’’ as I use it is different from the Jungian concept of archetype, which refers to archetypes existing in the collective unconscious (Jung 1959). Archetypes in the cultural sense, as I use the term, are part of what would be viewed as the ‘‘collective conscious.’’ 2. Other groups, perhaps not quite so famous, include Exterminador and Los Capos de México (considered ‘‘hard core’’ according to one review; see Kun 1997), Los Huracanes del Norte, Los Dinámicos del Norte, and Los Rebeldes de Tijuana. 3. The ‘‘corrido community’’ refers to the hypothetical community of people who listen to and produce corridos and who participate in and understand the ‘‘cosmological orientation’’ expressed in them. This hypothesized community is a community in the broad sense, and not necessarily bound to a specific place. 4. According to McDowell (1981), Paredes defines a parranda as a kind of mobile or ‘‘ambulatory’’ cantina (Paredes 1976, p. xxii). 5. This version was performed by Pedro Rocha and Lupe Martínez, October 1929, and is from the Arhoolie Records collection entitled Corridos y Tragedias de la Frontera: First Recordings of Historic MexicanAmerican Ballads (1928–37). The words are similar to the version cited by Paredes (1976). The Spanish text of all corridos discussed in this book appears in Appendix 2. 6. From Herrera-Sobek 1993; Sonnichsen 1975. 7. Note that this corrido is presented in the first person—not as a song about, but as a song by. In this form it has more of the boasting quality that is found in some corridos of this genre, including narcocorridos. A question : When corridos are sung in this manner, does the corridista, or singer, ‘‘become’’ (in this case) Joaquín Murieta? 8. This version was sung by Pedro Rocha and Lupe Martínez in 1930, and is taken from the Arhoolie Records compilation entitled Corridos y Tragedias de la Frontera: First Recordings of Historic Mexican-American Ballads (1928–37). It is different from the version cited by Paredes (1976). This translation is mine, based on the booklet and translations accompanying the compilation. 9. This version is also taken from the Arhoolie corrido compilation Corridos y Tragedias de la Frontera: First Recordings of Historic MexicanAmerican Ballads (1928–37), and is sung by Francisco Montalvo and Andrés Berlanga, recorded at the Texas Hotel, San Antonio, August 15, 1935. 10. As a side note, I have encountered numerous words in ‘‘border Spanish ’’ (or calo) that begin with or contain the phoneme ‘‘ch’’ (e.g., the name ‘‘Chalino,’’ the state of Chihuahua, the word ‘‘chavo’’ for young person, the word ‘‘cheve’’ for beer). I am curious as to whether this phoneme itself imparts a sense of power or strength into the...

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