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Chapter 9. Leave Taking: Despedidas
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n 191 CHAPTER 9 Leave Taking: Despedidas En Dios descanses Lencho. A. Korte remembering a friend The idea of death haunts the human animal. Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death Hispanos in northern New Mexico commemorate the death of a loved one with a written narrative referred to as a recuerdo (a remembrance). These narratives (or ballads) share many characteristics of the corrido and its forerunner, the Spanish romance. The romance, a popular form of epic poetry, and the corrido depict events in the lives of heroic, historical, and common folk. Both reflect historical events, describe injustices, depict social values, and present moral teachings elicited from catastrophic social events, for example, a tragic murder, a sentence of death, or imprisonment for a heinous act. An important and fundamental aspect of both the corrido and the romance is that they both come from the common people, desde abajo (from below) (Rodríguez-Puértolas 1975) and are meant to be recited or sung in public. The recuerdo as a form of corrido has the important task of recounting a person’s life in an epic, lyric, and heroic manner. The recuerdo is a normative farewell on behalf ofthedeceased.Theballad,directedtothecommunity,usuallytellshowthepersonmet his or her death. It serves the added purpose of supplying the survivors with communal support for their loss. These written narratives provide insight into the cultural beliefs and behaviors surrounding Hispanos and death in northern New Mexico. 192 n Chapter 9 Many corridos end with a refrain in which the singer takes leave of the audience. This leave taking is called la despedida and is normative in the sense that as a social rule oneusuallytakesone’sleaveinasocialinteraction.Thecorridooftenendsbyidentifying the singer with the words Ya con esta me despido (I now take my leave). Loeffler writes that the despedida as a poetic convention in the romance dates to medieval times (1999, 2). In Mérimée is found this despedida from the thirteenth century. Sy queredes sabe quien fiso esti ditado, If you want to know the writer Gonçalo de Berçeo es por nombre clamado. Gonzalo de Berçeo is the acclaimed name. (1930, 42) Newspapers are a favorite outlet for despedidas on behalf of the deceased or by the family of the deceased. A family will place a picture of the deceased in the classified section of a newspaper and often a message seemingly written by the deceased describing a better life in the hereafter. This serves to console the survivors. Other messages from family members express how much they miss the deceased. A despedida is also published on the anniversary of the death. The public nature of these remembrances is related to the Spanish recuerdo. One of my purposes in this chapter is to show how the romance form has been retained in recuerdos from newspapers as part of the family life and folklore of northern New Mexico. Thus, my analysis attempts to account for the cultural-historical genesis that created these concepts—as reflected in the language and thoughts of ordinary people—as well as grounding these concepts in the everyday life of people. The Romance and Corrido The romance dates back to the epic poems of eleventh- and twelfth-century France and Spain. Some, like the Seven Infants of Lara, may date back to the tenth century (Mérimée 1930). Another predecessor is Le chanson de Roland, written by a French cleric between 1096 and 1100 c.e. Perhaps the best known of these epic poems is El cantar de mio Cid, which commemorates the epic deeds of Rodrigo de Vivar (ca. 1030–1099), who united Spain against the Moors (Tuck 1977). The similarities between the corrido and the romance are not casual. Both are characterized by realism and are lyrical in their presentation. A chronological format is used to present the message and the event, and both the corrido and the romance are designed to be sung in public in a sober and simple descriptive manner (RodríguezPu értolas 1975). In general, romances and corridos break the verse of an epic poem at the pause (i.e., caesura) in the middle of a verse. Such a break results in four verses Leave Taking n 193 from two, creating eight syllabic verses, with four verses to the stanza and the even lines rhyming. Tuck provides an example from El Cid: El Cid a Doña Ximena ivala Abrasar The Cid was going to embrace Lady Ximena Doña Ximena al...