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Chapter 2. The Oral Tradition: El Saber Popular
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n 27 CHAPTER 2 The Oral Tradition: El Saber Popular¡El que es perico es verde y el que es cabrón, ’onde quiera duerme! Alberto Lovato Language is the major means by which people express their everyday needs or explicate significant thoughts and feelings about the world of social relations . Naturally no study of Hispanos would be complete without considering their oral tradition. Although this chapter covers components of a phenomenological or ethnomethodological stance, strictly speaking some of the material here does not rise to either a phenomenological or ethnomethodological study. The oral tradition of Hispanos is about the use of language and creating meaning, and in this respect the oral tradition contributes significantly. In one sense this knowledge has the characteristic of processed knowledge or shared meanings handed down from generation to generation. In many ways the material presented in the pages to follow is an epistemology, a way of looking at the social world. It is the collective wisdom of a people laid down as proverbs, riddles, folk sayings, stories, and the use of objects found in the natural world. In this sense the oral tradition is about meaning, the way in which the Spanish-speaking people in northern New Mexico have used common sense to interpret events and situations. This knowledge is replete with meaning and in that sense shares some commonality with phenomenology and ethnomethodology. One shared commonality is that these 28 n Chapter 2 meanings arise in social interaction in what was called intersubjectivity in the previous chapter. No doubt a lot of the collective wisdom evolved in social interaction in the workplace and in the home, where people would gather to visit and talk. Some of the material that follows also falls in the category of making sense of events as they affected Hispano people and communities. My stance is that knowledge from oral traditions can augment phenomenological and ethnomethodological studies. An example of this is Andrada and Korte’s (1993) ethnomethodological study of elderly people in a nursing home (see below). I should add that some attention is paid to material culture in a later portion of the chapter. By material culture I mean the use of language to name aspects of Hispano life. For example, Antonia Baca relates living in a three-generational household prior to 1918. She tells us that various rooms in the household compound had different names based on the purpose for which they were used (Korte 1999b). The granero room, for example, was used to store corn, beans, and wheat. The other example is more familiar and comes from McWilliams’s book North from Mexico, in which he describes the various names of cowboy accoutrement derived from the Spanish language. Similarly the names for different types of horses also derive from Spanish (McWilliams 1961, 153–55). In this chapter some attention is given to punche, a wild tobacco still used by Hispanos for medicinal and other purposes. This topic was selected from a number of other possibilities primarily because it has not received attention and ties into a story told by a couple in the foster grandparent program in Las Vegas. Oral traditions in New Mexico have their roots in Spain and Mexico as well as local culture. They are a source of rich folk knowledge with a long history, the collective wisdom of a people, their knowledge of the social world, a way of thinking about many things, for purposes of entertainment and for the training of children and adults in the ways of the world. Collectively, it is a folk psychology, an epistemology, a folk knowledge like those of other folk people in other areas of the United States. In it is a way of “making sense” of events, persons, and situations and knowledge of the use of the natural environment. Elements of oral culture include poetry, dichos and refranes (proverbs), adivinanzas (riddles), trovos (philosophical discourse), chistes (jokes), folklore, corridos (ballads), and stories. These elements can be incorporated into ethnomethodological studies. For example, chapter 9 (on despedidas) makes use of what I call recuerdos (remembrances)—a type of poetry used to provide condolences to families who have lost loved ones. In chapter 11 (on tinieblas), I use folk poetry to study the concept of luz (giving birth) in the poetry of Ricardo Sandoval. The ever-popular corrido is the basis of a lot of folk psychology and is the basis of chapter 5 (on mancornando [cuckolding]). The ever-popular folktale of La Llorona...