South of the Guadalupe: A History of Nixon and Southern Gonzales County (review)

242Southwestern Historical QuarterlyOctober ballads known as corridos have on Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and specifically, Mexican immigrants in the United States. The aim of the author is to examine the role of corridos in shaping the cultural memories and identities of transnational Mexican groups, focusing on transnational communities from northern Chihuahua dirough northern Texas and New Mexico. In proving her argument, Chew Sánchez begins by discussing and comparing certain details, such as the recorded history, characteristics, identities, immigration, and migration ofMexicans living in the American Southwest and in Mexico after the U.S.-Mexican War. The second chapter defines the corrido, focusing particularly on corridos about immigration and how those ballads impacted migrants culturally , socially, personally, and collectively. The author's third chapter analyzes how her interviewees of Mexican descent, whether migrants, songwriters, singers, disc jockeys, or others, understand the meaning oflife through the corrido. Chew Sánchez uses the fourth chapter of her study to describe how corridos are transmitted to the Mexican migrant populace in transnational communities. The last chapter focuses on the importance of Los Tigres del Norte, the most popular Mexican musical group, famous for performing corridos about immigration, in preserving the migrant memory through their music. The author's work is well organized and presented. She provides a Spanish phrase or sentence with almost each chapter tide and subtide that gives die Spanish reader an understanding of what to expect. Chew Sánchez also focuses on issues relevant to this study, such as migrant women, clothing, female singers ofcorridos, and narcocorridos (ballads about drug trafficking). There are some items in the work that need attention. Although the book focuses primarily on Texas and New Mexico, it would have been beneficial to add migrant viewpoints of corridos from Arizona and California to assure balance among all states that border Mexico in further proving the argument. The author might have interviewed adolescents of Mexican descent to see whether corridos are important to their migrant memory. Chew Sánchez might also have attempted to ascertain Anglo American perceptions ofcorridos, especially ofsome who understand Spanish or are acquaintances ofMexicans living in transnational communities. Despite these omissions, this historical analysis is a grand achievement because historians, particularly those focused in Chicano, Mexico, borderlands, Southwest, and/or immigration studies, have not previously ventured into this territory. Immigration is a timely issue, and reading Dr. Chew Sanchez's work will help Americans and Mexicans understand life for transnational migrants. What better way to understand a group of people than by listening to music that truly defines them. "Si con mi cantopudiera derrumbaría lasfronteraspara que el mundo viviera con una sola bandera en una misma nación. " University ofTexas-Pan AmericanJ°si A. P. Alaniz South ofthe Guadalupe: A History ofNixon and Southern Gonzales County. By Donald D. Hoffman. (Privately printed, 2006. Pp. 292. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography , index. ISBN 0978737008. $39.95, cloth.) 2oo7 Book Reviews243 Cattleman Donald D. Hoffman, a native of soutfiern Gonzales County and former teacher and principal at Nixon High School, succincdy states his South ofthe Guadalupe "is not a history of one generation of Anglo setders, or even two or three. Rather it is the history of a particular piece of land and die people who have lived on it since the beginning of time" (p. 3). True to his premise, the author traces the history of Gonzales County, placing emphasis on die southern portion, from the era of the dinosaurs to the present day by providing brief accounts of the area's relationship to Native Americans and their culture; Spanish explorers, missions, and presidios; the establishment of the Green DeWitt colony; the Texas Revolution and the Republic period; Texas's entry into the Union; and the major events in American history. The development of southern Gonzales County began in 1849 when Paul Murray, a migrant from Mississippi, established a general store and gristmill some thirty miles south of Gonzales where several trails leading to the interior and die coastal region crisscrossed. By the early 1850s, die community that emerged around Murray's business ventures became known as Rancho, and in 1855, a post office was opened in the settlement. Throughout the remainder of the century...