The Emergence of Mexican America: Recovering Stories of Mexican Peoplehood in U.S. Culture

5 “Con su pluma en su mano”: Américo Paredes andthe Poetics of “Mexican American” Peoplehood

“Con su pluma en su mano” Américo Paredes and the Poetics of “Mexican American” Peoplehood Con su pluma en su mano (With His Pen in His Hand) Con su permiso quiero cantarles (With your permission I want to sing to you) Aquí un corrido sin tristeza (Here a ballad without sadness ni maldad or malice) Con pluma firme muy fronterizo (With pen held firmly, very frontierlike) Sin miedo nos forjo nuevo pensar (Without fear he forged for us a new way of thinking) En Brownsville Tejas (In Brownsville, Texas, mil nueve y quince nineteen hundred fifteen) Américo Paredes fue a empezar (Américo Paredes began) Su vida y los quince años (His life and at fifteen years) Sus ojos vieron cosas que hay (His eyes saw things that have) Que recontar (To be recounted) (Chorus) Con su pluma en su mano (With his pen in his hand) Corazonde fiel Chicano (Heart of true Chicano) Mexico-americano (Mexican American) Muchos cuentos fue a cambiar (Many tales he changed) Con su pluma en su mano (With his pen in his hand) Con paciencia y sin temor (With patience and without fear) Escribio muchas verdades (He wrote many truths) Y respeto nos gano (And won respect for us) Se fue la guerra viajo el mundo (He went to the war, traveled the world) Después se continuó a educar (Later he continued his education) 5 135 En Austin Tejas poco nerviosos (In Austin, Texas, a little nervous) Se pusieron los de la universidad (Those at the university became) Palabras justas bien presentadas (Words of justice well presented) Aparecieron y así fue a llegar (Appeared and that’s how he became) Doctorado y decorado (Doctorated and decorated) Que hasta México lo fue a honrar (That even Mexico was to honor him) Tantas canciones me ha enseñado (So many songs he has taught me) Por ser musico poeta y locutor (By being muscian, poet, and radio announcer) Yo gaurdaré siempre un tesoro (I’ll always guard a treasure Las historias de ese amable (The stories of that friendly profesor professor) Un gran maestro no se retira (A great teacher does’t retire) Y es por eso que aquí les vengo (And that’s why I’m here to a dar bring you) Este corrido porque yo he sido (This ballad because I’ve been) También alumna de Don Américo (Also a student of Don Américo) Tish Hinojosa, 1999 In the summer of 1999, I attended Don Américo Paredes’ memorial celebration in Austin, Texas, where Tish Hinojosa sang the above corrido for an audience of nearly one thousand mourners. People had come from all over the country: former students, musicians, artists, poets, Chicano and Anglo community leaders, senators and congressman . Hinojosa wrote this song to pay tribute to the long and distinguished career of Paredes as a writer, musician, ethnographer, teacher, leader, and, in many respects, creator of Chicano studies. Hinojosa’s corrido was timely and moving. It not only honored the man who became known to the Chicano community as Don Paredes, but it also captured the poetics of Mexican American peoplehood that Paredes himself would be so interested in exploring during his long and distinguished life. 136 | The Poetics of “Mexican American” Peoplehood With a guitar in her hand, Hinojosa sang “Con su pluma en su mano” in the same versification, rhythm, and structure that hundreds of other corridos had been sung for generations. “Con su pluma en su mano” relates the biographical story of Paredes, creating for us a lyrical bildungsroman . Through the corrido, the listener learns of his birth in 1915; his work as a soldier in the Korean war; his work as a broadcaster, poet, musician, and folk singer; and his emergence as a scholar and teacher at the University of Texas. Like the hundreds of corridos that had helped de- fine Mexican peoplehood in years past, Hinojosa’s eulogizing corrido worked as a modern story of Mexican peoplehood, poetically making Paredes the leader and embodiment of all of us in that room through the use of a historical form. In this way, the poetic inscription of Paredes through a uniquely Chicano cultural expression whose themes resonate with populist ideals and norms, the corrido, becomes a founding discourse of our (post)modern Mexican American collectivity. The cultural form that had been so important to Mexican collectivity and resistance in...