Americo Paredes: In His Own Words, an Authorized Biography

Appendix One: Unedited Transcription of Favorite Interview with Dr. Am

137 Dr. Américo Paredes: Okay. How do you want to lead off? Medrano: Today is September 22, 1994. We are very pleased to be here at the home of Américo Paredes, Professor Emeritus at The University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Paredes what can you tell us about your childhood? Where were you born? About your parents? Where did you grow up? Dr. Américo Paredes: I was born in Brownsville; I’m a Brownsville boy, on September 3, 1915, during the height of the border troubles when there was an ethnic cleansing, to use current term, along the border when Rangers and others murdered a number of Mexicans and intimidated a lot of others to leave the country; in other words, so the country could be developed. That’s why we have grapefruit orchards and all of that in the Brownsville area. Medrano: And your parents, what can you tell us about your parents? Dr. Américo Paredes: Well, my father came from people that colonized the area in 1749. They came north with Escandon, but they had settled in the area around Nuevo León in 1580. They were part of a colony of Sephardic Jews that were brought over by Carbajal y Cueva. Now the Jews had been given a choice after 1492 either to leave the country or become Christianized. Many of them remained practicing their religion in secret. Luis Carbajal y Cueva was one of them appendix฀one unedited฀trAnscriPtion฀oF฀FA vorite฀ inter view฀witH฀dr.฀Américo฀PAredes September 22, 1994 138 APPendix฀one and rose in esteem. He had come to Mexico once and participated in the defeat and capture of a power that English history doesn’t talk about, John Hawkins… About the time other colonists were moving into New Mexico in 1580, and he brought more than 100 families. So these people married each other. So my father’s people stayed where anti-clerics were. I said in one of my articles they didn’t intermarry much, but my father did. The other matter of intermarriage broke down in the 1860s. He married someone whose parents had come down from Spain. My mother’s father was from Asturias and my mother was born on the border, but her father José María Vidal was a Catalan…so that is my background, I would say. Medrano: You were born in Brownsville. What recollections do you have of your early years growing up, going to school? What do you remember about the city, the school system, and about your own education? Dr. Américo Paredes: Well, it was a very peaceful setting. Now it is not unfortunately, but we grew up during the Depression; by that I mean my friends Sabas Klahn, who died not too long ago, and Roberto Ramírez of another family there. We had no money so we often would go out walking anywhere. No danger, that was before the roads and smuggling, but that didn’t bother us. Mostly smuggling was tequila. In other words drugs was not a problem or what are known as drug lords nowadays. Medrano: What do you recall about the downtown area, something special about walking in el centro? Dr. Américo Paredes: Well, it was something like a Mexican town, but we didn’t have a plaza, but Elizabeth Street and Washington Street, to a certain extent, acted like Saturday evening because at that time all the farmers and ranchers came to town on Saturday, and the girls, including some from Matamoros would walk along Elizabeth Street, and on the other side the boys would walk the other way or talk to them, try to court them. That existed at that time. Washington Street was still part of downtown; and then, of course, from Washington Street on we had streets named for presidents and those Spanish 139 trAnscriPtion฀oF฀FA vorite฀inter view speaking people, who were not really Anglos but the leaders of the towns. Anglos lived on the other side of Elizabeth Street; on that side, streets were named after saints in Spanish. But I lived really, my memory is divided a certain ways. My father had been the oldest son and they had land on what is now Texas, south of the Nueces, which then was part of the province of Nuevo Santander and Tamaulipas. They had to sell out. Though they managed to...