The Legacy of Américo Paredes

Preface

Preface “With His Pistol in His Hand”: A Border Ballad and Its Hero (1958), Américo Paredes’s most-acclaimed work, generated a considerable amount of interest and enthusiasm during the rise of the Chicano movement. The text provided young activists with a convincing literary document of Mexican American resistance against U.S. hegemony. The book narrates the life and legend of Gregorio Cortez, a man who defended his rights with his pistol in his hand. The point of view presented by Paredes challenged stereotypes of Mexican Americans, since for too many years the U.S. literary record had offered an often-distorted view of Mexican culture. In general terms the mestizo people in the United States were viewed as inferior and backward with no serious desire to better themselves or their lot. Paredes rejected this attitude in much of his writings throughout his entire career at the University of Texas at Austin. He believed that Mexican American folklore and culture in general was limited in scope and often inaccurate in its attempts to understand the people. A variable within his revisionist efforts was his idea of folklore as “performance.” The concept involved a shift of emphasis away from the collection and origin of cultural items and into an examination of folklore as a communicative process and with the genius of the folk artist in mind. Rather than being the object of representation, folklore as performance served as a voice for Paredes to understand what it meant to be a Mexican in the United States. The spin allowed for another point of view, one that was seldom considered by folklorists and cultural anthropologists. Writing about culture in this way foreshadowed an important xi trend many years later known as the postmodern movement in the social sciences. My argument in this book attempts to prove that Paredes’s contribution to the study of culture not only establishes him as a one of the most influential folklorists of his time, but also as an important figure in cultural anthropology. Paredes was well versed in the latest cultural theories and methods of his time when he challenged the representation of Mexicans and Chicanos in his article “On Ethnographic Work among Minority Groups: A Folklorist ’s Perspective” (1977). The essay points toward some of the inaccuracies of cultural anthropologists who studied Mexican and Chicano communities, while his recommendations for the study of culture represent a groundbreaking text in the field of the social sciences. His techniques in ethnography and knowledge of folklore as performance show that he was ahead of his time and that the discipline of cultural anthropology would profit from a serious consideration of his contribution. Américo Paredes was a curious and meticulous individual, who at an early age loved to read and write and who dreamed about one day becoming a famous poet and novelist. After high school graduation (1934), he attended and graduated from Brownsville Junior College (1934–36) and worked as a proofreader for the Brownsville Herald. He wrote poetry, short stories, and essays on Chicano culture, although a good portion of this early material remained unpublished for years. His dedication to the written word went hand in hand with his love of music, especially the piano and guitar. Américo Paredes was born into a culture that celebrated life through music, and ballads served as a form of oral history for the Mexican people. Américo sang and played guitar on the radio in his youth and became an accomplished folk singer along the Lower Rio Grande Border. He married the well-known singer Consuelo “Chelo” Silva, and the couple had a son, Américo Paredes Jr. But the marriage did not last, and Américo and Consuelo soon dixii Preface vorced. He later volunteered to serve in World War II and became editor of the army newspaper Pacific Stars and Stripes (1945–46). While in Japan he met and married his second wife, Amelia Shidzu Nagamine, daughter of a Japanese diplomat to Argentina. Amelia would be instrumental in his life and career as a professor and scholar of Chicano studies. She assumed most of the family responsibilities to allow her husband to continue his dream of one day becoming a famous writer. The Paredes family arrived in the United States in 1950, and Américo enrolled immediately as a full-time student at the University of Texas at Austin. At home...