Corrido=ballad (Tex-Mex fusion—Anglo-American ballad form fused with Spanish language/themes—border of Mexico and Texas)

Tradition of honoring Mexican defiance of Anglo-white supremacy (narcocorrido—song in praise of the drug lord, runner)

Cortez: violence, language barriers, power of language, lack of trust/respect/communication; becomes a folk hero for Mexicans who know he can’t get a fair trial and is likely to be lynched by the powers that be (Texas Rangers—paramilitary force)

Jesse James figure—outlaw in a land that is corrupt (this land is condemned)—Railroads—Robin Hood figure; Gregorio Cortez standing up to a racist injust power structure (Anglo lynch mob)

Ballad style: quatrain stanza with rhymes A-B-C-B  simple sing-song melody; oral culture (no single version of the ballad, many versions depending on performance)

Opening stanzas establish: tragedy (desgracia) place (El Carmen) victim (Mayor Cherife) wrongdoer (Gregorio Cortez) –do we know for sure what has happened?  It’s all hearsay evidence.   We don’t know what happened at all. 

He’s a wanted man, a killer (dead or alive)—lack of judicial process; Anglos scapegoating; dehumanizing

Ballads—flexible narrative structure  We move from the 3^rd person to 1^st with no transition (“with a pistol in his hand”—title of Amerigo Paredes book in 1958 about the ballad)  how does the gun in hand symbolize Cortez?  He’s capable of defending himself against an oppressive culture—in story, fiction, narrative people can enact their frustrations/desires sublimate through art (healthy thing or not?)  Does art/literature provoke violence or does it merely come out of basic human nature)

“whiter than a poppy/for the fear” Anglo-whiteness becomes equated with fear not supremacy

Pistol (symbol of power machismo phallic); magic animal power—ancient native American that have power beyond the Anglo invader; superhuman element (300 to one); jumping around like comic book superhero;

Ballad repetition (repeat lines to progress story): pistol in hand; jump out corral; kill another sheriff

Why does he call the Rangers “rinches” (using Mexican-American dialect to belittle the white power)

Why does he surrender according to the ballad?  Heroic attitude and surrender himself for the larger good (true hero—put himself aside for the larger good)

Rinches after reward/money – capitalist society of the Anglos ; he’s going to control the surrender—won’t let himself be lynched—smart but defiant even in an of surrender—maintains dignity and humanity—I want same justice you’d give an Anglo