Américo Paredes

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Américo Paredes
Born(1915-09-03)September 3, 1915
Brownsville, Texas, U.S.
DiedMay 5, 1999(1999-05-05) (aged 83)
Austin, Texas, U.S.
NationalityAmerican
Occupations
  • Folklorist
  • professor
  • writer
Awards
AA)
University of Texas at Austin (BA, MA, PhD)
Academic work
InstitutionsUniversity of Texas at Austin

Américo Paredes (September 3, 1915 – May 5, 1999) was an American author born in

sefarditas, or Spanish Jews who had been converted to Christianity, and in 1749—along with José de Escandón—they settled in the lower Rio Grande. The year of Paredes’ birth was the year of the last Texas Mexican Uprising, which was to portend the life Paredes was to lead. Throughout his long career as a journalist, folklorist and professor, Paredes was to bring focus to his Mexican American heritage, and the beauty of those traditions.[1]

Life and career

Growing up in Brownsville, Texas, Paredes was to experience the double life of American and Mexican culture.

Cesar Augusto Sandino
, about whom, five years later, Paredes would write “A Cesar Augusto Sandino.”

While in his second year of junior college, Paredes was also to write George Washington Gomez: A Mexico-Texan Novel. Although it was not published until 1990, George Washington Gomez[3] is Paredes' most well known work. The novel tells the story of a young man growing up in early 20th-century Jonesville on the River (a fictional city Paredes used to represent the city of Brownsville) and reveals the conflict in identity (as the title name suggests) the young man experiences growing up in an Anglo-Texan environment, particularly with regard to the educational system.

While in college, Paredes worked not only at the local grocery store (where he bought his first guitar from a co-worker), but also as a proofreader and reporter at

University of Texas, through an army school, affectionately referred to as the Tokyo College. By 1950, Paredes had moved to Austin to pursue first his master's degree and then his Ph.D. When he returned to the United States, he brought with him his half-Japanese, half-Uruguayan wife Amelia Nagamine, whose visa issues almost stopped his education. By 1951, Paredes was teaching as a graduate student at the University of Texas and drawing attention. In 1952 he would win an award from the Dallas Times Herald
for a collection of short stories he had selected from his larger work, The Hammon and The Beans. He called it Border Country. In 1955, he won an award of 500 dollars for his novel The Shadow, although this book would not be published until 1998.

In his graduate school years it would be a twist of fate that would lead Paredes down the road of folklore. While taking English courses during his masters' program, he encountered a text comparing two Scottish ballads, which Paredes was to compare to the Mexican corrido (a comparison that would crop up again in his dissertation of With His Pistol in His Hand). His professor at the time introduced him to Robert Stephenson, then a professor of English teaching folklore, who would persuade him to pursue a future in the field. In 1956, Paredes’ dissertation, which was to turn into his opus With His Pistol in His Hand,[4] told the story of the legendary Gregorio Cortez and his conflict with the Texas Rangers. The text portrayed the famed Texas Rangers in a negative fashion, which was unheard of in the history of that organization. There was a suggestion, jokingly perhaps, by some Texas Rangers that Paredes should be shot in retaliation for his blemishing of the reputation of the Texas Rangers in that book.[5] When With His Pistol in His Hand was completed,[6] it garnered the attention of famous folklorist Stith Thompson, who was to recommend the work to the University of Texas Press for publication in 1958. The book "sold less than 1000 copies by 1965, then exploded into dozens of editions as it became a foundational text and primer for the emerging academic movement of Chicano studies."[7]

The same year With His Pistol in His Hand was published, Paredes was hired by

Orden del Aguila Azteca along with Cesar Chavez and Julian Samora
.

In 1970, his Folktales of Mexico was published as part of the Folktales of the World series.

On May 5, 1999, Americo Paredes died in Austin, Texas.

Paredes has the distinction of being one of the few scholars "to ever have a corrido...composed in his honor".[citation needed]

Legacy

Places named after him:

Bibliography

  • 1937 Cantos de adolescencia
  • 1958 With His Pistol in His Hand: A Border Ballad and Its Hero
  • 1966 Folk Music of Mexico. Book for the Guitar No. 671
  • 1970 Folktales of Mexico
  • 1976 A Texas-Mexican Cancionero: Folksongs of the Lower Border
  • 1990 George Washington Gomez: A Mexico-Texan Novel
  • 1991 Between Two Worlds
  • 1993 Uncle Remus con chile
  • 1993 Folklore and Culture on the Texas-Mexican Border
  • 1994 The Hammon and the Beans and Other Stories
  • 1998 The Shadow

References

  1. ^ "Américo Paredes". Dictionary of Literary Biography. Archived from the original on 2008-12-05. Retrieved 2008-10-17.
  2. ISBN 0-226-64571-1
  3. ISBN 978-1-55885-012-5
    )
  4. ISBN 978-0-292-70128-1
    )
  5. ^ The Enduring Legacy of Américo Paredes
  6. ^ Paredes, Americo
  7. ^ Lamadrid, Enrique. 2018. Review of Border Folk Balladeers: Critical Studies on Américo Paredes. http://www.jfr.indiana.edu/review.php?id=2287
  8. ^ "Dr. Americo Paredes Elementary ~ Brownsville, TX".
  9. ^ https://paredes.lajoyaisd.com/
  10. ^ "Paredes Middle School". Austin ISD. Retrieved 2020-07-29.

Further reading

External Reading
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