The New Mexican early ballad tradition: reconsidering the New Mexican Folklorists' contribution to songs of intercultural conflict.(Critical Essay)

In his classic 1979 essay on the "Folklore of Groups of Mexican Origin in the United States," Chicano Folklorist Americo Paredes stresses the social and economic conditions of Mexicans within the United States in his search for a purely and distinctive Mexican-American folklore. The Mexican-American corrido is one folkloric expression that emerged as a truly native musical and literary form after the 1860s amidst the ongoing and often turbulent culture clash between Mexican and Anglo Americans along the lower Rio Grande Texas-Mexican border area. There obviously remain several unanswered questions regarding the Mexican American ballad tradition in the Southwest. Paredes' own theory regarding the antiquity of the Mexican-American corrido raises several issues which I will examine briefly in this essay. (1)

The first question is why the corrido had not migrated into the frontier outposts in the early colonial days. The second is why the romance tradition did not flower into the corrido in the provinces--and in New Mexico particularly, where the romance tradition flourished until very recent times. My analytic approach will consist of a critical examination of the early writings of some of New Mexico's more noted folklorists and musical scholars.

Paredes (1979:3-4) distinguishes Mexican from Mexican American folklore in at least three ways and these approaches may also be exemplified by representatives of New Mexico's folklorists and other musical scholars. Paredes refers to New Mexico's earliest native folklorists collectively as Hispanophiles. This group of scholars includes Aurelio M. Espinosa, Gilberto Espinosa, Manuel J. Espinosa, Aurora Lucero, White Lea, Cleofas Vigil, and Juan B. Rael. The best representative and most prolific of these folklorists is Aurelio Espinosa, who is best remembered for his preoccupation with the survival of Spanish folklore in the Southwest.

Other scholars who have contributed to the study of New Mexican folk and traditional music include Arthur Campa, Ruben Cobos, Vicente T. Mendoza, and John Donald Robb. Mendoza represents a more diffusionist approach and orientation, disregarding Mexican American folklore as in no way different, original, or important than Mexican folklore. In contrast, Robb argues a somewhat more regionalist view, regarding New Mexican folklore as an offshoot of Spanish colonial folklore with deep roots in North America. Discussing the issue of intercultural conflict along the United States-Mexico border, Paredes concludes that "nothing of what has interested us here can be hoped for from the Hispanophiles." He charges New Mexican folklorists such as Aurelio Espinosa as being disinterested in Mexican folklore (1993, 16).

I take somewhat of an exception with this opinion because of the orientation and comparative methodology of the field of folklore and comparative literature at the time the Hispanophiles were writing. I intend to examine the scholarly contributions of Aurelio Espinosa to the ongoing dialogue of intercultural conflict. Working from a sound premise in search of a truly Mexican American folklore, Paredes stresses the "importance of cultural conflict in its formation" (1993, 16). I will also follow this postulate in search of a truly native New Mexican folklore that is certainly in line with the principles defined by other Mexican American folklorists but more importantly remaining in accord with the attitudes expressed by the people who produce it.

I agree with Paredes that the shock of cultures and peoples in a continuing situation of cultural conflict has given New Mexican (otherwise known as Hispano or Spanish American) folklore the traits that distinguish it from other folklores including that of Mexico and other Hispanic groups throughout the Southwest. I rest my argument not only on the fact that many of New Mexico's Hispanos and other scholars were indeed interested in Spanish survivals but that they were also interested in the folklore data which may be seen as genuine products of New Mexican folk groups. The only difficulty that I encounter with Paredes' approach is that it dismisses the attitudes regarding the folklore of the Hispanic people under investigation across the Greater Southwest. Such a view sets aside native attitudes and voices, especially in New Mexico and California where the native claim has been entirely disregarded by Chicanos as either a fantasy heritage, a legend, or a myth. Likewise this folklorization of ethnic identity overlooks a unique opportunity to investigate the relations between folklore and culture.

Paredes concludes that the greater part of folklore of the Southwest or at least of South Texas is primarily Mexican American and he views the rest as "Mexican folklore, and by extension, Spanish-American, Spanish, or universal folklore" (1993, 13). Keeping all of the approaches to Mexican American folklore in mind, Paredes admits that none is altogether incorrect noting that: