Folklore and Culture on the Texas-Mexican Border

A distinguished senior scholar, the late AmÉrico Paredes was the Dickson, Allen, Anderson Centennial Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and English at the University of Texas at Austin. In 1990 he received the Order of the Aztec Eagle, the highest honor Mexico bestows on foreigners.

Vintage Paredes—at once erudite and clear, scholarly and accessible.... It could serve the general reader as an interesting, accessible introduction to this unique Texas scholar who, in Bauman’s words, ‘has produced the most important and influential scholarship of our generation on the folklore of Greater Mexico in general and the Lower Border in particular.’ ...The newly published collection of essays reflects the range and diversity of his work: ribald jokes and ethnic slurs, the rise and fall of the corrido, machismo in the United States and Mexico, how anthropologists and other scholars are led astray by their informants, the clash of cultures in the Rio Grande Valley today. (Texas Observer)

• AcknowledgmentsIntroductionPart One. The Social Base and the Negotiation of Identity 1. The Folklore of Groups of Mexican Origin in the United States [1979]2. The Problem of Identity in a Changing Culture: Popular Expressions of Culture Conflict along the Lower Rio Grande Border [1978]3. Folk Medicine and the Intercultural jest [1968]4. On Ethnographic Work among Minority Groups: A Folklorist's Perspective [1977]Part Two. The Folklore Genres: History, Form, and Performance 5. Some Aspects of Folk Poetry [1964]6. The Mexican Corrido: Its Rise and Fall [1958]7. The Concept of the Emotional Core Applied to the Mexican Corrido "Benjamin Argumedo" [1972]8. JosÉ Mosqueda and the Folklorization of Actual Events [1973]9. The United States, Mexico, and Machismo [1971]10. The DÉcima on the Texas-Mexican Border: Folksong as an Adjunct to Legend [1966]11. The Undying Love of "El Indio" CÓrdova: DÉcimas and Oral History in a Border Family [1987]NotesBibliography: The Scholarly Writings of AmÉrico Paredes