Américo Paredes, The Valley's Renaissance Man

Norman Rozeff
October 2009

"Renaissance man" is a complimentary description applied to an individual of wide interests and who is an expert in several fields. This description certainly applies to Américo Paredes, a local Latino who has become a national Hispanic icon. His story is well worth relating.

Américo Paredes, scholar, teacher, author, poet, musicologist, ethnographer, anthropologist, and English professor, the son of Justo and Clotilde Manzano-Vidal Paredes, was born in Brownsville, Cameron County, Texas on September 3, 1915, a period of great border upheaval. His father's ancestors had settled into ranching in the mid-1700s as part of a Sephardic colony in Nuevo Leon. On his mother's side the family had come to Mexico from Spain around 1850. Américo was named after the famed Italian 16th century geographer and explorer, Amerigo Vespucci, as "the result of a promise made to an aunt and her Italian sailor husband." Américo was one of eight children in his family.

His early education was in the public schools of Brownsville. At the time open anti-Mexican discrimination and racism led to low expectations for Mexican-American students. Encouraged, however, by a sympathetic teacher and in winning first prize in a state-wide poetry contest, Paredes, in 1934 enrolled in Brownsville Junior College, later to become Texas Southmost College. While there he worked part-time for the Brownsville Herald as proofreader, translator for English and Spanish, and cub staff writer. In these Depression Era years he earned all of $11.40 a week. Again experiencing discrimination, Paredes would be instilled with a lifelong dedication to fight bias and bigotry. At age 20 in 1935, Paredes' poetry was being published in a literary supplement to La Prensa in San Antonio. A collection of his poems would be published as Cantos de Adolescencia two years later.

He was to marry Consuela (Chelo) Silva, a well-known local singer, in the early 1940s, but they would drift apart and divorce while he was serving in the Army. One son was born of their union. While married however, Paredes, a self-taught guitarist, and Chelo would amass a repertoire of some five hundred songs. Chelo, alone, would rise to become a noted radio, recording and nightclub star, famous for interpreting canción romantica. Paredes took a second job with Pan American Airlines in 1940. This latter work was related to World War II.

In 1944 left his employments to enter the U.S. Army as an infantryman. When the war ended he joined the military newspaper, Stars and Stripes, and was assigned to Tokyo to cover the Japanese war crimes trials. He later rose to the position of political editor of the Pacific edition of this newspaper. During the occupation Paredes took course work at the Tokyo Army College. Upon his discharge he worked for the Red Cross as a public relations specialist. While with the Red Cross he met a fellow Spanish-speaking employee, Amelia Nagamine, who was of Japanese-Uruguayan heritage. They were married on May 28, 1948 before returning to the U.S. in 1950,. This union lasted until his death and produced three children. Américo's children from his two marriages were Julia, Américo, Alan, and Vicente. Amelia, like her husband, was a strong advocate, her focus being on the Austin State School and the mentally retarded.

Paredes, upon his return, enrolled in the University of Texas at Austin and in one year was graduated, summa cum laude, with majors in English and Philosophy. In the following two years he went on to acquire his M.A. in English and folklore studies. In 1956 he would receive his doctorate degree in those same disciplines. He was the first Mexican-America to receive a Ph.D from the university. Paredes began his academic teaching career at Texas Western College (now the University of Texas at El Paso).

After one year here he returned to Austin to accept a tenure track position in the Department of English. It was in 1969 that he accepted an additional appointment to the Department of Anthropology. While teaching folklore and creative writing he would often play guitar and sing to his students.

In 1958 his doctoral dissertation on Gregorio Cortez, the Tejano hero of a border corrido, was adapted and published by the University of Texas Press under the title With His Pistol in His Hand: A Border Ballad and Its Hero. As the Handbook of Texas Online notes it "reconstructed the story of Gregorio Cortez Lira, a Mexican American who killed an Anglo sheriff in a misunderstanding over the ownership of a horse. Cortez's flight from a huge posse of Texas Rangers inspired corridos celebrating his courage and tenacity, while attacking the rangers for their chauvinistic racism. Paredes's effort to overturn the romanticizing of the rangers by such Anglo authors as Webb and Dobie made his book a seminal text among Mexican-American intellectuals." The book dealing with social justice was ground-breaking, in that it was one of the first to touch negatively on the Texas Rangers. It ushered in an era of revisionism of previously Anglo-dominated histories of Texas. Its release quickly brought him recognition, widespread success, and, importantly, recognition by fellow academics. In 1982 Edward James Olmos would star in a movie based on the book. Chicano activists in the late sixties were to discover the book and make Paredes an "underground celebrity". It was in 1958 also that Paredes published a series of articles on the corrido. He demonstrated that this form of music actually had its origin along the Texas-Mexico border rather than in a purely Mexican origin as had been earlier attributed to it.

Hispanic youth, both on a high school and collegiate level, were beginning to appreciate what organization and activism could accomplish in securing social, civil and other rights. As the Handbook relates: " At the University of Texas at Austin, MAYO (Mexican American Youth Organization) garnered the support of both the eminent anthropologist Américo Paredes and the well-regarded teacher George I. Sánchez. Though the general public usually became aware of MAYO only through the mainstream press, the organization had its own newspapers, in which it reported on its activities in English, standard Spanish, and the Spanish argot known as caló . The newspapers, with such titles as El Despertador, Hoy, El Azteca, and La Revolución, often brought a decidedly different-some would say militant-slant to their articles. But they also published stories not seen in the general press, as well as poetry, and at least one newspaper occasionally carried "el güiri, güiri," a witty gossip column written in caló.

Paredes lobbied for the founding of the Center for Intercultural Studies of Folklore and Ethnomusicology in1967. It was in1970, together with Sánchez, other Chicano faculty members, and graduate students, that his lobbying efforts resulted in the establishment of UT Austin's Center for Mexican-American Studies. He was named its first director. So serious was Paredes and his convictions that twice in the early 1970s he tended his resignation to the university when he felt that his suggestions were being ignored or not given serious consideration. His reputation increased, and he was invited in 1967 to be a distinguished visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. Over the period of 1968 to1973 he served as editor of the Journal of American Folklore.

In the 1970s, publication of his Folktales of Mexico and A Texas Mexican Cancionero: Folksongs of the Lower Border would cement his scholarly reputation. While retiring in1984 at age 69, he continued to perform and write. His best-known work was to be published in 1990. It had been written 50 years earlier. This was George Washington Gómez: A Mexicotexan Novel. In it he portrays a young man's identity conflicts, experienced primarily in the educational system while growing up in an Anglo-Texan environment. The city of Brownsville is fictionalized as "Jonesville-on-Grande". In it he takes the opportunity to satirize the figure of J. Frank Dobie as a garrulous racist named K. Hank Harvey, the "Historical Oracle of the State."

In was in the early 1980s that Paredes was named the Ashbel Smith Professor of English and Anthropology and later the Dickson, Allen, and Anderson Centennial Professor in 1983. His 1990 publication, Between Two Worlds, a collection of poems, some going back as early as 1934, would largely influence a generation of Mexican-American writers.

The year 1993 saw two of his works published. These were: Uncle Remus con chile, a collection of Mexicano border humor. His scholarly collection of seventeen stories, The Hammon and the Beans and Other Stories, was called " an elegant reminiscence", and it "helped to establish a literary tradition for Texas-Mexican fiction". Six stories in the collection had already won first prize in a contest on the short story held by the Dallas Times Herald in 1952. The stories dealt with the Lower Rio Grande borderland and Japanese life and culture. A work of fiction, The Shadow, was, in 1998, to be his last. In all of his fiction, it is clear that Paredes drew directly from his experiences of border life. As has been pointed out " These works celebrate, with gentle irony and a haunting sense of the transformation of a culture, the vitality of life on the border." They are steeped in "tragedy, humor, pathos, and irony." In addition to the Southern, Western, and Urban traditions in Texas fiction, the works of Paredes helped to establish a fourth, the Chicano tradition.

Américo Paredes received numerous honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship; in 1989 the Charles Frankel Prize from the National Endowment for the Humanities; in 1990 the Order of the Aztec Eagle, the highest honor awarded foreigners by the government of Mexico; 1991, the Order of José de Escandón; and in 1993 the University of Texas dedicated to him the two-day symposium, "Regional Identity and Cultural Tradition: The Tejano Contribution." In 1995 Austin musician, Tish Hinohosa, dedicated a corrido to him. It is titled "Con Su Pluma en Su Mano" ("With His Pen in His Hand.") In 1998 he helped break ground for the Austin Independent School District's school named in his honor, the Américo Paredes Middle School. In 2008 he was an inaugural inductee into the Austin Music Memorial.

An outstanding teacher, Paredes, though gentle and soft- spoken, was a man of his convictions and stood up and taught others to combat ethnic discrimination. After a lengthy illness, Paredes was to die of pneumonia at age eighty-three in Austin on May 5,1999, coincidentally on Mexico's celebratory holiday, Cinco de Mayo. His wife Amelia died a year later.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Julio A Martinez and Francisco A. Lomeli, editors, Chicano Literature: A Reference Guide (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985), Luis Leal, "Américo Paredes and Modern Mexican American Scholarship." Ethnic Affairs 1 (Fall 1987), José E. Limón, "Américo Paredes, a Man From the Border." Revista Chicano-Riqueña 8:3 (Fall 1980), Anne Dingus, "Américo Paredes." Texas Monthly (June 1999).

Recommended citations:

Dr. Matt Meier's "Américo Parades 1915-1999"

Clarissa E. Hinojosa and Juan Carlos Rodriguez "Paredes, Américo (1915-1999)" 

When I drew up the list of local Hispanic icons some months back I was unaware of a very important gentleman. After chancing upon page 202 of the June 1999 issue of Texas Monthly, I was alerted to Américo Paredes and the need to have a biography of this accomplished individual online. The magazine page, with a large photo, presents his many accomplishments including being the first Mexican American to receive a PhD. from the University of Texas. He is referenced 17 times in the Handbook of Texas Online, primarily for his publications. Paredes was to die in Austin on Cinco de Mayo, 1999.

Here is a short list of Paredes publications taken from the Handbook:

El Corrido de Gregorio Cortez: A Ballad of Border Conflict (PhD. dissertation, University of Texas, 1956);

With His Pistol in His Hand: A Border Ballad and Its Hero (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1958;

A Texas-Mexican Cancionero: Folksongs of the Lower Border (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976);

Editor, Humanidad: Essays in honor of George L. Sanchez (Chicano Studies Center Publications: University of California, Los Angeles, 1977);

Folklorization of Actual Events, Aztlán 4 (Spring 1973).

Some quotes relating to Paredes and taken from the Handbook are as follows:

Américo Paredes popularized the story of Gregorio Cortez in With His Pistol in His Hand: A Border Ballad and Its Hero, which was published by the University of Texas Press in 1958. Between 1958 and 1965 the book sold fewer than 1,000 copies, and a Texas Ranger angered by it threatened to shoot Paredes. In subsequent decades, however, the book has been recognized as a classic of Texas Mexican prose and has sold quite well. Cortez's story gained further interest when the movie The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez was produced in 1982.

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