Corrido-Ing State Violence Romeo García, University of Utah

51 Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics Corrido-ing State Violence Romeo García, University of Utah Content warning: This article contains discussions of physical and symbolic racial violence targeting colonized peoples and its depiction in various media. “This land’s all mine…I need every last inch of it…” —Texas Rangers in Action, no. 8 (p. 28) Corridos and Community labor. (p. 36) Listening as Cultural-Rhetoric • So what if the Mexican had been killed Practices by a Gringo? The Gringo would have Since the 15th century, a colonial and got off with a year. One divided into imperial design, axiologically premised twenty: A Mexican then is worth one- upon logics of domination, management, twentieth the value of a horse. (p. and control of land, resources, and 178) people, has functioned in the U.S. This colonial and imperial design, in my Together, these passages reveal a historical opinion, is best captured by Américo depiction of the appropriation of land, Paredes’ work in George Washington Gómez. exploitation of labor, extraction of The following passages reflect these resources, racial distribution of work, and logics: a subject/object binary. Settlers came to Texas and the region today known as the • A few English-speaking adventurers Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV) in the moved in…Then came the railroad early 1800s. But they never left. Settler early in the 20th century, and with it colonialism then must be thought of as a arrived the first real-estate men and series of projects carried out, as Paredes the land-and-title companies, and a depicts, that ensures that even if the Chamber of Commerce, of course, temporality of the political order of which renamed the little town colonization has passed, Texas and its “Jonesville-on the-Grande.” (p. 36) people will re-write itself as colonial. • Mexicans labored with axe and spade In Texas, there is a settler public to clear away the brush…To make memory that did and continues to desire room for truck farming and citrus to forget and remember in colonial ways. groves. And the settlers poured Jacques Derrida once captured this desire in…while Mexicans were pushed out (and the kind of literacy and rhetorical of cattle raising into hard manual work needed to be carried out) in Specters Spring 2018 (2:2) 52 of Marx when he spoke of Western ensure a kind of ecological impact on conjuration practices: “let us make sure humans of Texas. An impact, I argue, that that in the future it [the specter] does not ensures Texas will re-write itself as come back…in the future, said the colonial (as in the colonial will traffic in powers of old Europe…it must not the normative) as it forgets and incarnate itself, either publicly or in remembers in colonial ways and confirms secret” (p. 48). This kind of desire to a haunting. forget is inextricably linked to literacy and Specters haunt Texas. Before becoming rhetorical work, from classroom an academic and encountering influential education to storytelling to ceremonial figures such as Américo Paredes, Rolando celebrations. Settler public memory Hinojosa, José Limón, and the Saldívar resounds in characters such as K. Hank family, who also illuminated this reality, I Harvey, as portrayed by Paredes, who as had knowledge of this haunting from my an invited keynote guest at a high school community. I was born and raised in the graduation, tells a population that is LRGV where there is a different kind of predominately Mexican: literacy and rhetorical work at play. Work that reflects a kind of community May they [the graduating students] expression of responsibility and justice never forget the names of Sam that seeks, without certainty, to create a Houston, James Bowie, and Davey space for and to give back speech to Crockett. May they remember the specters that haunt Texas. An example of Alamo where they go…When our such work are corridos, which carry a forefathers rose on their hindlegs and collective memory of tragedy and hope. demanded independence…when they Corridos, or Mexican folk ballads, have arose with a mighty shout and forever one corridista (singer), who is channeling erased Mexican cruelty and tyranny society through a first or third-person from this fair land. (p. 274) perspective as they bear witness Settler public memory desires to forget hypothetically to a tragedy, reinforcing how the cruelty and tyranny of settlers both shared community perspective and both attempted to erase the “Other” from collective memory (Limón, 1992).1 history (physically and historiographically) Typically, the corridista identifies a place, and emplace structures of management recognizes the wronged and the and control of land, resources, and people wrongdoers, articulates a metanarrative of through a series of violent projects. a triste verdad, and announces an urgency Rather, settler public memory functions to communicate both in the form of through and with literacy and rhetorical refusing to forget and an expression of work, as depicted in the scene above, to remembering so as to bear witness to an 1 See José Limón (1992), also, for an insightful conversation on the theme of masculinity, which might very much be the limitation of corridos. 53 Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics inheritance. The corridista’s propositional que eran hombres…no por que fueran intent, without certainty, is to implicate bandidos,” they are calling and pushing la others to bear witness to this inheritance, gente de las márgenes to hold settlers to interpret it, and to orient the self to it. answerable to their past actions. The past, The affective value of the corrido is its however, still is present and still makes a circulation and flow, which keeps its sound in the present because of the secret even as it is expressed as a form of literacy and rhetorical work that takes public memory. In the márgenes of the place throughout the communities of LRGV, there are communities educated Texas—settler public memory and public through this kind of literacy and rhetorical memory of the márgenes. work that undermines official Texas For Grandma, it was important for me history. An education, I argue, that begins to listen. It was a kind of listening that by cultivating community listening ensured every act of seeing, being, and towards a memory of tragedy and hope. doing in itself was with my community in Together, Grandma and I listened to mind. She was preparing me for a life of corridos. One in particular continues to tragedy and hope—the burden of our serve as inspiration for the work I do. In historical bodies and material conditions. one corrido, “Pistoleros Famosos,” the Corridos were but one exercise in corridista announces a place, “Por las listening to what was at stake when márgenes del Rio [as in the Rio Grande submitting to the literal translation of así River],” which situates the subject, the son las cosas. Perhaps for no other reason “pistoleros,” and proclaims the urgency to the commencement of the corrido “Jefe de communicate, “Murieron por que eran Jefes” was significant to Grandma: “A mi hombres…no por que fueran bandidos” me gustan los corridos por que son los (Garza and Arredondo, n.d.). In the hechos reales de nuestro pueblo…Si a mi exchange between rhetor and audience, también me gustan por que en ellos se the audience is implicated by the canta la pura verdad” (Bello, 1997). For corridista, called to listen to stories of Grandma, it was important for me to tragedy and hope and pushed to listen in recognize and acknowledge que no hay ways that create presence from absence una sola verdad. Rather, similar to the and sound from silence. Corridos are an above lyric, there was always a verdad expression of a cultural rhetorics practice from gente like us that challenged a of speaking back—back to a white truth or singular truth. Grandma exercised my white narrative that doubles down on listening to ensure I knew this: settler colonial rhetoric and the narratives that justify the violence they inflicted on Grandma: “Ay, esta canción me the Mexican and Mexican American encanta.” communities in South Texas in the name Me: “¿Por qué?” of modernity. When the corridista states Grandma: “Pos, está pesada.” in “Pistoleros Famosos,” “Murieron por Me: “¿Pesada?” Spring 2018 (2:2) 54 Grandma: “¡Sí, pesada! ¿Entiendes? and to confirm a haunting. Perhaps for no Ábre tus oídos, ¿me estás other reason is it common to hear a escuchando?” variation on these words pronounced Me: “Estoy escuchando” throughout corridos: “diles que nunca Grandma: “Te digo esto para que sepas olviden and ay que prender la lección.” y aprendas.” Jose Limón (1992) speaks to the Me: “Yo se, Grandma.” spectrality of corridos when he writes that Grandma: “La gente se cantan los corridos “return the dead to the living and corridos con padre, ¿que no? Es to the politics of the present” (p. 73). una triste verdad.” Because the telos of Western epistemology is a topos of intelligibility, The translation of “pesada” is “heavy.” But rationality, and totality, there is an effort the word itself is expounded in the to mark and display the “Other” as “dead.” sentiments it conjures. Her charge for me The “dead” stand juxtaposed to and with to open my ears suggests that listening the present (de Certeau, 1988; Cushman, goes beyond the mere act of listening. The 2013). “pesada” component of this exchange is The corridista, however, in naming a something that resides within the gente de place, time, subjects, and/or atrocities, las márgenes who inherit stories of tragedy ensures that an exorcism of the past is and hope. Grandma was preparing me for impossible.

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