Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. [Vol. 3.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 23)

STUDIES - András Tarnóc: Ethnic Consciousness in Chicano Literature: The Voice of "La Raza".

História de la Nueva Mexico and the accounts of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca concerning his own exploits. The authors were mostly Spanish explorers but as Philip D. Ortego argued these works deal with distinctly American topics following a "unique metamorphosis, integrating alien elements which were to herald a distinct kind of New World literature" (Leal and Barrón 16). The most frequent forms of literary expression were fast-paced narrative ballads or poems set to music, called corridos, religious plays and folktales (Leal and Barrón 16). Paredes asserts that the corrido was the principal literary genre for Mexican-Americans in the Southwest. The term originally means 'to run' in Spanish and the ballads have Spanish colonial roots. The corrido is the product of the Anglo-Mexican cultural conflict viewing the events of the Southwest from a distinctly Mexican-American vantage point (Lauter 828). One of the oldest corridos, "Kiansis," describes a cattle drive from Texas to Kansas serving as a background to a rivalry between Anglo and Mexican cattlemen during which the latter proudly hold their own in a crisis. The ballad displays a clash of myths and in the end the vaquero defeats the cowboy. The poem promotes a human ideal who not only protects the herd but upholds the integrity of the MexicanAmerican cultural heritage. "Kiansis" actually reclaims the cowboy myth, one of the most cherished legends of Anglo culture, and proves J. Frank Dobie right, who asserted that the Anglo ranching industry was the straight descendant of Mexican cattle herding and raising practices with the vaquero functioning as the teacher of the cowboy (Moquin 377). "Gregorio Cortez" tells of the protagonist's clash with the "rinches," or the Texas Rangers. Cortez, a Mexican-American rancher defending his brother, gets in conflict with the law after he shoots a sheriff and makes his way toward the Mexican border. In the poem the relatively peaceful rivalry between vaqueros and cowboys gives way to a deadly gunfight as Cortez, a lone Mexican, symbolizes ethnic pride and defiance of Anglo authority. Cortez is the opposite of the stereotypical docile Mexican as his very name and weapon instills fear 66